Oil/basis

Famous quotes containing the words oil and/or basis:

“His education lay like a film of white oil on the black lake of his barbarian consciousness. For this reason, the things he said were hardly interesting at all. Only what he was.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)

“Knighterrantry is a most chuckleheaded trade, and it is tedious hard work, too, but I begin to see that there is money in it, after all, if you have luck. Not that I would ever engage in it, as a business, for I wouldn’t. No sound and legitimate business can be established on a basis of speculation. A successful whirl in the knighterrantry line—now what is it when you blow away the nonsense and come down to the cold facts? It’s just a corner in pork, that’s all.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)