Famous quotes containing the words rip van, rip and/or van:
“As a father I had some trouble finding the words to separate the person from the deed. Usually, when one of my sons broke the rules or a window, I was too angry to speak calmly and objectively. My own solution was to express my feelings, but in an exaggerated, humorous way: You do that again and you will be grounded so long they will call you Rip Van Winkle II, or If I hear that word again, Im going to braid your tongue.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“I never knowed how clothes could change a body before. Why, before, he looked like the orneriest old rip that ever was; but now, when hed take off his new white beaver and make a bow and do a smile, he looked that grand and good and pious that youd say he had walked right out of the ark, and maybe was old Leviticus himself.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)
“An indirect quotation we can usually expect to rate only as better or worse, more or less faithful, and we cannot even hope for a strict standard of more and less; what is involved is evaluation, relative to special purposes, of an essentially dramatic act.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)