quotes

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
  - Mark Twain

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

- Steven Weinberg

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.
 - Bertrand Russell

Kindness is loving people more than they deserve.
 -Joseph Joubert, moralist and essayist (1754-1824)

I may not mean what I say, but I say what I mean.
 - Ximenes

"Die, my dear? Why that's the last thing I'll do!" 
  - Groucho Marx's final words. 

The world isn't worse. It's just that the news coverage is so much better.
- Anon

Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
- Gene Fowler

I hate writing, I love having written.
- Dorothy Parker

Constraint is the doting mother of Invention, whilst Freedom sits among her squalid brood refusing even to change Drivel's nappy.
 - M. H. Forsyth

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.
- Sigmund Freud 

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
-- W. Somerset Maugham

Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl. 
 ~Stephen Leacock

We like lists because we don't want to die.
 - Umberto Eco
 
 A nobleman is nothing but a man who says one thing and thinks another.
 -- The Mask of Zorro

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
 - Robert A. Heinlein

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
 - Russel Lynes

Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. 
 -John Ruskin, author, art critic, and social reformer (1819-1900)


Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.
 -Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

Wear your learning, like your watch, in a private pocket, and do not pull it out and strike it merely to show you have one. If you are asked what o'clock it is, tell it, but do not proclaim it hourly and unasked, like the watchman.
 -Lord Chesterfield, statesman and writer (1694-1773) 
Love is grand. Divorce is 50 grand.
  - Anon

You've got to take the bitter with the sour.
   Samuel Goldwyn (1882 - 1974)

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.
    Albert Camus (1913 - 1960)

A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls. 
 -US Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
 
May you live in interesting times. 
-Ancient Chinese Curse

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything. 
-Steven Wright, comedian (b. 1955) 

Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them. 
- P. G. Wodehouse

 

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.
 -Doug Larson, Olympic Gold Medalist (1902-1981)

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.
 -Fyodor Dostoyevsky, novelist (1821-1881)

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.
  - Somerset Maugham


The reason lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place is that the same place isn't there the second time.
-Willie Tyler

In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice - but not in practice.

Only the madman is absolutely sure -- I think.
 - Jonathan H

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. 
-George Baker (1877-1965)

One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
 -E.B. White, writer (1899-1985)

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
- Alfred North Whitehead, mathematician and philosopher (1861-1947)

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. 
-Aldous Huxley, novelist (1894-1963) 

Spoon feeding, in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
- E M Forster.


In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite.
     Paul Dirac (1902 - 1984)

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
- Samuel Johnson

It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
 - Bill Watterson, comic strip artist (1958- ), in his
comic strip Calvin & Hobbes.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. 
-H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

Men hate those to whom they have to lie. -
Victor Hugo, poet, novelist, and dramatist (1802-1885)

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them. 
 - Mark Twain 

Life is a zoo in a jungle.
    Peter De Vries

Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same.
Audrey Hepburn 

Politeness is the art of choosing among your thoughts. 
- Madame de Stael, writer (1766-1817)

Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is. 
 -William James, psychologist and philosopher (1842-1910) 

It's about time a zoo is defined for what it is:
   a prison for animals who have done nothing wrong

Men rarely (if ever) managed to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child.
 -Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (1907-1988)

Religion--freedom--vengeance--what you will, A word's enough to raise mankind to kill.
 -Lord Byron, poet (1788-1824)

Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.
 -Benjamin Franklin, statesman, author, and inventor

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. 
-Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

The lust for comfort murders the passions of the soul. 
-Khalil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931) 

If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
   Dorothy Parker (1893 - 1967)

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right. 
-Laurens van der Post, explorer and writer (1906-1996)

We find comfort among those who agree with us, growth among those who don't. 
-Frank A. Clark, writer (1911- )

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your own children have teenagers of their own.
   -Doug Larson

Faith which does not doubt is dead faith. 
-Miguel de Unamuno, philosopher and writer (1864-1936)

Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness. 
-Ouida [pen name of Marie Louise de la Ramee], novelist (1839-1908) 

The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.
 -Lorraine Hansberry, playwright and
painter (1930-1965)

From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review. 
-Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)

What some people mistake for the high cost of living is really the cost of high living.
    - Doug Larson

What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.
 -Sigmund Freud, neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis (1856-1939)

Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
 - H L Mencken

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
 - Erica Jong 

Be good and you will be lonesome.
 -Mark Twain

The belly is the reason why man does not mistake himself for a god.
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) [Beyond Good and Evil, 1886]

Whenever people say 'We mustn't be sentimental,' you can take it they are about to do something cruel. And if they add 'We must be realistic,' they mean they are going to make money out of it. 
-Brigid Brophy, writer (1929-1995)

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill

Carpe diem - Seize the day

First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.
Steve Martin

I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.
 Groucho Marx
 
 The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.
  - GK Chesterton

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.
  - George Bernard Shaw

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain 

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
Oscar Wilde 

A Lawyer will do anything to win a case, sometimes he will even tell the truth.
Patrick Murray 

Before we proceed further let us get one thing clear. Are we talking about the brown Indians in India, who have multiplied alarmingly under the benevolent British rule? Or are we speaking of the red Indians in America who, I understand, are almost extinct?
  Winston Churchill 

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
 -Leonardo da Vinci

To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. 
   Carl Sagan

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbors will say.
  - Cyril Connolly

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.
  - Richard M. Nixon

I've seen George Foreman shadow boxing and the shadow won.
Muhammad Ali

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.   
    Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849), "Eleonora"

There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.
  - Steven Wright

Genius is eternal patience.
 -Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, painter, architect, and poet (1475-1564)

You can sometimes count every orange on a tree but never all the trees in a single orange.
  -A.K. Ramanujan, poet (1929-1993)

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
Mahatma Gandhi

You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
Albert Einstein 

An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex.
Edgar Wallace.

There's so much pollution in the air now that if it weren't for our lungs there'd be no place to put it all.
Robert Orben.

Persons appear to us according to the light we throw upon them from our own minds.
 -Laura Ingalls Wilder, author (1867-1957)

A man who has to be punctually at a certain place at five o'clock has the whole afternoon ruined for him already.
 - Lin Yutang

As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler. 
Calvin Trillin, writer (1935- )

No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.
Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (1920-1992)

Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm but the harm does not interest them.
T.S. Eliot, poet (1888-1965)

That some good can be derived from every event is a better proposition than that everything happens for the best, which it assuredly does not. 
-James Kern Feibleman, philosopher and psychiatrist (1904-1987)

The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy. 
Florence Scovel Shinn, writer, artist and teacher (1871-1940)

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.
 -Richard Feynman, physicist, Nobel laureate (1918-1988)

'The term for the branch of medicine that deals with the ear, nose, and throat is otorhinolaryngology. You have to use all three to pronounce it.'
 - Anu Garg

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five. 
-Carl Sagan, astronomer and writer (1934-1996) 

We are healed of a suffering only by expressing it to the full.
  -Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922)

A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
 Robertson Davies

Having been unable to strengthen justice, we have justified strength.
-Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

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"My dear fellow," said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, "life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable."

     "And yet I am not convinced of it," I answered. "The cases which come to light in the papers are, as a rule, bald enough, and vulgar enough. We have in our police reports realism pushed to its extreme limits, and yet the result is, it must be confessed, neither fascinating nor artistic."

     "A certain selection and discretion must be used in producing a realistic effect," remarked Holmes. "This is wanting in the police report, where more stress is laid, perhaps, upon the platitudes of the magistrate than upon the details, which to an observer contain the vital essence of the whole matter. Depend upon it, there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace."
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Who knows what Columbus would have discovered if America hadn't got in the way.
 -Stanislaw J. Lec, poet and aphorist (1909-1966)

Hunting is not a sport. In a sport, both sides should know they're in the game.
 -Paul Rodriguez

There is no doubt that the first requirement for a composer is to be dead.
     Arthur Honegger (1892 - 1955)

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.
  - Leo J. Burke

I'm kind of jealous of the life I'm supposedly leading.
  - Zach Braff

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth.
  - George Burns

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
 - Bertrand Russell

Pure love produces pure nonsense.
 - Jonathan Klinger

Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.
  - Fletcher Knebel

Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength. 
  -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983) 

I find it difficult to feel responsible for the suffering of others. That's why I find war so hard to bear. It's the same with animals: I feel the less harm I do, the lighter my heart. I love a light heart. And when I know I'm causing suffering, I feel the heaviness of it. It's a physical pain. So it's self-interest that I don't want to cause harm.
 -Alice Walker, author (b. 1944)

Why a man would want a wife is a big mystery to some people. Why a man would want two wives is a bigamystery.
 - Slashdot

Alas, after a certain age every man is responsible for his face.
 -Albert Camus, writer and philosopher (1913-1960)

Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet.
 -Roger Miller, musician (1936-1992)

In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.
  - Johann von Neumann

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore.
 -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

A good listener helps us overhear ourselves. 
 -Yahia Lababidi, author (b.1973)

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
 -H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic (1880-1956)

We lie the loudest when we lie to ourselves.
 -Eric Hoffer, philosopher and author (1902-1983)

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
Mark Twain 

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.
      Christopher Hampton

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good.
 -Alice May Brock, author (1941- )

Skill is successfully walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Intelligence is not trying.
Anonymous.

The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand.
 Lewis Thomas

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
       Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
    -Albert Einstein

Never confuse movement with action.
    Ernest Hemingway

In a country as big as the United States, you can find fifty examples of anything.
       Jeffery F. Chamberlain

For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery. 
  -Jonathan Swift, satirist (1667-1745)

A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary. 
  -Thomas Carruthers


There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad. 
-Salvador Dali, painter (1904-1989) 

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
   James Branch Cabell (1879 - 1958)

The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly', meaning 'many', and the word 'ticks', meaning 'blood sucking parasites'.
  Larry Hardiman

A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill.
 -Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (1907-1988)

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.
  - EB White

I believe that people would be alive today if there were a death penalty.
    Nancy Reagan (1921 - )

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.
   George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
- Arnold Toynbee

Girls are always running through my mind. They don't dare walk.
    Andy Gibb

You can never understand one language until you understand at least two.
 -Ronald Searle, artist (b. 1920) 

Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
    Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.
     Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

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

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
    Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

In Hollywood a marriage is a success if it outlasts milk.
   Rita Rudner

"I have so often seen how people come by the name of genius; in the same way, that is, as certain insects come by the name of millipede — not because they have that number of feet, but because most people won't count up to fourteen."
 — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
 
 'He's got a brain the size of a peanut' 
  - Ant

Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything -- anything -- be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in. 
-Sam Harris, author (1967- )

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
  -Samuel Johnson

No iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place.
 -Isaac Babel, author (1894-1940) 

"When I meet a man I ask myself, 'Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?'"
-Rita Rudner

A physicist is an atom's way of knowing about atoms.
 - George Wald
 
The trouble with jogging is that the ice falls out of your glass.
   Martin Mull (1943 - )

If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke? -- Steven Wright

It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.
-James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)

I want a man who's kind and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire? 
- Zsa Zsa Gabor

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
    Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968)

Language is the archives of history.
 -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

If your parents never had children, chances are you won't, either.
  - Dick Cavett

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
 -  P. J.  O’ Rourke 

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.
  - Jean Giraudoux

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend, Rubies are her facebook friends, Emeralds must be on her blogroll and surely Sapphires must be her Orkut fans.
 - Krish Ashok

It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
     W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965)

He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.
    - William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), The Tempest, Act II scene 1

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
 -Arthur C Clarke, science fiction writer (1917- )

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.
 -John Wooden, sports coach (1910- )

Roads endure longer than pyramids.
 -Karol Bunsch, novelist (1898-1987) 

A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. 
-Michael Pollan, author, journalism professor (b. 1955) 

Stability in language is synonymous with rigor mortis.
  -Ernest Weekley, lexicographer (1865-1954)

Just as a cautious businessman avoids tying up all his capital in one concern, so, perhaps, worldly wisdom will advise us not to look for the
whole of our satisfaction from a single aspiration.
 -Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)

If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.
    Jewish Proverb

When I was born I was so surprised I didn't talk for a year and a half.
  - Gracie Allen

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. 
  - Carl Sagan

I have a rock garden. Last week three of them died.
   Richard Diran

I shot an arrow into the air, and it stuck.
    Graffito

I know a lot about cars. I can look at a car's headlights and tell you exactly which way it's coming.
     Mitch Hedberg (1968 - 2005)

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
     John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. 
  -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'
   Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)

There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. 
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
     Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

When I eventually met Mr Right, I had no idea his first name was Always.
- Rita Rudner 

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
    Hannah Arendt (1906 - 1975)

The coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man...only five hundred.
    Meredith Willson, The Music Man

It is true that I was born in Iowa, but I can't speak for my twin sister.
     Abigail Van Buren (1918 - )

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
     Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914)

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it -- and stop there -- lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again, and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
 -Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) 

Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice.
  - George Jackson

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
     Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) 

My theory is that all of Scottish cuisine is based on a dare.
    Mike Myers

No good deed goes unpunished.
   Clare Booth Luce (1903 - 1987)

We must certainly acknowledge that solitude is a fine thing; but it is a pleasure to have some one who can answer, and to whom we can say, from time to time, that solitude is a fine thing. 
- Honore de Balzac

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
    Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. 
 -William James, psychologist (1842-1910)

Invention is the mother of necessity.
    Thorstein Veblen (1857 - 1929)

Some people become so expert at reading between the lines they don't read the lines. 
 -Margaret Millar, novelist (1915-1994)

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.
 -Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

Illegal aliens have always been a problem in the United States. Ask any Indian.
  - Robert Orben

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
   Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations. 
-Francis Bacon, essayist, philosopher, and statesman (1561-1626) 

A friend is someone who will help you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move a body.
    Unknown

Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
    Charles Caleb Colton (1780 - 1832)

Crown: A headgear that makes the head superfluous.
 -Gabriel Laub, author (1928-1998)

Strike an average between what a woman thinks of her husband a month before she marries him and what she thinks of him a year afterward, and you will have the truth about him.
 - H.L. Mencken, writer, editor, and critic
(1880-1956)

A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
 - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., US Supreme Court Justice (1841-1935)

Everyone is born with genius, but most people only keep it a few minutes.
   Edgard Varese (1883 - 1965)

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
    David Friedman

Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away.
      Thomas Fuller (1608 - 1661)

The world is round; it has no point.
  - Adrienne E. Gusoff

Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.
    Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
     Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
 - Anon

The world is my lobster.
     Henry J. Tillman

The bishop came to our church today. He was an impostor. Never once moved diagonally.
  - Anon

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
     George Bernard Shaw 

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.
   Arthur Koestler (1905 - 1983)

If Dracula can't see his reflection in the mirror, how come his hair is always so neatly combed?
   Steven Wright

Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
     Henry Ward Beecher (1813 - 1887)

It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
    Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867)

Men are idolaters, and want something to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you don't make it of wood, you must make it of words. 
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., poet, novelist, essayist, and physician (1809-1894)

We live in a Newtonian world of Einsteinian physics ruled by Frankenstein logic.
       David Russell

For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.
   Johnny Carson (1925 - 2005)

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
  - Henry J. Tillman

Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
     Flannery O'Connor (1925 - 1964)

He who praises you for what you lack wishes to take from you what you have.
     Don Juan Manuel (1282 - 1349)

Sometimes the mind, for reasons we don't necessarily understand, just decides to go to the store for a quart of milk.
     Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
    Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860)

People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust.
     E. B. White (1899 - 1985)

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
      Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us.
 -Konrad Lorenz, ethologist, Nobel laureate (1903-1989)

We can't exhume anything more often than we inhume. It's
just that the exhuming makes more news.
 -Anu Garg

By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong.
     Charles Wadsworth

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his. 
- General George Patton (1885-1945)

If something goes wrong, blame the guy who can't speak English.
Homer Simpson

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
     Thomas Jones (1892 - 1969)

The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it.
  - Doug Larson

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 (1874 - 1936)

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.
   Denis Diderot (1713 - 1784)

A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says them about other people.
  - Peter McArthur

As you journey through life take a minute every now and then to give a thought for the other fellow. He could be plotting something.
    Hagar the Horrible

When Solomon said there was a time and a place for everything he had not encountered the problem of parking his automobile.
     Bob Edwards

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.
 -Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)

Almost all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to hide them. 
-Francois de La Rochefoucauld, writer (1613-1680)

The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don't talk much. 
-Germain G. Glien

I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I'd think, no, actually I'm a giraffe.
    Richard Gere

If you devote your life to seeking revenge, first dig two graves.
-Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn't work that way, so I stole one and asked for forgiveness. 
-Emo Philips, comedian (1956- )

I get a lot of cracks about my hair, mostly from men who don't have any.
     Ann Richards

Seeing ourselves as others see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them.
     Franklin P. Adams (1881 - 1960)

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
      Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic.
   Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin (1973) "Science and Scientism"

The greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, "The children are now working as if I did not exist." 
  -Maria Montessori, educator (1870-1952)

To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
    Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 - 1799)

Those who are incapable of committing great crimes do not readily suspect them in others.
 -Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

Count Hermann Keyserling once said truly that the greatest American superstition was belief in facts.
  - John Gunther

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.
   Burt Bacharach (1928 - )

A coupla months in the laboratory can save a coupla hours in the library.
   Westheimer's Discovery

A hypocrite is a person who -- but who isn't?
     Don Marquis (1878 - 1937)

Life is a long lesson in humility.
    James M. Barrie (1860 - 1937)

Walking isn't a lost art: one must, by some means, get to the garage.
    Evan Esar (1899 - 1995)

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.
     Shirley Temple (1928 - )

They know enough who know how to learn.
 -Henry Adams (1838-1918)

Selfish, adj. Devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others.
   -Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), [The Devil's Dictionary, 1906]

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Ms. M's picks:

"In this world Elwood... you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart- I recommend pleasant. You may quote me."- Elwood (Jimmy Stewart) in Harvey the Invisible Rabbit

"I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell- you see, I have friends in both places." -Mark Twain

"One can know a man from his laugh, and if you like a man's laugh before you know anything of him, you may confidently say that he is a good man." -Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Sometimes things don't work out like you'd like them to, but still end up working out better." -Lorne Elliott

"Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid." -Fyodor Dostoevsky

"I can live for two months on a good compliment" - Mark Twain

"Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more" -Nikola Tesla

"The formula 'Two and two make five' is not without its attractions."
-Fyodor Dostoevsky

"Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible." -Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso

"Anger is weakness. Patience is strength." - Julian Casablancas

"Religion is never the problem; it's the people who use it to gain power."
-Julian Casablancas

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give." -Winston Churchill

"Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding." - Albert Einstein

"But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?" -Mark Twain

"You can't hate a giraffe for having a long neck." -Dharma from Dharma and Greg

"In the end, only kindness matters." -Jewel

"It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions." - Mark Twain

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sicks and stones." - Albert Einstein ||