I admit it. I'm an Internet addict. Here's some quotations collected from alt.quotations and a few other places.
Volume II
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Last update 28 February 1997
Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful molder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State- and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
Free love? As if love is anything but free. Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love.
-Emma Goldman, Marriage and Love (from the Anarchist Sampler)
"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."
- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
"I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability."
-Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"I'm pleased God made my skin black. I wish He had made it thicker"
-Curt Flood
It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
-Winston Churchill
The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.
-Muhammad Ali
We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.
-Menander
Love is a series of 'darlings' and 'dearies,'
Of 'honeys,' and 'sweeties' and sugared entreaties.
Of moonings, and swoonings, and cooings and billings
All tempered, of course, by occasional killings.-E.Y. Harburg
It is better to be a mouse in a cat's mouth than to be a man in a lawyer's hands.
-Spanish proverb
The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.
-Fyodor Dostevsky
There once was a man who said, 'God
Must find it exceedingly odd
If he sees that that tree
Continues to be
When there's no-one about in the Quad.'Dear sir, your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the Quad;
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, yours faithfully, God.- attributed to John Knox in alt.quotations, although I'm suprised he had that much of a sense of humor.
Hershey's Kisses are called that because the machine that makes them looks like it's kissing the conveyor belt.
The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up
-paul valery
Croesus said to Cambyses; that peace was better than war; because in peace the sons bury their fathers, but in wars the fathers bury their sons.
-Francis Bacon, _Apophthegms, New and Old_ (1625)
We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.
-Quintilian (35-90 A.D.)
We apologize for the error in last week's paper in which we stated that Mr Arnold Dogbody was a defective in the police force. We meant, of course, that Mr Dogbody is a detective in the police farce.
-Correction Notice in the Ely Standard, a British newspaper
Warning: Objects in calendar are closer than they appear.
- Marshall Clow
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
-Dwight Eisenhower
"You can't imagine the extra work I had when I was a god"
-Hirohito (1901-1989), Emperor of Japan
"Where else but in America can a poor, black boy like Michael Jackson grow up to be a rich, white woman?"
-Molly Ivins
"Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible."
-Edward Teller
"Giving English to an American is like giving sex to a child. He knows it's important but he doesn't know what to do with it."
-Adam Cooper (19th century)
Anyone can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not easy.
-Aristotle (B.C. 384-322)
"In life, 'changing' is like being in a ship on the sea: you must build a new boat with material from the old one you're travelling in; you can't go on shore to destroy the old one first and then build a new one - but you have to re-construct while sailing."
-otto neurath
The German is used as a epigraph for the book _Word and Object_, by Willard Van Orman Quine:
Wie Schiffer sind wir, die ihr Schiff auf offener See umbauen muessen, ohne es jemals in einem Dock zerlegen und aus besten Bestandteilen neu errichten zu koennen.
It is not miserable to be blind; it is miserable to be incapable of enduring blindness.
-John Milton
-Saskya Pandita (1182-1251)
The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things - the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.
-Johnson (1709-1784)
"I believe I've found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us."
-zoologist Konrad Lorenz
Religion is a candle inside a multi-colored lantern. Everyone looks through a particular color, but the candle is always there.
-Modammed Neguib
"When I die, I want to be buried in Chicago so I can still be active in politics".
-atributed to Rep. Charlie Rangel of NY).
Prepare for the difficult while it is still easy. Deal with the big while it is still small. Difficult undertakings have always started with what's easy. Great undertakings always started with what is small. Therefore the sage never strives for the great, And thereby the great is achieved.
-Lao-Tzu
The difference between a violin and a viola is that a viola burns longer.
-Victor Borge
"Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong."
-John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908), U.S. economist. Guardian (London, 28 July 1989)
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
-Voltaire
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me."
-Erma Bombeck
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
-Babbage, Charles
If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.
--Abraham Lincoln
... coffee plunges into the stomach...the mind is aroused, and ideas pour forth like the battalions of the Grand Army on the field of battle... Memories charge at full gallop... the light cavalry of comparisons deploys itself magnificently; the artillery of logic hurry in with their train of ammunition; flashes of wit pop up like sharp-shooters.
- Honore de Balzac(1799-1850)
The great tragedy of Science -- the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
-Thomas Henry Huxley
If thine enemy offend thee, give his child a drum.
-Anonymous
I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house.
-Zsa Zsa Gabor
And who knows? Somewhere out there in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the president's spouse.
I wish him well!
-Barbara Bush, commencement address to Wellesley College
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
-Ingrid Bergman
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein
The free market is 'socialism' for the rich: the public pays the costs and the rich get the benefit - markets for the poor and plenty of state protection for the rich.
-Noam Chomsky on the One World web site
"I get up. I walk. I fall down.
Meanwhile, I keep dancing."
--unattributed quote from the Engaged Bhuddist Dharma page
Humphrey Bogart didn't write any of the things he said in Casablanca, or any other movie. He did say, during the McCarthy Era:
They'll nail anyone who ever scratched his ass during the National Anthem.
-Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957) American film actor of the Un-American Activities Committe
Nancy J. Gill, Quinquagenarian
As the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves
To lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse
On the fairest joys.
- William Blake, Proverbs of Hell
"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.
"When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
-Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
The horse and mule live thirty years
and nothing know of wines and beers;
The goat and sheep at twenty die,
And never taste of Scotch and Rye;
The cow drinks water by the ton
And at eighteen is mostly done;
Without the aid of rum or gin
The dog at fifteen cashes in;
The cat in milk and water soaks,
and then at twenty years old she croaks;
the modest, sober bone-dry hen
Lays eggs for nog and dies at ten;
All animals are strictly dry;
they sinless live and swiftly die,
while sinful, gleeful rum-soaked men
Survive for three score years and ten.
And some of us-a might few-
Stay pickled ‘till we’re ninety-two.
-Harlan Fiske Stone _1872-1946) Harlan Fisk Stone, Pillar of the Law [1956]
“”If you wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes. If you don’t wait for tomorrow, tomorrow comes.”
-Senegalese proverb
When the French Academy was preparing its first dictionary, it defined "crab" as, "A small red fish which walks backwards." This definition was sent with a number of others to the naturalist Cuvier for his approval. The scientist wrote back, "Your definition, gentlemen, would be perfect, only for three exceptions. The crab is not a fish, it is not red and it does not walk backwards."
"How much is that telescope worth?"
"I don't know. At least ten grand."
"Yeah? How much is the comet worth?"
"It's priceless."
"No. Really. How much?"
Pause. "How much do you have?"
-Robert J. Nemiroff
Appeared in Astronomy Magazine in 1987, Volume 15, Section 2, Page 30
A mugwump is a person educated beyond his intellect.
-Horace Porter (1837- ----), a bon-mot in the Cleveland-Blaine campaign of 1884.
Busy, curious, thirsty fly, Drink with me, and drink as I.
-William Oldys (1696-1761): On a Fly drinking out of a Cup of Ale.
My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.
-Orson Welles
As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
-Sandra Boynton
Leibniz never married; he had considered it at the age of fifty; but the person he had in mind asked for time to reflect. This gave Leibniz time to reflect, too, and so he never married.
-Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier (1657-1757) Eloge de le Leibniz.
God not only plays dice. He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen.
-Hawking, Stephen Williams (1942- ) Nature 1975 257.
Documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and when it is bad, it is better than nothing.
-DICK BRANDON
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.
-Rita Mae Brown
"A professional is a person who can do his best at a time when he doesn't particularly feel like it."
-Alistair Cooke
Somebody once said that Washington was a city of Northern charm and Southern efficiency.
-John F. Kennedy, remarks to the trustees of the national cultural center (now The Kennedy Center), November 14, 1961, _Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States:John F. Kennedy, 1961_, p. 719
A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.
-Robert Benchley (1889-1945) American humorous writer
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.
-Thomas De Quincey 1785-1859 Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts [1827]
I demonstrate by means of philosophy that the earth is round, and is inhabited on all sides; that it is insignificantly small, and is borne through the stars.
-Johannes Kepler, "Astronomis nova"
I want to suggest to you today, that unless we have a tolerant attitude toward mistakes - I might almost say "a positive attitude toward them" - we shall be behaving irrationally, unscientifically, and unsuccessfully. Now, of course, if you now say to me, "Look here, you weird Limey, are you seriously advocating relaunching the Edsel?" I will reply, "No." There are mistakes - and mistakes. There are true, copper-bottom mistakes like spelling the word "rabbit" with three Ms; wearing a black bra under a white shirt; or, to take a more masculine example, starting a land war in Asia. These are the kind of mistakes described by Mr. David Letterman as Brushes With Stupidity, because they have no reasonable chance of success.
-JOHN CLEESE
"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid"
- Frank Zappa
When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly.
- Patrick Overton
07 O, once in each man's life, at least, Good luck knocks at his door; And wit to seize the flitting guest Need never to hunger more. But while the loitering idler waits Good luck beside his fire, The bold heart storms at fortune's gates, And conquers its desire.
-Lewis J. Bates (b. 1832) Good Luck
1218 Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart, it will not come to stay with me. Even by the falling of water-drops a water-pot is filled; the fool becomes full of evil, even if he gather it little by little.
-The Dhammapada (c. B.C. 300)
A man is a fool is he drinks before he reaches the age of 50, and a fool if he doesn't afterward.
-Frank Lloyd Wright, on his before-dinner custom of a single Irish whisky with water chaser, _New York Times_, June 11, 1958
3633 Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
-Burke (1729-1797)
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies for instance.
-John Ruskin (1819-1900)
"One of the oldest human needs is having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night."
-Margaret Mead
We trained hard - but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams, we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing. And what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization.
-GAIUS PETRONIUS ARBITER, first century:
Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
-Mark Twain
Save a boyfriend for a rainy day--and another, in case it doesn't rain.
-Mae West, _New York Mirror_, April 6, 1958
Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.
-Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
If my grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather.
Yiddish saying
A grazing mace, how sweet the sound
That felled my foe for me!
I bashed his skull. He hit the ground.
And, thus came victory!
Snowy, Flowy, Blowy, Showery, Flowery, Bowery, Hoppy, Croppy, Droppy, Breezy, Sneezy, Freezy. The Twelve Months.
- Benham. _Book of Quotations._
A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and viniger, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.
-Samuel Johnson
: No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger that its weakest people, : and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down : there to hold him down, so it means you cannot : soar as you might otherwise. :
-Marian Anderson, on CBS TV, December 30, 1957
" Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by the dozens "
-Michel de Montaigne
"Math was always my bad subject. I couldn't convince my teachers that many of my answers were meant ironically."
- Calvin Trillin
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
- Joseph Campbell
"First learn computer science and all the theory. Next develop a programming style. Then forget all that and just hack."
- George Carrette
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves, too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Music and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.
-Samuel Pepys[1666]
"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."
-Herman Melville
If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
-John Stuart Mill, _On Liberty_ (1859)
You may send poetry to the rich, to poor men give substantial presents.
- Martial
If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry is money. --
Graves, Robert
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Put crepe bows round the white necks of public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West.
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. >
-W. H. Auden
Paul Revere had just discovered that someone in Boston was a spy for the British, and when he saw the young woman believed to be the spy's girlfriend in an Italian restaurant, he said to the waiter, "Hold the spumoni -- I'm going to follow the chick an' catch a Tory."
-John L. Ashman
One of my favorites has been "He's so dumb he couldn't pour piss out of a boot with a hole in the toe and instructions on the heel."
"The only devils in the world are those running in our own hearts. That is where the battle should be fought."
-Mahatma Gandhi
Bear, do not blame, what cannot be changed.
-Publilius Syrus
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Opinions expressed here are personal and do not reflect the views of Spatial Technology, Inc.
Copyright © Pierre Malraison All rights reserved.
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