Quote

The Irish are often nervous about having the appropriate face for the occasion. They have to be happy at weddings, which is a strain, so they get depressed they have to be sad at funerals, which is easy, so they get happy.

Peggy Noonan

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Peggy Noonan
Age: 74
Born: 1950
Born: August 7
Author
Journalist
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Faces
Irish
Happy
Occasion
Often
Strain
Easy
Funeral
Occasions
Appropriate
Funerals
Nervous
Weddings
Face
Depressed

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Speeches are more important in politics than talking points, as a rule, and are better remembered.
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The biggest improvement in the flow of information in America in our lifetimes is that no single group controls the news anymore.
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The 2008 election settled nothing, not even for a while. Our national politics are reflecting what appears to be going on geologically, on the bottom of the oceans and beneath the crust of the Earth: the tectonic plates are moving.
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Morals are concerned with what aids or impedes the fulfillment of basic human needs.
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The Democrats often seem like the Not Republican Party, no more and no less.
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If you join government, calmly make your contribution and move on. Don't go along to get along do your best and when you have to - and you will - leave, and be something else.
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A great speech is literature.
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Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.
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Resentment isn't a magnetic personal style.
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I love eulogies. They are the most moving kind of speech because they attempt to pluck meaning from the fog, and on short order, when the emotions are still ragged and raw and susceptible to leaps.
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When you forget yourself and your fear, when you get beyond self-consciousness because your mind is thinking about what you are trying to communicate, you become a better communicator
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Now he is a statesman, when what he really wants is to be what most reporters are, adult delinquents.
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Don't fall in love with politicians, they're all a disappointment. They can't help it, they just are.
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Politicians, please, think of yourselves! Move to help Terri Schiavo, and no one will be mad at you, and you'll keep a human being alive.
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