Famous Quotes |
| The discovery of America was the
occasion of the greatest outburst of cruelty and reckless greed known in history. |
Joseph Conrad |
|
English (Polish-Ukrainian-born) novelist
(1857 - 1924) |
| America has been discovered before, but it has always been hushed up. |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he ever
mentioned it. |
|
Margot Asquith |
|
|
| Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any
Indian. |
|
Robert Orben |
|
|
| A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for. |
|
W.C. Fields |
|
|
| Living with a conscience is like driving a car with the brakes on. |
|
Budd Schulberg |
|
|
| In order to preserve your self-respect, it is sometimes necessary to lie
and cheat. |
|
Robert Byrne |
|
|
| Depend not on another, but lean instead on thyself...True happiness is
born of self-reliance. |
|
The laws of Manu |
|
|
| He without benefit of scruples His fun and money soon quadruples. |
|
Ogden Nash |
|
US humorist & poet (1902 -
1971) |
| (Clemenceau) once said that war is
too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he may have been right...but now, war is too
important to be left to the politicians. They have neither the time, the
training, nor the inclination for strategic thought...And I can no longer,
sit around and allow Communist subversion, Communist corruption, and
Communist infiltration of our precious bodily fluids. |
Col. Jack Ripper, commander of
Burpleson AFB to Group Capt. Mandrake (Peter Sellers) in Dr. Strangelove |
| Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you. |
|
C.G. Jung |
|
|
| Half of analysis is anal. |
|
Marty Indik |
|
|
| Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind? |
|
Vladimir Nabokov |
|
US (Russian-born) author & translator
(1899 - 1977) |
| What we say is important for in most cases the mouth speaks what the
heart is full of. |
|
Jim Beggs |
|
|
| Marriage is a triumph of habit over hate. |
|
Oscar Levant |
|
(1906 - 1972) |
| A sportsman is a man who, every now and then, simply has to go out and
kill something. |
|
Stephen Leacock |
|
Canadian economist & humorist
(1869 - 1944) |
| Friendship is a very taxing and arduous form of leisure activity. |
|
Mortimer Adler |
|
|
| Name me and emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball. |
|
Charles V |
|
|
| The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other
bastard die for his. |
|
General George Patton |
|
|
| You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. |
|
Jeannette Rankin |
|
US pacifist & politician (1880
- 1973) |
| Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball. |
|
Charles V |
|
|
| Doctors are men who prescribe
medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less in human beings of whom they know nothing. |
Voltaire |
|
French author, humanist, rationalist, & satirist (1694 - 1778) |
| If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse - as a man shoots
himself. |
|
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| Man is what he believes. |
|
Anton Chekhov |
|
Russian dramatist & short story author (1860 - 1904) |
| We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to
amuse them. |
|
Evelyn Waugh |
|
English novelist & satirist
(1903 - 1966) |
| Thank God men cannot as yet fly and lay waste the sky as well as the
earth. |
|
Henry David Thoreau, Jan. 3, 1861 |
|
US Transcendentalist author (1817
- 1862) |
| It is now possible for a flight attendant to get a pilot pregnant. |
|
Richard J. Ferris, president, United Airlines |
|
|
| The odds against there being a bomb
on a plane are a million to one, and against two bombs a million times a million to one. Next time you fly, cut the
odds and take a bomb. |
Benny Hill |
|
|
| Traditionalists often study what is taught, not what there is to create. |
|
Ed Parker, Grandmaster, American Kenpo. |
|
|
| I know a mother-in-law who sleeps
with her glasses on, the better to see her son-in-law suffer in her dreams. |
Ernest Coquelin |
|
|
| Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the
future. |
|
Charles F. Kettering |
|
US electrical engineer & inventor
(1876 - 1958) |
| Good taste is the enemy of creativity |
|
Pablo Picasso |
|
Spanish Cubist painter (1881 -
1973) |
| Reviewing has one advantage over
suicide: in suicide you take it out on yourself; in reviewing you take it out on other people. |
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| Anybody who has listened to certain
kinds of music, or read certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the concertina, will admit
that even suicide has its brighter aspects. |
Stephen Leacock, 1912 |
|
Canadian economist & humorist
(1869 - 1944) |
| Nobody ever committed suicide while
reading a good book, but many have while trying to write one. |
Robert Byrne |
|
|
| I do not say a proverb is amiss when
aptly and reasonably applied, but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation
insipid and vulgar. |
Miguel Cervantes |
|
|
| I hate quotations. |
|
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
|
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| The average dog is a nicer person than the average person. |
|
Andrew A. Rooney |
|
|
| Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think. |
|
Alexander Pope |
|
English poet & satirist (1688
- 1744) |
| Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally
dislike. |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| Monogamy is the Western custom of one wife and hardly any mistresses. |
|
H.H. Munro (Saki) |
|
|
| I have perfumed my bed with myrrh,
aloes, and cinnamon. Come, let us take our fill of love until the morning. |
Proverbs 7:17-18 |
|
|
| Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who
will get the blame. |
|
Laurence J. Peter |
|
US educator & writer (1919 -
1988) |
| Get all the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything. |
|
Frank Dane |
|
|
| Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving
cabs and cutting hair. |
|
George Burns |
|
US actor & comedian (1896 -
1996) |
| The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his
own way. |
|
Josh Billings |
|
US Humorist (1818 - 1885) |
| I detest converts almost as much as I do missionaries. |
|
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| What if there had been room at the inn? |
|
Linda Festa on the origins of Christianity |
|
|
| Christ died for our sins. Dare we make his martyrdom meaningless by not
committing them? |
|
Jules Feiffer |
|
US cartoonist & satirist (1929
- ) |
| Religions change; beer and wine remain. |
|
Hervey Allen |
|
|
| When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they
truly are, infinite. |
|
William Blake |
|
English engraver, illustrator, & poet
(1757 - 1827) |
| There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money either. |
|
Robert Graves |
|
British author & classical scholar
(1895 - 1985) |
| I hope that one or two immortal lyrics will come out of all this tumbling
around. |
|
Poet Louise Bogan |
|
|
| They devoted the city to the lord
and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it - men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys. |
The Book of Joshua 6:21 |
|
|
| Reason should direct and appetite obey. |
|
Cicero |
|
Roman author, orator, & politician
(106 BC - 43 BC) |
| Remarriage is an excellent test of just how amicable your divorce was. |
|
Margo Kaufman |
|
|
| A man likes his wife to be just
clever enough to comprehend his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it. |
Israel Zangwill |
|
|
| I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy. |
|
Franz Kafka |
|
Austrian (Czechoslovakian-born) author
(1883 - 1924) |
| The world is a prison in which solitary confinement is preferable. |
|
Karl Kraus |
|
Austrian author and journalist
(1874 - 1936) |
| It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be
happy without money. |
|
Albert Camus |
|
French existentialist author & philosopher (1913 - 1960) |
| In heaven all the interesting people are missing. |
|
Friedrich Nietzsche |
|
German philosopher (1844 - 1900) |
| The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity. |
|
Marcel Proust |
|
French novelist (1871 - 1922) |
| The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. |
|
Mahatma Gandhi |
|
Indian ascetic & nationalist leader
(1869 - 1948) |
| Love: The delusion that one woman differs from another. |
|
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished. |
|
Zsa Zsa Gabor |
|
US (Hungarian-born) actress (1919
- ) |
| Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it
holds the universe together... |
|
Carl Zwanzig |
|
|
| Alimony: the ransom the happy pay to the devil. |
|
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make
the rubble bounce. |
|
Sir Winston Churchill |
|
British politician (1874 - 1965) |
| I know not with what weapons World
War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. |
Albert Einstein |
|
US (German-born) physicist (1879 -
1955) |
| The warning message we sent the
Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood. |
Alexander Haig |
|
|
| Whenever the literary German dives
into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his atlantic with
his verb in his mouth. |
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up. |
|
W. Somerset Maugham |
|
English dramatist & novelist
(1874 - 1965) |
| The charms of a passing woman are usually in direct relation to the speed
of her passing. |
|
Marcel Proust |
|
French novelist (1871 - 1922) |
| In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true
or becomes true. |
|
John Lilly |
|
|
| Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and
everybody else. |
|
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| The Bible tells us to love our
neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people. |
G.K. Chesterton |
|
|
| Chess is a foolish expedient for
making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time. |
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality. |
|
Jules de Gaultier |
|
|
| But in our enthusiasm, we could not
resist a radical overhaul of the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been exposed, analyzed, and replaced
with new weaknesses. |
Bruce Leverett - "Register Allocation in Optimizing Compilers" |
|
|
| Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on
people. |
|
W.C. Fields |
|
|
| There is something fascinating about
science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. |
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| As far as the laws of mathematics
refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. |
Albert Einstein |
|
US (German-born) physicist (1879 -
1955) |
| This world is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who
feel. |
|
Horace Walpole |
|
English author (1717 - 1797) |
| All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater
things. |
|
Bobby Knight |
|
US basketball coach (1940 - ) |
| Our lives improve only when we take
chances - and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves. |
Walter Anderson |
|
|
| A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in
students. |
|
John Ciardi |
|
US poet (1916 - 1986) |
| Man is a rational animal who always
loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason. |
Oscar Wilde |
|
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| Now is the time for all good men to come to. |
|
Walt Kelly |
|
US animator & cartoonist (1913
- 1973) |
| I am not an Economist. I am an honest man! |
|
Paul McCracken |
|
|
| The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel
making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. |
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| One reason the human race has such a
low opinion of itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers. |
Wilfrid Sheed |
|
|
| The Puritans gave thanks for being
preserved from the Indians, and we give thanks for being preserved from the Puritans. |
Finley Peter Dunne |
|
|
| The young always have the same
problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying
one another. |
Quentin Crisp |
|
|
| Victory belongs to the most persevering. |
|
Napoleon Bonaparte |
|
French general & politician
(1769 - 1821) |
| In Hollywood a starlet is the name
for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel. |
Ben Hecht |
|
US author & dramatist (1893 -
1964) |
| Candy<br>Is dandy<br>But liquor<br>Is quicker. |
|
Ogden Nash, "Reflections on Ice-Breaking" |
|
US humorist & poet (1902 -
1971) |
| The Pig, if I am not
mistaken,<br> Supplies us sausage, ham, and Bacon.<br> Let others
say his heart is big,<br> I think it stupid
of the Pig. |
Ogden Nash, "The Pig" |
|
US humorist & poet (1902 -
1971) |
| Getting kicked out of the American
Bar Association is like getting kicked out of the Book-of-the-Month-Club. |
Melvin Belli on the occasion of his getting kicked out of the American
Bar Association |
|
|
| It matters not whether you win or lose; what matters is whether I win or
lose. |
|
Darin Weinberg |
|
|
| Men are born with two eyes, but only
one tongue, in order that they should see twice as much as they say. |
Charles Caleb Colton |
|
(1780 - 1832) |
| If you stay in Beverly Hills too long you become a Mercedes. |
|
Robert Redford |
|
US movie actor & director
(1937 - ) |
| Americans are the only people in the
world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in
the rear window of their automobiles. |
Paul Fussell |
|
|
| University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so
small. |
|
Henry Kissinger |
|
US (German-born) diplomat & scholar
(1923 - ) |
| Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre but they are more
deadly in the long run. |
|
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine. |
|
Irwin Edman |
|
|
| Teach children to be polite and
courteous in the home, and, when he grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a freeway. |
Unknown |
|
Quotations by unknown authors |
| How is the world ruled and how do
wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read. |
Karl Kraus |
|
Austrian author and journalist
(1874 - 1936) |
| Human war has been the most successful of our cultural traditions. |
|
Robert Ardrey |
|
|
| A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes
longer. |
|
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
|
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| If God were suddenly condemned to
live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself. |
Alexandre Dumas, fils |
|
French dramatist & novelist
(1802 - 1870) |
| When you leave New York, you are
astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough. |
Fran Lebowitz |
|
US writer and humorist (1950
- ) |
| Awards are merely the badges of mediocrity. |
|
Charles Ives |
|
|
| Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to
reform. |
|
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular
error. |
|
John Kenneth Galbraith |
|
US (Canadian-born) administrator & economist (1908 -
) |
| There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the
other is to read Pope. |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| Whatever women do they must do twice
as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult. |
Charlotte Whitton |
|
|
| It is well, when judging a friend,
to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior imapartiality. |
Arnold Bennett |
|
|
| The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive
proof that God is a bore. |
|
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck. |
|
James A. Garfield |
|
US general & politician (1831
- 1881) |
| It is hard to believe that a man is
telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. |
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| Men occasionally stumble over the
truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. |
Sir Winston Churchill |
|
British politician (1874 - 1965) |
| I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I speak the truth, and
they never believe me. |
|
Conte Camillo Benso di Cavour |
|
|
| Lie: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one discovered to
date. |
|
Unknown |
|
Quotations by unknown authors |
| It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie. |
|
Unknown |
|
Quotations by unknown authors |
| Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art. |
|
Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle |
|
(1856 - ) |
| Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution. |
|
G.K. Chesterton |
|
|
| A cynic is not merely one who reads
bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future. |
Sidney J. Harris |
|
|
| Vegetarianism is harmless enough,
although it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness. |
Sir Robert Hutchison |
|
|
| To avoid criticism do nothing, say nothing, be nothing. |
|
Elbert Hubbard |
|
US author (1856 - 1915) |
| It is inexcusable for scientists to
torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians. |
Henrik Ibsen |
|
Norwegian dramatist (1828 - 1906) |
| The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for
lists of "Ten Best". |
|
H. Allen Smith |
|
|
| The penalty for laughing in a
courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence. |
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post. |
|
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| I went to a convent in New York and
was fired finally for my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion. |
Dorothy Parker |
|
US author, humorist, poet, & wit
(1893 - 1967) |
| Contemporary American children, if
they are old enough to grasp the concept of Santa Claus by Thanksgiving, are able to see through it by December
15th. |
Roy Blount Jr. |
|
|
| Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. |
|
Unknown |
|
Quotations by unknown authors |
| Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived. |
|
Abraham Lincoln |
|
16th president of US (1809 - 1865) |
| ... and thereof do I repent: I only
plucked an occasional flower when I might have gathered an ample harvest of fruit -- such are the just grounds for the
regrets I have ... |
D. A. F. Sade, "Dialogue between a Priest and a Dying Man" |
|
|
| Avarice is the sphincter of the heart. |
|
Matthew Green (c. 1737) |
|
|
| The further the spiritual evolution
of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear
of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after
rational knowledge. |
Albert Einstein |
|
US (German-born) physicist (1879 -
1955) |
| Music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness. |
|
E.M. Cioran |
|
|
| An idealist is one who, on noticing
that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup. |
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both. |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower your
class. |
|
Paul Fussell |
|
|
| All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under
his feet. |
|
James Oppenheim |
|
|
| Most men do not mature, they simply grow taller. |
|
Leo Rosten |
|
US (Polish-born) author (1908
- ) |
| I have just returned from Boston. It is the only thing to do if you find
yourself up there. |
|
Fred Allen |
|
US radio comedian (1894 - 1956) |
| Social confusion has now reached a
point at which the pursuit of immorality turns out to be more exhausting than compliance with the old moral codes. |
Denis de Rougemont |
|
|
| Behind almost every woman you ever heard of stands a man who let her
down. |
|
Naomi Bliven |
|
|
| He who labors diligently need never
despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor. |
Menander |
|
Greek comic dramatist (342 BC -
292 BC) |
| He grounds the warship he walks on. |
|
John Bracken on Captain Barney
Kelly, who ran the USS Enterprise into the mud of San Francisco Bay in May
1983 |
| You must believe in God in spite of what the clergy say. |
|
Benjamin Jowett |
|
|
| Changing a college curriculum is
like moving a graveyard--you never know how many friends the dead have until you try to move them! |
Calvin Coolidge or Woodrow Wilson |
|
|
| Be careful in revising those immigration laws of yours.<br> We got
careless with ours. |
|
advice given to Herbert Humphrey by an American Indian from New Mexico |
|
|
| Chess is as elaborate a waste of
human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency. |
Raymond Chandler |
|
US detective novelist & screenwriter
(1888 - 1959) |
| When there is no peril in the fight there is no glory in the triumph. |
|
Pierre Corneille |
|
French dramatist (1606 - 1684) |
| Actions lie louder than words. |
|
Carolyn Wells |
|
|
| Enzymes are things invented by
biologists that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking. |
Jerome Lettvin |
|
|
| American husbands are the best in
the world; no other husbands are so generous to their wives, or can be so easily divorced. |
Elinor Glyn |
|
|
| The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victims to a
great lie than to a small one. |
|
Adolf Hitler |
|
German Nazi dictator, orator, & politician (1889 - 1945) |
| Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired. |
|
Robert Frost |
|
US poet (1874 - 1963) |
| God created man and, finding him not
sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly. |
Paul Valery |
|
French critic & poet (1871 -
1945) |
| God made man, and then said I can do better than that and made woman. |
|
Adela Rogers St. Johns |
|
|
| Art is making something out of nothing and selling it. |
|
Frank Zappa |
|
US musician, singer, & songwriter
(1940 - 1993) |
| All power corrupts, but we need the electricity. |
|
Unknown |
|
Quotations by unknown authors |
| The police.....always wanting to play games. |
|
Maude (Ruth Gordon), from the movie "Harold & Maude" |
|
|
| If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it
dance. |
|
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream. |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| If a child shows himself to be
incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity marry, and
perpetuate his kind. |
Don Marquis |
|
US humorist (1878 - 1937) |
| Sunday: A day given over by
Americans to wishing they were dead and in heaven, and that their neighbors were dead and in hell. |
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| Deeds, not words shall speak me. |
|
John Fletcher |
|
English dramatist (1579 - 1625) |
| Death: To stop sinning suddenly. |
|
Elbert Hubbard |
|
US author (1856 - 1915) |
| I have always loved truth so
passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms. |
Giovanni Jacopo Casanova |
|
|
| Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious. |
|
Brendan Gill |
|
|
| Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. |
|
Bernard Berenson |
|
US (Lithuanian-born) art critic
(1865 - 1959) |
| If I ask a woman if she has suffered
sexual harassment, could this be considered sexual harassment? |
Sally Forth, Jan. 28, 1991 |
|
|
| Our Constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U.S. senators. |
|
Will Rogers |
|
US humorist & showman (1879 -
1935) |
| The classes that wash most are those that work least. |
|
G.K. Chesterton |
|
|
| As it is more blessed to give than
receive, so it must be more blessed to receive than to give back. |
Robert Frost |
|
US poet (1874 - 1963) |
| If I have ever made any valuable
discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent. |
Isaac Newton |
|
English mathematician & physicist
(1642 - 1727) |
| Writing is easy. All you do is stare
at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. |
Gene Fowler |
|
|
| Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. |
|
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one? |
|
Abraham Lincoln |
|
16th president of US (1809 - 1865) |
| Marriage: a long conversation chequered by disputes. |
|
Robert Louis Stevenson |
|
Scottish author (1850 - 1894) |
| An appeal is when you ask one court to show its contempt for another
court. |
|
Finley Peter Dunne |
|
|
| If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill always came together,
who would escape hanging? |
|
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| It is possible to be below flattery as well as above it. |
|
Thomas Babington Macaulay |
|
English author & politician
(1800 - 1859) |
| People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought
which they avoid. |
|
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard |
|
|
| My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence. |
|
Dame Edith Sitwell |
|
|
| We must not allow the clock and the
calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery. |
H. G. Wells |
|
English author, historian, & utopian
(1866 - 1946) |
| Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense. |
|
Thomas H. Huxley |
|
English biologist (1825 - 1895) |
| That orgy of wishful thinking that has passed for logic in the present
century. |
|
F.W. Lawvere |
|
|
| Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the
people. |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| You can pick out actors by the
glazed look that comes into their eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves. |
Michael Wilding |
|
|
| Working in the theater has a lot in common with unemployment. |
|
Arthur Gingold |
|
|
| One should always be wary of anyone
who promises that their love will last longer than a weekend. |
Quentin Crisp |
|
|
| The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the last half by
our children. |
|
Clarence Darrow |
|
US defense lawyer (1857 - 1938) |
| Virtue is its own punishment. |
|
Aneurin Bevan |
|
|
| If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. |
|
Latin Proverb |
|
|
| Never believe anything until it has been officially denied. |
|
Claud Cockburn |
|
(1904 - 1981) |
| Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their
common sense. |
|
Gertrude Stein |
|
US author in France (1874 - 1946) |
| Most people enjoy the inferiority of their friends. |
|
Lord Chesterfield |
|
(1694 - 1773) |
| I am a deeply superficial person. |
|
Andy Warhol |
|
US artist (1928 - 1987) |
| Early morning cheerfulness can be extremely obnoxious. |
|
William Feather |
|
(1908 - 1976) |
| Do Not Disturb signs should be written in the language of the hotel
maids. |
|
Tim Bedore |
|
|
| Always hold your head up, but be careful to keep your nose at a friendly
level. |
|
Max L. Forman |
|
|
| Never forget that the most powerful force on earth is love. |
|
Nelson Rockefeller |
|
|
| No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to
arrive. |
|
Thorstein Veblen |
|
US economist & social philosopher
(1857 - 1929) |
| Men are the only animals that devote
themselves, day in and day out, to making one another unhappy. It is an art like any other. Its virtuosi are
called altruists. |
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| A loving wife will do anything for
her husband except stop criticizing him and trying to improve him. |
J.B. Priestley |
|
|
| The woman who cannot tell a lie in defense of her husband is unworthy of
the name of wife. |
|
Elbert Hubbard |
|
US author (1856 - 1915) |
| What a blessing it would be if we
could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eyes. |
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg |
|
(1742 - 1799) |
| Ignorance is the mother of admiration. |
|
George Chapman |
|
|
| Giving a man space is like giving a dog a computer: the chances are he
will not use it wisely. |
|
Bette-Jane Raphael |
|
|
| Outer space is no place for a person of breeding. |
|
Lady Violet Bonham Carter |
|
(1887 - 1969) |
| Men should not try to overstrain their goodness more than any other
faculty. |
|
Samuel Butler |
|
English composer, novelist, & satiric author (1835 - 1902) |
| Life is like playing the violin in public and learning the instrument as
one goes on. |
|
Samuel Butler |
|
English composer, novelist, & satiric author (1835 - 1902) |
| Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature. |
|
Samuel Butler |
|
English composer, novelist, & satiric author (1835 - 1902) |
| To fall in love you have to be in the state of mind for it to take, like
a disease. |
|
Nancy Mitford |
|
|
| Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another |
|
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| Better to have loved and lost a short person than never to have loved a
tall. |
|
David Chambless |
|
|
| Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself. |
|
Thomas Jefferson |
|
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826) |
| I derive no pleasure from talking with a young woman simply because she
has regular features. |
|
Henry David Thoreau |
|
US Transcendentalist author (1817
- 1862) |
| The love of money is the root of all virtue. |
|
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| To some lawyers all facts are created equal. |
|
Felix Frankfurter |
|
US (Austrian-born) jurist (1882 -
1965) |
| Any pitcher who throws at a batter and deliberately tries to hit him is a
communist. |
|
Alvin Dark, former baseball coach |
|
|
| I was not successful as a ballplayer, as it was a game of skill. |
|
Casey Stengel |
|
US baseball manager (1890 - 1975) |
| I like a friend better for having faults that one can talk about. |
|
William Hazlitt |
|
English essayist (1778 - 1830) |
| I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of
liking them. |
|
Jane Austen |
|
English novelist (1775 - 1817) |
| It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees. |
|
Dolores Ibarruri, September 3, 1936 |
|
Spanish Communist agitator & politician (1895 - 1989) |
| Tell us your phobias, and we will tell you what you are afraid of. |
|
Robert Benchley |
|
US actor, author, & humorist
(1889 - 1945) |
| A child of my own! Oh, no, no, no!
Let my flesh perish with me, and let me not transmit to anyone the boredom and ignominiousness of life. |
Gustave Flaubert |
|
French realist novelist (1821 -
1880) |
| In this world of sin and sorrow
there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican. |
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless
it is kept under control. |
|
Don Marquis |
|
US humorist (1878 - 1937) |
| God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world. |
|
Ed McMahon |
|
|
| The Irish are a fair people - they never speak well of one another |
|
Samuel Johnson |
|
English author, critic, & lexicographer (1709 - 1784) |
| The great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by
an ugly fact. |
|
T.H. Buxley |
|
|
| We tolerate shapes in human beings that would horrify us if we saw them
in a horse. |
|
W. R. Inge |
|
|
| It takes a wonderful brain and exquisite senses to produce a few stupid
ideas. |
|
George Santayana |
|
US (Spanish-born) philosopher
(1863 - 1952) |
| The average man does not know what
to do with his life, yet wants another one which will last forever. |
Anatole France |
|
French novelist (1844 - 1924) |
| Everyone would like to behave like a pagan, with everyone else behaving
like a Christian. |
|
Albert Camus |
|
French existentialist author & philosopher (1913 - 1960) |
| There are few sorrows in which a good income is of no avail. |
|
Logan Pearsall Smith |
|
(1865 - 1946) |
| All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors. |
|
Unknown |
|
Quotations by unknown authors |
| If you wouldst live long, live well, for folly and wickedness shorten
life. |
|
Benjamin Franklin |
|
US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790) |
| It is no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be. |
|
Jim Grue |
|
|
| Business is a good game - lots of
competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money. |
Atari founder Nolan Bushnell |
|
|
| Advertising is 85% confusion and 15% commission. |
|
Fred Allen |
|
US radio comedian (1894 - 1956) |
| Contrary to popular belief, English women do not wear tweed nightgowns. |
|
Hermione Gingold |
|
|
| Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it. |
|
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| Money is always there, but the pockets change. |
|
Gertrude Stein |
|
US author in France (1874 - 1946) |
| Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil. |
|
Henry Fielding |
|
English dramatist & novelist
(1707 - 1754) |
| I am not sincere, not even when I say I am not. |
|
Jules Renard |
|
(1864 - 1910) |
| This is the day upon which we are
reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four. |
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| Sometimes a fool makes a good suggestion. |
|
Nicolas Boileau |
|
French critic & satiric poet
(1636 - 1711) |
| All my life, affection has been
showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it. |
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| It is better to be beautiful than to be good, but it is better to be good
than to be ugly. |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| I make a fortune from criticizing
the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going. |
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| A dollar saved is a quarter earned. |
|
John Ciardi |
|
US poet (1916 - 1986) |
| A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart. |
|
Jonathan Swift |
|
Irish essayist, novelist, & satirist
(1667 - 1745) |
| A large section of the intelligentsia seems wholly devoid of
intelligence. |
|
G.K. Chesterton |
|
|
| The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange
protein; it rejects it. |
|
Biologist P. B. Medawar |
|
|
| The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man
hardly anything. |
|
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
|
German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 - 1832) |
| The Green Party is like a watermelon - green on the outside and red on
the inside. |
|
Rep. Bill Dannemeyer, R-Fullerton |
|
|
| There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence. |
|
Henry Adams |
|
US author, autobiographer, & historian (1838 - 1918) |
| The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my
tongue. |
|
Oscar Levant |
|
(1906 - 1972) |
| Promote yourself, but do not demote another. |
|
Israel Salanter |
|
|
| He marries best who puts it off until it is too late. |
|
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution. |
|
Oscar Wilde |
|
Irish dramatist, novelist, & poet
(1854 - 1900) |
| Delores breezed along the surface of
her life like a flat stone forever skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to it
consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an over- dose
of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic apathy, doomed
herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless as an appendix and
as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a steroid-free fitness center. |
Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest. |
|
|
| Etymology, n.:<br> Some early
etymological scholars come up with derivations that were hard for the public to believe. The term "etymology"
was formed from the Latin "etus" ("eaten"), the root
"mal" ("bad"), and "logy" ("study
of"). It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow." |
Mike Kellen |
|
|
| In our country we have those three
unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either. |
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| I know what love is: Tracy and
Hepburn, Bogart and Bacall, Romeo and Juliet, Jackie and John and Marilyn.... |
Ian Shoales |
|
|
| Nowadays a citizen can hardly
distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter. |
G.K. Chesterton |
|
|
| The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf. |
|
Will Rogers |
|
US humorist & showman (1879 -
1935) |
| The wages of sin are unreported. |
|
Unknown |
|
Quotations by unknown authors |
| To a woman the first kiss is just
the end of the beginning but to a man it is the beginning of the end. |
Helen Rowland |
|
(1876 - 1950) |
| Discretion in speech is more than eloquence. |
|
Sir Francis Bacon |
|
English author, courtier, & philosopher (1561 - 1626) |
| Oh, what lies there are in kisses! |
|
Heinrich Heine |
|
German critic & poet (1797 -
1856) |
| Events in the past may be roughly
divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter. |
W. R. Inge |
|
|
| Dubito ergo sum - I doubt therefore I am |
|
Kayvan Sylvan |
|
|
| Forgive me my nonsense as I also forgive the nonsense of those who think
they talk sense. |
|
Robert Frost |
|
US poet (1874 - 1963) |
| The continued propinquity of another
human being cramps the style after a time unless that person is somebody you think you love. Then the burden
becomes intolerable at once. |
Quentin Crisp |
|
|
| I shall be breakfasted before you are afield. In short, I shall astonish
you all. |
|
Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd |
|
|
| Science is nothing but trained and organized common sense. |
|
Thomas H. Huxley |
|
English biologist (1825 - 1895) |
| Life only demands from you the
strength you possess. Only one feat is possible - not to have run away. |
Dag Hammarskjold |
|
Swedish diplomat (1905 - 1961) |
| Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing
himself. |
|
Leo Tolstoy |
|
Russian mystic & novelist
(1828 - 1910) |
| Man is a natural polygamist: he
always has one woman leading him by the nose, and another hanging on to his coattails. |
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| I am not young enough to know everything. |
|
J.M. Barrie |
|
|
| The impotence of God is infinite. |
|
Anatole France |
|
French novelist (1844 - 1924) |
| One of the simple but genuine
pleasures in life is getting up in the morning and hurrying to a mousetrap you set the night before. |
Kin Hubbard |
|
(1868 - 1930) |
| Except during the nine months before
he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does. |
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| There are more bad musicians than there is bad music. |
|
Isaac Stern |
|
|
| Only sick music makes money today. |
|
Friedrich Nietzsche |
|
German philosopher (1844 - 1900) |
| Every man is the architect of his own fortune. |
|
Sallust |
|
Roman historian & politician
(86 BC - 34 BC) |
| Music is essentially useless, as life is. |
|
George Santayana |
|
US (Spanish-born) philosopher
(1863 - 1952) |
| Democracy means government by
discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. |
Clement Richard Atlee, British prime minister (1945-1951) |
|
|
| An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country. |
|
Sir Henry Wotton |
|
|
| A communist is a person who publicly airs his dirty Lenin. |
|
Jack Pomeroy |
|
|
| I honestly believe that in my
lifetime we will see a country once again governed by Christians...and Christian values. What Christians have got to do is
take back this country, one precinct at a time, one neighborhood at a time,
and one state at a time. |
Ralph Reed, Executive Director, the Christian Coalition |
|
|
| Judge: a law student who marks his own papers. |
|
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed. |
|
Josh Billings |
|
US Humorist (1818 - 1885) |
| I used to be a lawyer, but now I am a reformed character. |
|
Woodrow Wilson |
|
28th president of US (1856 - 1924) |
| I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it
was hell. |
|
Harry S Truman |
|
33rd president of US (1884 - 1972) |
| I can think of nothing more boring
for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their
television screens. |
Dwight David Eisenhower |
|
|
| Alimony is a system by which, when
two people make a mistake, one of them keeps paying for it. |
Peggy Joyce |
|
|
| Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other
women. |
|
Elsa Schiaparelli |
|
|
| What you have when everyone wears
the same playclothes for all occasions, is addressad by nickname, expected to participate in Show And Tell, and
bullied out of any desire form privacy, is not democracy; it is kindergarten. |
Judith Martin, (Miss Manners) |
|
|
| No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes
than a public library. |
|
Samuel Johnson |
|
English author, critic, & lexicographer (1709 - 1784) |
| Any ordinary man can...surround
himself with two thousand books...and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be
happy. |
Augustine Birrell |
|
|
| I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library. |
|
Jorge Luis Borges |
|
Argentine novelist & poet
(1899 - 1986) |
| Carlyle said, "A lie cannot live"; it shows he did not know how
to tell them. |
|
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| A good listener is usually thinking about something else. |
|
Kin Hubbard |
|
(1868 - 1930) |
| My main reason for adopting
literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably. |
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| America: the only country in the
world where failing to promote yourself is regarded as being arrogant. |
Garry Trudeau |
|
|
| Something ignoble, loathsome,
undignified attends all associations between people and has been transferred to all objects, dwelling, tools, even the
landscape itself. |
Bertolt Brecht |
|
German Communist & dramatist
(1898 - 1956) |
| I love America. You always hurt the one you love. |
|
David Frye impersonating Nixon |
|
|
| If thou are a master, be sometimes blind; if a servant, sometimes deaf. |
|
Thomas Fuller |
|
English clergyman & historian
(1608 - 1661) |
| I passionately hate the idea of
being with it. I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time. |
Orson Welles, 1966 |
|
US actor & director (1915 -
1985) |
| Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. |
|
W.H. Auden |
|
|
| Logic is like the sword: those who appeal to it shall perish by it. |
|
Samuel Butler |
|
English composer, novelist, & satiric author (1835 - 1902) |
| The pencil sharpener is about as far
as I have ever got in operating a complicated piece of machinery with any success. |
Robert Benchley |
|
US actor, author, & humorist
(1889 - 1945) |
| The proof that man is the noblest of all creatures is that no other
creature has ever denied it. |
|
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg |
|
(1742 - 1799) |
| Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget
it. |
|
Michel de Montaigne |
|
French essayist (1533 - 1592) |
| Autobiography is an unrivalled vehicle for telling the truth about other
people. |
|
Philip Guedalla |
|
English author & popular historian
(1889 - 1944) |
| Muscles come and go; flab lasts. |
|
Bill Vaughan |
|
|
| A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any
wonder drug. |
|
Patricia Neal |
|
|
| You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider. |
|
Robert Frost |
|
US poet (1874 - 1963) |
| Only the winners decide what were war crimes. |
|
Garry Wills |
|
|
| Wars teach us not to love our enemies but to hate our allies. |
|
W.L. George |
|
|
| The individual choice of garnishment
of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important
thing to people. |
Donald N. Smith, president of Burger King |
|
|
| When anyone asks me how I can best
describe my experience in nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter
gales, and storms and fog and the like. But in all my experience, I have
never been in any accident... or any sort worth speaking about. I have seen
but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and
never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to
end in disaster of any sort. |
E. J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS Titanic |
|
|
| To get the attention of a large
animal, be it an elephant or a bureaucracy, it helps to know what part of it feels pain. Be very sure, though, that you want
its full attention. |
Kelvin Throop |
|
|
| The wisest mind has something yet to learn. |
|
George Santayana |
|
US (Spanish-born) philosopher
(1863 - 1952) |
| Of all the unbearable nuisances, the ignoramus that has travelled is the
worst. |
|
Kin Hubbard |
|
(1868 - 1930) |
| There is only one thing a
philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers. |
William James |
|
US Pragmatist philosopher & psychologist (1842 - 1910) |
| Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined. |
|
Samuel Goldwyn |
|
US (Polish-born) movie producer
(1882 - 1974) |
| He, in a few minutes ravished this
fair creature, or at least would have ravished her, if she had not, by a timely compliance, prevented him. |
Henry Fielding, "Jonathan Wild" |
|
English dramatist & novelist
(1707 - 1754) |
| No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have - and I think he is a
dirty little beast. |
|
W.S. Gilbert |
|
|
| The enemy came. He was beaten. I am tired. Goodnight. |
|
Vicomte Turenne, Message sent
after the battle of Dunen, 658 |
|
|
| I hate the pollyanna pest who says that all is for the best. |
|
Franklin P. Adams |
|
US journalist (1881 - 1960) |
| Good habits result from resisting temptation. |
|
Ancient Proverb |
|
|
| There are plenty of good five-cent
cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country really needs is a good five-cent nickel. |
Franklin P. Adams |
|
US journalist (1881 - 1960) |
| The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the
characters are purely imaginary. |
|
Franklin P. Adams |
|
US journalist (1881 - 1960) |
| The only thing I like about rich people is their money. |
|
Lady Astor |
|
|
| The richer your friends, the more they will cost you. |
|
Elisabeth Marbury |
|
|
| It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich
people. |
|
Logan Pearsall Smith |
|
(1865 - 1946) |
| Our national flower is the concrete cloverleaf. |
|
Lewis Mumford |
|
US architect & sociologist
(1895 - 1990) |
| Nature magically suits a man to his fortunes, by making them the fruit of
his character. |
|
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
|
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| I regret to say that we of the
F.B.I. are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. |
J. Edgar Hoover |
|
|
| In certain trying circumstances,
urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer. |
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| If more than ten percent of the population likes a painting it should be
burned, for it must be bad. |
|
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist, except an old optimist. |
|
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| In America you can go on the air and
kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people. |
Groucho Marx |
|
US comedian with Marx Brothers
(1890 - 1977) |
| If Jerry Brown is the answer, it must be a very peculiar question. |
|
Sen Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas |
|
|
| Charity sees the need not the cause. |
|
German Proverb |
|
|
| Making music should not be left to the professionals. |
|
Michelle Shocked |
|
|
| A husband should not insult his wife
publicly, at parties. He should insult her in the privacy of the home. |
James Thurber |
|
US author, cartoonist, humorist, & satirist (1894 - 1961) |
| Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy. |
|
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| There ought to be one day - just one - where there is open season on
senators. |
|
Will Rogers |
|
US humorist & showman (1879 -
1935) |
| Nobody said it was going to be easy, and nobody was right. |
|
President George Bush, quoted in Asiaweek magazine |
|
|
| Get this (economic plan) passed. Later on, we can all debate it. |
|
President George Bush, to New Hampshire legislators |
|
|
| The world makes up for all its follies and injustices by being damnably
sentimental. |
|
Thomas H. Huxley |
|
English biologist (1825 - 1895) |
| It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth
have both failed. |
|
Kin Hubbard |
|
(1868 - 1930) |
| No nation was ever drunk when wine was cheap. |
|
Thomas Jefferson |
|
3rd president of US (1743 - 1826) |
| The wine seems to be very closed-in
and seems to have entered a dumb stage. Sort of a Marcel Meursault. |
Paul S. Winalski |
|
|
| What profits a man if he keeps his
eternal soul when he could have lived life to the full and been forgiven at the end of it all anyway? |
David Merritt, a.k.a. THE RED SHARK |
|
|
| The best reason I can think of for
not running for President of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day. |
Adlai E. Stevenson Jr. |
|
US diplomat & Democratic politician
(1900 - 1965) |
| Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth
Corner, Vermont. |
|
Clarence Darrow |
|
US defense lawyer (1857 - 1938) |
| Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty. |
|
Stanislaw J. Lec |
|
Polish writer (1909 - 1966) |
| You must have taken great pains, sir; you could not naturally been so
very stupid. |
|
Samuel Johnson |
|
English author, critic, & lexicographer (1709 - 1784) |
| A bone to the dog is not charity.
Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. |
Jack London |
|
US adventurer, author, & sailor
(1876 - 1916) |
| My father never raised his hand to any one of his children, except in
self-defense. |
|
Fred Allen |
|
US radio comedian (1894 - 1956) |
| I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I
awoke from sheer boredom. |
|
Heinrich Heine |
|
German critic & poet (1797 -
1856) |
| Unprovided with original learning,
unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book. |
Edward Gibbon |
|
English historian of Rome (1737 -
1794) |
| Oh, life is a glorious cycle of
song,<br> A medley of extemporanea;<br> And love is thing that
can never go wrong;<br> And I am Marie of
Romania. |
Dorothy Parker |
|
US author, humorist, poet, & wit
(1893 - 1967) |
| The Preacher, the Politicain, the
Teacher,<br> Were each of them once a kiddie.<br> A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.<br> Do I want one?
God Forbiddie! |
Ogden Nash |
|
US humorist & poet (1902 -
1971) |
| Marriage: a book of which the first
chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose. |
Beverly Nichols |
|
|
| One should never know too precisely whom one has married. |
|
Friedrich Nietzsche |
|
German philosopher (1844 - 1900) |
| Men have a much better time of it
than women; for one thing, they marry later; for another thing they die earlier. |
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| The more he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons. |
|
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
|
US essayist & poet (1803 -
1882) |
| Psychoanalysts are father confessors who like to listen to the sins of
the father as well. |
|
Karl Kraus |
|
Austrian author and journalist
(1874 - 1936) |
| My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more. |
|
Charles Lamb |
|
English critic & essayist
(1775 - 1834) |
| Canada is a country whose main
exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain. |
Pierre Trudeau |
|
Canadian politician (1919 - 2000) |
| Habit is habit and not to be flung
out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. |
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. |
|
Don Marquis |
|
US humorist (1878 - 1937) |
| Statistics show that we lose more
fools on this day than on all other days of the year put together. This proves, by the numbers left in stock, that one
Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so. |
Mark Twain |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| Love is an ideal thing, marriage a
real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished. |
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe |
|
German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 - 1832) |
| For a while we pondered whether to
take a vacation or get a divorce. We decided that a trip to Bermuda is over in two weeks, but a divorce is something
you always have. |
Woody Allen |
|
US movie actor, comedian, & director
(1935 - ) |
| She cried, and the judge wiped her tears with my checkbook. |
|
Tommy Manville |
|
|
| Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse. |
|
Arthur Baer |
|
|
| Where desire writhed there stands a stone; the change was sudden and
complete. |
|
Maggie Roche |
|
|
| Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves. |
|
Nathaniel Branden |
|
|
| The first kiss is stolen by the man; the last is begged by the woman. |
|
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b)
that is not true. |
|
H. L. Mencken |
|
US editor (1880 - 1956) |
| I have never found in a long experience of politics that criticism is
ever inhibited by ignorance. |
|
Harold Macmillan, British prime minister (1957-1963) |
|
(1894 - 1986) |
| If only God would give me some clear
sign! Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank. |
Woody Allen |
|
US movie actor, comedian, & director
(1935 - ) |
| A sign of celebrity is that his name is often worth more than his
services. |
|
Daniel J. Boorstin |
|
US historian (1914 - ) |
| Fame lost its appeal for me when I
went into a public restroom and an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door. |
Marlo Thomas |
|
|
| All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is
sure. |
|
Mark Twain, Letter to Mrs Foote, Dec. 2, 1887 |
|
US humorist, novelist, short story author, & wit (1835 - 1910) |
| Who begins too much accomplishes little. |
|
German Proverb |
|
|
| As an anti-American, I thank you for your rotten article devoted to my
person. |
|
Prince Sihanouk in a letter to Time magazine |
|
|
| A painter should not paint what he sees but what should be seen. |
|
Paul Valery |
|
French critic & poet (1871 -
1945) |
| When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I
know she lies. |
|
William Shakespeare |
|
Greatest English dramatist & poet
(1564 - 1616) |
| Man is only man at the surface.
Remove the skin, dissect, and immediately you come to machinery. |
Paul Valery |
|
French critic & poet (1871 -
1945) |
| Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god. |
|
Sir Francis Bacon |
|
English author, courtier, & philosopher (1561 - 1626) |
| Self is the only prison that can bind the soul. |
|
Henry Van Dyke |
|
|
| Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. |
|
William Shakespeare |
|
Greatest English dramatist & poet
(1564 - 1616) |
| All professions are conspiracies against the laity. |
|
George Bernard Shaw |
|
Irish dramatist & socialist
(1856 - 1950) |
| Nothing to me is more distasteful
than that entire complacency and satisfaction which beam in the countenances of a newly married couple. |
Charles Lamb |
|
English critic & essayist
(1775 - 1834) |
| Foolish writers and readers are created for each other. |
|
Horace Walpole |
|
English author (1717 - 1797) |
| The safest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it in your
pocket. |
|
Kin Hubbard |
|
(1868 - 1930) |
| Every author, however modest, keeps
a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast. |
Logan Pearsall Smith |
|
(1865 - 1946) |
| I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. |
|
Mahatma Gandhi |
|
Indian ascetic & nationalist leader
(1869 - 1948) |
| Politicians are the same the world over: they promise to build a bridge
even when there is no river. |
|
Nikita Khrushchev |
|
Russian Soviet politician (1894 -
1971) |
