Russian Post Offices

Famous quotes containing the words russian, post and/or offices:

    A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.
    Clifford Irving (b. 1930)

    A demanding stranger arrived one morning in a small town and asked a boy on the sidewalk of the main street, “Boy, where’s the post office?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well, then, where might the drugstore be?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “How about a good cheap hotel?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Say, boy, you don’t know much, do you?”
    “No, sir, I sure don’t. But I ain’t lost.”
    William Harmon (b. 1938)

    If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)