A

If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.
-- Hal Abelson
When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped.
-- Marcel Achard
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
-- Dean Acheson
Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.
-- Diane Ackerman
I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.
-- Douglas Adams
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
-- Douglas Adams
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
The work of internal government has become the task of controlling the thousands of fifth-rate men.
-- Henry B. Adams
Thomas Jefferson--still surv...
-- John Adams, dying words
Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl.
-- Mike Adams
My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.
-- Richard Adams, Watership Down
Our children's children will hear a good story.
-- Richard Adams, Watership Down
As a fan, I'm distraught, but as a cartoonist looking at new vacant spaces in 2,400 newspapers, well, behind me, my cats are dancing a conga line.
-- Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip "Dilbert," on the ending of competing strip "Calvin & Hobbes"
If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how it's done.
-- Scott Adams
Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
-- Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle
A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.
-- Joseph Addison
All television is children's television.
-- Richard P. Adler
He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.
-- Aesop
We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.
-- Aesop
Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-- Howard Aiken
Marriage is more than four bare legs in a bed.
-- Hoshang N. Akhtar
Elegance of language may not be in the power of all of us; but simplicity and straight forwardness are. Write much as you would speak; speak as you think. If with your inferior, speak no coarser than usual; if with your superiors, no finer. Be what you say; and, within the rules of prudence, say what you are.
-- Alford
Coffee is a beverage that puts one to sleep when not drank.
-- Alphonse Allais
Statistics have shown that mortality increases perceptibly in the military during wartime.
-- Alphonse Allais
A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
-- Fred Allen
Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
-- Fred Allen
You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a firefly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart.
-- Fred Allen
I didn't accept it. I received it.
-- Richard Allen, National Security Advisor to President Reagan, explaining the $1000 in cash and two watches he was given by two Japanese journalists after he helped arrange a private interview for them with First Lady Nancy Reagan.
I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
-- Woody Allen
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it by not dying!
-- Woody Allen
I'm astounded by people who want to 'know' the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown.
-- Woody Allen
It's impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.
-- Woody Allen
Love is the answer, but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions.
-- Woody Allen
Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.
-- Woody Allen
The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.
-- Woody Allen
The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people. Of course, the bad people enjoy the waking hours much more.
-- Woody Allen
What do I dislike about death? Must be the hours.
-- Woody Allen
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
-- Woody Allen
Why are our days numbered and not, say lettered?
-- Woody Allen
The only thing you take with you when you're gone is what you leave behind.
-- John Allston

Whenever books are burned men also in the end are burned.
-- Heinrich Heine Almansor
There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the network.
-- Guy Almes
If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.
-- Kingsley Amis
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
-- Jeremy S. Anderson
If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.
-- Maya Angelou
If you don't double-click me, I can't do anything.
-- John Aniston, on how computers have taken over his life
We trained hard - but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were 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 actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
-- Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.
Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
-- Aristotle
The gods too are fond of a joke.
-- Aristotle
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
-- Aristotle
Two more laser treatments and this is gone.
-- Tom Arnold, actor and comic, describing his plans for the "Rosanne" tattoo on his chest, 1995
In a great romance, each person plays a part the other really likes.
-- Elizabeth Ashley
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!", but "That's funny..."
-- Isaac Asimov
I married beneath me. All women do.
-- Lady Nancy Astor, attributed
An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.
-- Margaret Atwood
My good intentions are completely lethal.
-- Margaret Atwood
Motivation will almost always beat mere talent.
-- Norman R. Augustine
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
-- Marcus Aurelius
How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
-- Marcus Aurelius
It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage.
-- Jane Austen
Those who do not complain are never pitied.
-- Jane Austen

Anonymous
A behaviorist is someone who pulls habits out of rats.
-- Anonymous
A good marriage is like a casserole, only those responsible for it really know what goes in it.
-- Anonymous
A little girl at the wedding afterwards asked her mother why the bride changed her mind. "What do you mean?" responded her mother. "Well, she went down the aisle with one man, and came back with another."
-- Anonymous
A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
-- Anonymous
Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.
-- Anonymous
All marriages are happy. It's living together afterwards that is difficult.
-- Anonymous
An economic forecaster is like a cross-eyed javelin thrower: they don't win many accuracy contests, but they keep the crowd's attention.
-- Anonymous
Be tolerant of the human race. Your whole family belongs to it -- and some of your spouse's family does too.
-- Anonymous
Better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.
-- Anonymous
Compromise: An amiable arrangement between husband and wife whereby they agree to let her have her own way.
-- Anonymous
Count your age with friends but not with years.
-- Anonymous
Despite the high cost of living it remains a popular item.
-- Anonymous
Don't anthropomorphize computers -- they hate it.
-- Anonymous
Don't trust anyone over 30 who used to say "Don't trust anyone over 30."
-- Anonymous
Every flower must grow through dirt.
-- Anonymous
Every mother generally hopes that her daughter will snag a better husband than she managed to do...but she's certain that her boy will never get as great a wife as his father did.
-- Anonymous
Give her two red roses, each with a note. The first note says "For the woman I love" and the second, "For my best friend."
-- Anonymous
Guide to understanding a net.addict's day:
Slow day: didn't have much to do, so spent three hours on usenet.
Busy day: managed to work in three hours of usenet.
Bad day: barely squeezed in three hours of usenet.
-- Anonymous

He believes that marriage and a career don't mix. So after the wedding he plans to quit his job.
-- Anonymous
He early on let her know who is the boss. He looked her right in the eye and clearly said, "You're the boss."
-- Anonymous
Here's to you and here's to me,
and I hope we never disagree.
But, if that should ever be,
to HELL with you, here's to ME!
-- Anonymous
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-- Anonymous
I told my wife that a husband is like a fine wine; he gets better with age. The next day, she locked me in the cellar.
-- Anonymous
If I promise to miss you.... will you go away?
-- Anonymous
If it weren't for marriage, men and women would have to fight with total strangers.
-- Anonymous
If it weren't for marriage, men would spend their lives thinking they had no faults at all.
-- Anonymous
If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
-- Anonymous
If Satan ever loses his hair, there'll be hell toupee.
-- Anonymous
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.
-- Anonymous
Is it better for a woman to marry a man who loves her than a man she loves.
-- Anonymous
It's not as great a day for the bride as she thinks. She's not marrying the best man.
-- Anonymous
Jealousy is the only vice that gives no pleasure.
-- Anonymous
Know her mind and you can have her body, know her heart and you have her soul.
-- Anonymous
Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a teardrop.
-- Anonymous
Marital Freedom: The liberty that allows a husband to do exactly that which his wife pleases.
-- Anonymous
Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter.
-- Anonymous
Marriage is a three ring circus: engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering.
-- Anonymous
Marriage is bliss. Ignorance is bliss. Ergo...
-- Anonymous
Marriage is like a box of chocolates. You have to squeeze a few bottoms to make sure you like what you are getting.
-- Anonymous
Marriage is like a hot bath. Once you get used to it, it's not so hot.
-- Anonymous
Marriage is like a violin. After the music is over, you still have the strings.
-- Anonymous
Marriage is the only war in which you sleep with the enemy.
-- Anonymous
Mary had a little lamb and the doctor fainted.
-- Anonymous
Mistress: Something between a mister and a mattress.
-- Anonymous
Most people are more comfortable with old problems than with new solutions.
-- Anonymous
Mother-in-law: A woman who destroys her son-in-law's peace of mind by giving him a piece of hers.
-- Anonymous
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.
-- Anonymous
Of course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little in; the seniors don't take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates...
-- Anonymous
Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the doorbell.
-- Anonymous
Republican boys date Democratic girls. They plan to marry Republican girls, but feel they're entitled to a little fun first.
-- Anonymous
Some men are born with cold feet; some acquire cold feet; and some have cold feet thrust upon them.
-- Anonymous
Tact is the art of making guests feel at home when that's where you wish they were.
-- Anonymous
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
-- Anonymous
The best defense is a good offense.
-- Anonymous
The fate of love is that it always seems too little or too much.
-- Anonymous
The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but you still have to mow it.
-- Anonymous
The only weapon that becomes sharper with constant use is the tongue.
-- Anonymous
The theory used to be you marry an older man because they are more mature. The new theory is that men don't mature. So you might as well marry a younger one.
-- Anonymous
The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.
-- Anonymous
There's nothing wrong with having nothing to say -- unless you insist on saying it.
-- Anonymous
They had a dispute about a night out with the boys. But he finally decided to let her go.
-- Anonymous
They have come up with a perfect understanding. He won't try to run her life, and he won't try to run his, either.
-- Anonymous
They're almost inseparable. Sometimes it takes ten people to separate them.
-- Anonymous
This is a test. It is only a test. Had it been an actual job, you would have received raises, promotions, and other signs of appreciation.
-- Anonymous
Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
-- Anonymous
We always believe our first love is our last, and our last love our first.
-- Anonymous
We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
-- Anonymous
We do not remember days; we remember moments.
-- Anonymous
Whenever you eliminate the inedible, whatever remains, however unpalatable, must be food.
-- Anonymous
Where am I going? And why am I in this HANDBASKET?
-- Anonymous
Wind is to fire like distance is to love; it extinguishes the small and enflames the great.
-- Anonymous
Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere.
-- Anonymous
You can chase a butterfly all over the field and never catch it. But if you sit quietly in the grass it will come and sit on your shoulder.
-- Anonymous
You can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose.
-- Anonymous
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive.
-- Anaïs Nin

B
People say "I want peace." If you remove I {ego}, and your want {desire}, you are left with peace.
-- Satya Sai Baba
Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.
-- Roger Babson
Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.
-- Roger Babson
Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgement will always be in demand under all conditions.
-- Roger Babson
Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.
-- Lauren Bacall
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
Many a man owes his success to his first wife and his second wife to his success.
-- Jim Backus
Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
-- Francis Bacon
Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.
-- Francis Bacon
Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror.
-- Byrd Baggett
The main thing I like about New Yorkers is that they understand that their lives are a relentless circus of horrors, ending in death. As New Yorkers, we realize this, we resign ourselves to our fate, and we make sure that everyone else is as miserable as we are. Good town.
-- Kyle Baker, Why I Hate Saturn
Eternal boyhood is the dream of a depressing percentage of American males, and the locker room is the temple where they worship arrested development.
-- Russell Baker
Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three categories-- those that don't work, those that break down, and those that get lost.
-- Russell Baker
Is fuel efficiency really what we need most desperately? I say what we really need is a car that can be shot when it breaks down.
-- Russell Baker
People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out on the pleasure.
-- Russell Baker
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
-- James Baldwin
Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.
-- James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name, 1961
Nothing matters very much, and little matters at all.
-- Lord Balfour
I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it, and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else; hard work and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.
-- Lucille Ball
Honeymoon: A short period of doting between dating and debting.
-- Ray Bandy
Never practice two vices at once.
-- Tallulah Bankhead
To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it more fit for its prime function of looking forward.
-- Margaret Fairless Barber
My initial response was to sue her for defamation of character, but then I realized that I had no character.
-- Charles Barkley, on hearing Tonya Harding proclaim herself "the Charles Barkley of figure skating", 1994
I have always dressed according to certain Basic Guy Fashion Rules, including:
* Both of your socks should always be the same color
* Or they should at least both be fairly dark
-- Dave Barry
In the past decade or so, the women's magazines have taken to running home-handyperson articles suggesting that women can learn to fix things just as well as men. These articles are apparently based on the ludicrous assumption that _men_ know how to fix things, when in fact all they know how to do is _look_ at things in a certain squinty-eyed manner, which they learned in Wood Shop; eventually, when enough things in the home are broken, they take a job requiring them to transfer to another home.
-- Dave Barry
Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.
-- Dave Barry
Most married couples, even though they love each other very much in theory, tend to view each other in practice as large teeming flaw colonies, the result being that they get on each other's nerves and regularly erupt into vicious emotional shouting matches over such issues as toaster settings.
-- Dave Barry
The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless. So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...
-- Dave Barry
These childhood memories - I have them often, but can usually keep them under control with the use of drugs.
-- Dave Barry
Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.
-- Dave Barry
What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.
-- Dave Barry
If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.
-- Lynda Barry
Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
-- Marion Barry, Mayor, Washington, D.C.
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a losttradition.
-- Jacques Barzun
Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.
-- Baskins

A sweetheart is a bottle of wine, a wife is a wine bottle.
-- Baudelaire
All you need is love.
-- The Beatles, song title
And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.
-- The Beatles, The last lyric of their last song
We have only one person to blame, and that's each other.
-- Barry Beck, New York Ranger, on who started a fight furing a hockey game
Asking politicians to vote themselves out of power is like asking rabbits not to multiply, it ain't natural.
-- Bob Beckel, on term limits, CBS This Morning, 3/30/95
Now comes the mystery.
-- Henry Ward Beecher, dying words, March 8, 1887
The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.
-- Brendon Behan
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he's supposed to be doing at the moment.
-- Robert Benchley
When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home.
-- Betty Bender
It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.
-- Arnold Bennett
The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is.
-- Arnold Bennett
Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.
-- Thomas Arnold Bennett
It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.
-- Thomas Arnold Bennett
I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different.
-- Tony Bennett, 1995
I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.
-- Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward
I believe that mink are raised for being turned into fur coats and if we didn't wear fur coats those little animals would never have been born. So is it better not to have been born or to have lived for a year or two to have been turned into a fur coat? I don't know.
-- Barbi Benton, former Playboy bunny
Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.
-- Ingmar Bergman
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
-- Ingrid Bergman
I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's sixth husband. I know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't know how to make it interesting.
-- Milton Berle, when called to the microphone at the 2nd Annual Comedians Hall of Fame Inductions
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-- Hector Louis Berlioz
A hotel is a place that keeps the manufacturers of 25-watt bulbs in business.
-- Shelley Berman
If you want to recapture your youth, just cut off his allowance.
-- Al Bernstein
Ninety percent of the game is half mental.
-- Yogi Berra
No wonder nobody comes here--it's too crowded.
-- Yogi Berra
You can observe a lot by watching.
-- Yogi Berra
You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.
-- Yogi Berra
Patience with others is Love,
Patience with self is Hope,
Patience with God is Faith.
-- Adel Bestavros
The covers of this book are too far apart.
-- Ambrose Bierce
The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.
-- Ambrose Bierce
ARDOR, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
CAPITAL, n. The seat of misgovernment. That which provides the fire, the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the disgrace before meat.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder... It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
MARRIAGE, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
NEIGHBOR, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
NOVEL, n. A short story padded.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.
-- Josh Billings
Every man has his follies - and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.
-- Josh Billings
Every man knows his follies and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.
-- Josh Billings
Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
-- Josh Billings
Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
-- Josh Billings
One of rarest things that a man ever does is to do the best he can.
-- Josh Billings
The best time to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.
-- Josh Billings
I date this girl for two years--and then the nagging starts: "I wanna know your name."
-- Mike Binder
Never moon a werewolf.
-- Mike Binder
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.
-- Otto von Bismarck
I recently read that love is entirely a matter of chemistry. That must be why my wife treats me like toxic waste.
-- David Bissonette
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.
-- Shirley Temple Black
When nations grow old, the arts grow cold and commerce settles on every tree.
-- William Blake
Only positive consequences encourage good future performances.
-- Kenneth H. Blanchard
Love matches are made by people who are content, for a month of honey, to condemn themselves to a life of vinegar.
-- Countess of Blessington
Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner.
-- Amy Bloom
I have a great diet. You're allowed to eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people.
-- Ed Bluestone
Did you ever notice when you blow in a dog's face he gets mad at you? But when you take him in a car he sticks his head out the window.
-- Steve Bluestone
Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.
-- Paul Boese
There are trivial truths, and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.
-- Neils Bohr
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
-- Niels Bohr
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
-- Niels Bohr
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
-- Niels Bohr
Limousines used to be reserved for the ruling class, or, on special occasions, for the working class. Today, limousines are like taxicabs with the door handles still intact.
-- Erma Bombeck
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
-- Erma Bombeck
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
You never see a man walking down the street with a woman who has a little pot belly and a bald spot.
-- Elayne Boosler
Ah Mozart! He was happily married - but his wife wasn't.
-- Victor Borge
Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
-- Victor Borge
In the blithe days of honeymoon,
With Kate's allurements smitten,
I lov'd her late, I lov'd her soon,
And call'd her dearest kitten.
But now my kitten's grown a cat,
And cross like other wives.
O! By my soul my honest Mat,
I fear she has nine lives.
-- James Boswell, Life of Johnson
I am about to--or I am going to--die; either expression is used.
-- Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian, dying words
It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.
-- Alec Bourne, A Doctor's Creed
Unfortunately, the media have trouble distinguishing between real science and propaganda cross-dressed as science.
-- Linda Bowles, political columnist
One survey found that ten percent of Americans thought Joan of Arc was Noah's wife....
-- Robert Boynton
The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
-- General Omar Bradley
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
-- Anne Bradstreet
Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway.
-- Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board
Always behave like a duck--keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath.
-- Jacob Braude
The hard part about being a bartender is figuring out who is drunk and who is just stupid.
-- Richard Braunstein
He who laughs last has not yet heard the bad news.
-- Bertolt Brecht
Multimedia? As far as I'm concerned, it's reading with the radio on!
-- Rory Bremner
For a male and female to live continuously together is...biologically speaking, an extremely unnatural condition.
-- Robert Briffault
It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
-- J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man
Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.
-- Phillip Brooks
A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow.
-- Charles Brower
If someone offers you a breath mint, accept it.
-- H. Jackson Brown, Jr., Life's Little Treasure Book, on wisdom
The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.
-- Andrew Brown
In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back.
-- Charlie Brown, character in "Peanuts" comic strip, created by Charles Schultz
Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.
-- H. Jackson Brown
He who dies a thousand deaths meets the final hour with the calmness of one who approaches a well remembered door.
-- Heywood Brown
The tragedy of life is not that man loses, but that he almost wins.
-- Heywood Brown
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars
-- Les Brown
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
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
-- Lenny Bruce
My mother-in-law broke up my marriage. My wife came home from work one day and found me in bed with her.
-- Lenny Bruce
Never tell. Not if you love your wife... In fact, if your old lady walks in on you, deny it. Yeah. Just flat out and she'll believe it: "I'm tellin' ya. This chick came downstairs with a sign around her neck 'Lay on Top of Me Or I'll Die.' I didn't know what I was gonna do...."
-- Lenny Bruce
If people turn to look at you on the street, you are not well dressed.
-- Beau Brummel
Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, It is a thing to be acheived.
-- William Jennings Bryant
Husbands are awkward things to deal with; even keeping them in hot water will not make them tender.
-- Mary Buckley
Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.
-- Buddha
Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.
-- Buddha
Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.
-- Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat
We got to roll with the punches, play all of our hunches, make the best of whatever comes your way. Forget that blind ambition, learn to trust your intuition -- plowing straight ahead, come what may.
-- Jimmy Buffett, Cowboy in the Jungle (song)
Beneath the rule of men entirely great, / The pen is mightier than the sword.
-- Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu, II. ii
Art and science have their meeting point in method.
-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error. The strong and virtuous admit no destiny. On earth conscience guides; in heaven God watches. And destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one and dethrone the other.
-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.
-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it.
-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
When people have no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.
-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
I don't feel good.
-- Luther Burbank, dying words
Laugh and the world laughs with you. Snore and you sleep alone.
-- Anthony Burgess
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head.
-- Carol Burnett
Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.
-- George Burns
Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.
-- William S. Burroughs
Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.
-- Leo Buscaglia
I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children they just about throw up.
-- Barbara Bush, first lady, 1989
[You reporters] should have printed what he meant, not what he said.
-- Earl Bush, press aide to Richard Daley
I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.
-- George Bush, U.S. president, 1990
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
-- Samuel Butler
If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.
-- Samuel Butler
In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.
-- Samuel Butler
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
-- Samuel Butler
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
-- Samuel Butler
Never raise your hands to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.
-- Red Buttons
Since Eve ate the apple, much depends on dinner.
-- Lord Byron
No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.
-- Honore de Balzac
The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.
-- Honore de Balzac

C
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
-- James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion
Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction.
-- John Cage
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.
-- John Cage
Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
-- Albert Camus
You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
-- Albert Camus
You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
-- Al Capone
Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
-- Al Capp
Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac.
-- George Carlin
What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on?
-- George Carlin
Teach a parrot the terms "supply and demand" and you've got an economist.
-- Thomas Carlyle
If you can't sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep.
-- Dale Carnegie
You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime.
-- Dale Carnegie
You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.
-- Jonathan Carroll, Outside the Dog Museum
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!"
-- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop.
-- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
-- Thomas Carruthers
Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.
-- Johnny Carson
If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam.
-- Johnny Carson
Just buy a box of popcorn and a Coca-Cola and sit back and watch.
-- James Carville, Clinton advisor, offering advice for Democrats on the term-limits vote in the House
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
-- Wynn Catlin, also attributed to Will Rogers
When Michelangelo finished the painting of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, he spent the rest of his life trying to remove the paint that had poured into his sleeve.
-- Francois Cavanna
I don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking.
-- Katherine Cebrian
Better to have loved a short man than never to have loved a tall.
-- David Chambless
The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed.
-- Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort
Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.
-- Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort
The person who does not enjoy his own company is usually right.
-- Coco Chanel
In the end, everything is a gag.
-- Charlie Chaplin
If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.
-- Chekhov
Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too.
-- Anton Chekhov
The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing -- and then marry him.
-- Cher
Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so.
-- Lord Chesterfield
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
-- G. K. Chesterton
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
-- G. K. Chesterton
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
-- G. K. Chesterton
Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.
-- G. K. Chesterton
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
-- G. K. Chesterton
I still believe in liberalism today as much as I ever did, but, oh, there was a happy time when I believed in liberals...
-- G. K. Chesterton
Journalism consists largely in saying "Lord Jones died" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
-- G. K. Chesterton
Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.
-- G. K. Chesterton
Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
-- G. K. Chesterton
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.
-- G. K. Chesterton
Progress is the mother of all problems.
-- G. K. Chesterton
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.
-- G. K. Chesterton
The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church.
-- G. K. Chesterton
The honest poor can sometimes forget poverty. The honest rich can never forget it.
-- G. K. Chesterton
The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.
-- G. K. Chesterton
Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
-- G. K. Chesterton
We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour.
-- G. K. Chesterton
I'm worried that the universe will soon need replacing. It's not holding a charge.
-- Edward Chilton
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have; the older she gets the more interested he is in her.
-- Agatha Christie
Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.
-- Winston Churchill
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
-- Winston Churchill
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
-- Winston Churchill
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
-- Winston Churchill
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.
-- Winston Churchill
The optimist sees opportunity in every danger; the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity.
-- Winston Churchill
This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which we shall not put.
-- Winston Churchill
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
-- Winston Churchill
Well, dinner would have been splendid... if the wine had been as cold as the soup, the beef as rare as the service, the brandy as old as the fish, and the maid as willing as the Duchess.
-- Winston Churchill
As always, victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.
-- Count Galeazzo Ciano, The Ciano Diaries
A dollar saved is a quarter earned.
-- John Ciardi
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.
-- John Ciardi
You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
-- John Ciardi
The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.
-- Cicero
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
-- Tom Clancy
It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God, but to create him.
-- Arthur C. Clarke

Sir, I would rather be right than be President.
-- Henry Clay, Speech, 1850, referring to the Compromise Measure
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual intervention of civilization.
-- George Clemenceau
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
-- George Clemenceau
I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul.
-- Jean Cocteau
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?
-- Jean Cocteau
Nothing can so alienate a voter from the political system as backing a winning candidate.
-- Mark B. Cohen
He who laughs last is generally the last to get the joke.
-- Terry Cohen
Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy-- the mother.
-- Claudette Colbert
The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.
-- S. T. Coleridge
... I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time.
-- Colette
Music is the art of thinking with sounds.
-- Jules Combarieu
Heav'n hath no rage like love to hatred turn'd, Nor Hell a fury, like a woman scorn'd.
-- William Congreve
In the early sixties, we were strong, we were virulent...
-- John Connally, Secretary of Treasury under Richard Nixon, in an early 70s speech, as reported in a contemporary "American Scholar"
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
-- Rich Cook
I have noticed that nothing I have never said ever did me any harm.
-- Calvin Coolidge
The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness, can be trained to do most things.
-- Jilly Cooper
The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, "Is there a meaning to music?" My answer would be, "Yes." And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be, "No."
-- Aaron Copland
A cement mixer collided with a prison van on the Kingston Pass. Motorists are asked to be on the lookout for 16 hardened criminals.
-- Ronnie Corbett
Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, you lose interest.
-- Irwin Corey
Don't spend $2 to dry-clean a shirt. Donate it to the Salvation Army instead. They'll clean it and put it on a hanger. Next morning buy it back for 75 cents.
-- Billiam Coronel
What if it was cats who invented technology... would they have tv shows starring rubber sqeak toys?
-- Douglas Coupland

Live out of your imagination, not your history.
-- Stephen Covey
I've sometimes thought of marrying, and then I've thought again.
-- Noel Coward
Flowers are words which even a baby can understand.
-- Arthur C. Coxe
There is no future in any job. The future lies in the man who holds the job.
-- George Crane
Goodbye, Everybody!
-- Hart Crane, poet, who committed suicide by jumping overboard during a steamship voyage.
The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting.
-- Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
They were doing a full back shot of me in a swimsuit and I thought, Oh my God, I have to be so brave. See, every woman hates herself from behind.
-- Cindy Crawford, supermodel
To expect defeat is nine-tenths of defeat itself.
-- Francis Crawford
Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.
-- Joan Crawford
The trouble with children is that they are not returnable.
-- Quentin Crisp
A day without a pun is a day without sunshine; there is gloom for improvement.
-- John S. Crosbie
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
-- Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator, 1890
I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
-- ee cummings
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.
-- ee cummings
and what i want to know is how do you like your blueeyed boy Mister Death
-- ee cummings, Buffalo Bill
A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.
-- Fr. Jerome Cummings
Love is shown in your deeds, not in your words.
-- Fr. Jerome Cummings
There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.
-- George Armstrong Custer

D
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
-- Leonardo da Vinci
Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
-- Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks
A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.
-- Roald Dahl
To decide, to be at the level of choice, is to take responsibility for your life and to be in control of your life.
-- Abbie M. Dale
Marriage is a matter of give and take, but so far I haven't been able to find anybody who'll take what I have to give.
-- Cass Daley
I'm at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I've just had a mirror put over my kitchen table.
-- Rodney Dangerfield
If it were weren't for pickpockets, I'd have no sex life at all.
-- Rodney Dangerfield
Defeat never comes to any man until he admits it.
-- Josephus Daniels
Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing.
-- Georges Danton, to his executioner
He didn't say that. He was reading what was given to him in a speech.
-- Richard Darman, director of OMB, explaining why President Bush wasn't following up on his campaign pledge that there would be no loss of wetlands
History repeats itself; that's one of the things that's wrong with history.
-- Clarence Darrow
The first half of our life is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.
-- Clarence Darrow
When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it.
-- Clarence Darrow
The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.
-- Robertson Davies
I had ambition, by which sin
The angels fell;
I climbed, and step by step, oh Lord,
Ascended into Hell
-- W. H. Davies, Ambition
I'd marry again if I found a man who had 15 million and would sign over half of it to me before the marriage and guarantee he'd be dead within a year.
-- Bette Davis
Sex is God's joke on human beings.
-- Bette Davis
Honor the ocean of love.
-- George de Benneville
Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
-- Marquis de Flers Robert and Arman de Caillavet

Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.
-- Jean de La Fontaine
Absence diminishes small loves and increases great ones, as the wind blows out the candle and blows up the bonfire.
-- François de La Rouchefoucauld
It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
-- François de La Rouchefoucauld
There is only one kind of love, but there are a thousand imitations.
-- François de La Rouchefoucauld
Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
-- François de La Rouchefoucauld
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.
-- François de La Rouchefoucauld, Maxims, 1665
Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty and women their happiness.
-- Madame de Rieux
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
And now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
We cease loving ourselves if no one loves us.
-- Mme de Staël
It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.
-- Peter De Vries
There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you.
-- Peter De Vries
You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is.
-- Ellen DeGeneres
It is not good enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
-- Rene Descartes
When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.
-- Peter DeVries
Love is an ocean of emotions entirely surrounded by expenses.
-- Lord Dewar
Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.
-- Thomas Dewar
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
-- Philip K. Dick
...the fog is rising.
-- Emily Dickinson, dying words
Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.
-- Emily Dickinson
I've been asked to say a couple of words about my husband, Fang. How about "short" and "cheap"?
-- Phyllis Diller
Never go to bed angry. Stay up and fight.
-- Phyllis Diller
The multitude is always in the wrong.
-- Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, 1684
Life is a succession of lessons enforced by immediate reward, or, oftener, by immediate chastisement.
-- Ernest Dimnet
I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.
-- David Dinkins, New York City Mayor, answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes.
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
I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.
-- Walt Disney
Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
It destroys one's nerves to be amiable everyday to the same human being.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
It is easier to be critical than correct.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
The average Ph.D thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to another.
-- Frank J. Dobie, A Texan in England, 1945
Honolulu, it's got everything. Sand for the children, sun for the wife, sharks for the wife's mother.
-- Ken Dodd
More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
-- John Donne
No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
-- John Donne, Meditation XVII
If God does not exist, then everything is permitted.
-- Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Devils
The soul is healed by being with children.
-- Fyodor Dostoyevski
Education is the state-controlled manufacture of echoes.
-- Norman Douglas
In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had to worry about where the next meal would come from.
-- Peter F. Drucker
Joy is but the sign that creative emotion is fulfilling its purpose.
-- Charles Du Bos
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
-- Alexandre Dumas fils
I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.
-- Alexandre Dumas pere

Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.
-- Isadora Duncan
Trust everybody, but cut the cards.
-- Finley Peter Dunne
Many a man that could rule a hundherd millyon sthrangers with an ir'n hand is careful to take off his shoes in the front hallway whin he comes home late at night.
-- Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley On Making A Will, 1919

E
Never judge a book by its movie.
-- J. W. Eagan
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh.
-- Earl of Chesterfield
I think there are only three things America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music, and baseball.
-- Gerald Early, writer, baseball documentary, 1994
They gave me a book of checks. They didn't ask for any deposits.
-- Joe Early, Congressman (D-Mass), at a press conference to answer questions about the House Bank scandal
That's the nature of research--you don't know what in hell you're doing.
-- 'Doc' Edgerton
A straight line is the shortest in morals as in mathematics.
-- Maria Edgeworth
I'm desperately trying to figure out why kamikaze pilots wore helmets.
-- Dave Edison
... I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
-- Thomas Edison
Genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration.
-- Thomas Edison
If you want anything done well, do it yourself. This is why most people laugh at their own jokes.
-- Bob Edwards
If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others.
-- Tryon Edwards
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.
-- Albert Einstein
A man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. He sits on a hot stove for a minute, it's longer than any hour. That is relativity.
-- Albert Einstein
A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
-- Albert Einstein
A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.
-- Albert Einstein
A theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the person who made it.
-- Albert Einstein, attributed
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
-- Albert Einstein
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

Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
-- Albert Einstein
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteeen.
-- Albert Einstein
Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater.
-- Albert Einstein
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
-- Albert Einstein
Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labour in freedom.
-- Albert Einstein
Generations to come will find it difficult to believe that a man such as Gandhi ever walked the face of this earth.
-- Albert Einstein
Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.
-- Albert Einstein
Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.
-- Albert Einstein
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
-- Albert Einstein
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
-- Albert Einstein
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
-- Albert Einstein
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.
-- Albert Einstein
If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith.
-- Albert Einstein
If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.
-- Albert Einstein
If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
-- Albert Einstein
Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited while imagination embraces the entire world.
-- Albert Einstein
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
-- Albert Einstein
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
-- Albert Einstein
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
-- Albert Einstein
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the unlimitable superior who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
-- Albert Einstein

Never regard study as a duty, but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
-- Albert Einstein
Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted.
-- Albert Einstein
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
-- Albert Einstein
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
-- Albert Einstein
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.
-- Albert Einstein
The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
-- Albert Einstein
The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
-- Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
-- Albert Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
-- Albert Einstein
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
-- Albert Einstein
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.
-- Albert Einstein
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
-- Albert Einstein
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
-- Albert Einstein
When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity.
-- Albert Einstein
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
-- Albert Einstein
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. President
In the spider-web of facts, many a truth is strangled.
-- Paul Eldridge
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
-- George Eliot
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
-- T. S. Eliot
The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.
-- T. S. Eliot

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
-- Buke Ellington
The two most abundant things in the universe are Hydrogren and stupidity.
-- Harlan Ellison
A man's library is a sort of harem.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man's wife has more power over him than the state has.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.
-- Epicurus
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-- Susan Ertz
I hate it in friends when they come too late to help.
-- Euripides
Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain.
-- Euripides
I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better.
-- George Bird Evans
You can pay attention to the fact, in which case you'll probably become a mathematician, or you can ignore it, in which case you'll probably become a physicist.
-- Len Evans, professor, Northwestern University, teaching an honors calculus course
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
-- Isaac Newton

F
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
-- Clifton Fadiman
Head out toward Lake Nostalgia.... take Route 5 to Laughing Pines.... get off at Funway West... and drive into Springtime.
-- Donald Fagen, from the song "Springtime" on the Kamakiriad CD
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
-- William Faulkner
We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea at first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work.
-- Richard Feynman
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
-- W. C. Fields
The nourishment is palatable.
-- Millard Fillmore, dying words
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald
You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.
-- Edward Flaherty
There's a saying among prospectors: "Go out looking for one thing, and that's all you'll ever find."
-- Robert Flaherty
History is more or less bunk.
-- Henry Ford
I believe God is managing affairs and that He doesn't need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about.
-- Henry Ford
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
-- Henry Ford
Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.
-- Henry Ford
My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me!
-- Henry Ford
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
-- Henry Ford
One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do.
-- Henry Ford
The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.
-- Henry Ford
Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
-- Henry Ford
You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
-- Henry Ford
I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick
The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.
-- Anatole France
To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.
-- Anatole France
When a thing has been said and said well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.
-- Anatole France
Whoever is happy will make others happy too.
-- Anne Frank
Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.
-- Rose Franken
I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first.
-- Benjamin Franklin
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterwards.
-- Benjamin Franklin
Ne'er take a wife till thou hast a house (and a fire) to put her in.
-- Benjamin Franklin
There are three great friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.
-- Benjamin Franklin
Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
-- Benjamin Franklin
Where there is marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
-- Benjamin Franklin
When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the 2 will hover, inches above the ground. With a giant buttered-cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago.
-- John Frazee
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
-- Paulo Freire
If I had been around when Rubens was painting, I would have been revered as a fabulous model. Kate Moss? Well, she would have been the paintbrush...
-- Dawn French
Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.
-- Sigmund Freud
Never be possessive. If a female friend lets on that she is going out with another man, be kind and understanding. If she says she would like to go out with the Dallas Cowboys, including the coaching staff, the same rule applies. Tell her: "Kath, you just go right ahead and do what you feel is right." Unless you actually care for her, in which case you must see to it that she has no male contact whatsoever.
-- Bruce Jay Friedman
A Code of Honor: Never approach a friend's girlfriend or wife with mischief as your goal. There are just too many women in the world to justify that sort of dishonorable behavior. Unless she's really_ attractive.
-- Bruce Friedman
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
-- Milton Friedman
Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it.
-- Max Frisch
Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."
-- Erich Fromm
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
-- Robert Frost
A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
-- Robert Frost
Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
-- Robert Frost
Hell is a half-filled auditorium.
-- Robert Frost
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on.
-- Robert Frost
The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office.
-- Robert Frost
You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.
-- Robert Frost
Love me or hate me, but spare me your indifference.
-- Libbie Fudim
When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I only think about how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
-- Buckminster Fuller
Every child is born a genius.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
Choose a wife by your ear than your eye.
-- Thomas Fuller, 1732
He that would have the fruit must climb the tree.
-- Thomas Fuller, M.D.

G
A man is incomplete until he is married. After that, he is finished.
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor
Husbands are like fires. They go out if unattended.
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor
I know nothing about sex, because I was always married.
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor
I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back.
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor
I'm an excellent housekeeper. Every time I get a divorce, I keep the house.
-- Zsa Zsa Gabor
If I tell a lie it's only because I think I'm telling the truth.
-- Phil Gaglardi, Minister of Highways, British Columbia, Canada
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
I'll moider da bum.
-- Tony Galento, heavyweight boxer, when asked what he thought of William Shakespeare
I could prove God statistically.
-- George Gallup
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
-- John Galsworthy
All women are born evil. Some just realize their potential later in life than others.
-- Chad A. Gamble, Escape, short story
Consciously or unconsciously, every one of us does render some service or other. If we cultivate the habit of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger, and will make, not only our own happiness, but that of the world at large.
-- Gandhi
Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
-- Gandhi
I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
-- Gandhi
I think it would be a good idea.
-- Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
-- Gandhi
We must become the change we want to see.
-- Gandhi
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.
-- Gandhi
Where there is love there is life.
-- Gandhi
You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.
-- Indira Gandhi
Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done.
-- Carl Friedrich Gauss, when informed that his wife was dying
I like nonsense -- it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope...and that enables you to laugh at all of life's realities.
-- Theodor S. Geisel, a.k.a. "Dr. Seuss"
Most convicted felons are just people who were not taken to museums or Broadway musicals as children.
-- Libby Gelman-Waxner
Always go to the bathroom when you have a chance.
-- King George V
The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights.
-- J. Paul Getty
He who laughs last didn't get it.
-- Helen Giangregorio
Success is just a matter of attitude.
-- Darcy E. Gibbons
It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.
-- Khalil Gibran
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.
-- Andre Gide
Whoever controls the media--the images--controls the culture.
-- Allen Ginsberg
We love because it's the only true adventure.
-- Nikki Giovanni
There is nothing so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can't set it right in the course of an afternoon.
-- Giraudoux
We look forward to the time when the power to love of will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.
-- William Gladstone
The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day you're off it.
-- Jackie Gleason
If it weren't for electricity we'd all be watching television by candlelight.
-- George Gobel
I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is - I could be just as proud for half the money.
-- Arthur Godfrey
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.
-- Gail Godwin
Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
More light!
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, dying words
Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The society of women is the element of good manners.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is a courtesy of the heart; it is allied to love. From it springs the purest courtesy in the outward behavior.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Viewed from the summit of reason, all life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a madhouse.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What does not kill me makes me stronger.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you're in deep water.
-- Sidney Goff
America's one of the finest countries anyone ever stole.
-- Bobcat Goldthwait
Thank heaven. A bachelor's life is no life for a single man.
-- Samuel Goldwyn, immigrant-turned-famous-movie-producer, when told his son was getting married
Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.
-- Roy Goodman
It is a known fact that men are practical, hardheaded realists, in contrast to women, who are romantic dreamers and actually believe that estrogenic skin cream must do something or they couldn't charge sixteen dollars for that little tiny jar.
-- Jane Goodsell
Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo.
-- Al Gore, U.S. Vice President
When Baby's cries grew hard to bear I popped him in the Frigidaire. I never would have done so if I'd known that he'd be frozen stiff. My wife said, "George, I'm so unhappy! Our darling's now completely frappe!"
-- Graham
Love is blind and marriage is the institution for the blind.
-- James Graham
If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.
-- Robert Graves
The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth which it prevents you from achieving.
-- Russell Green
Life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease.
-- Colin Greene
I have a daughter who goes to SMU. She could've gone to UCLA here in California, but it's one more letter she'd have to remember.
-- Shecky Greene
These people have served a longer sentence than some people who have committed murder.
-- Jeff Greenfield, news analyst, describing the jury in the OJ Simpson murder trial, 1995
Hardly a year passes that fails to find a new, oft-times exotic, research method or technique added to the armamentarium of political inquiry. Anyone who cannot negotiate Chi squares, assess randomization, statistical significance, and standard deviations is less than illiterate; he is preconscious.
-- A. James Gregor, An Introduction to Metapolitics, 1971
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.
-- Wayne Gretzky
I don't think I'll get married again. I'll just find a woman I don't like and give her a house.
-- Lewis Grizzard
Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes.
-- Lewis Grizzard
Silence is argument carried out by other means.
-- Ernesto "Che" Guevara
A man must marry only a very pretty woman in case he should ever want some other man to take her off his hands.
-- Sacha Guitry
An ideal wife is one who remains faithful to you but tries to be just as charming as if she weren't.
-- Sacha Guitry
When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
-- Sacha Guitry

H
Jake liked his women the way he liked his kiwi fruit: sweet yet tart, firm-fleshed yet yielding to the touch, and covered with short brown fuzzy hair.
-- Jonathan S. Haas
My mother's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it.
-- Buddy Hackett
I have read your book and much like it.
-- Moses Hadas, book reviewer
Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time reading it.
-- Moses Hadas, book reviewer
This book fills a much-needed gap.
-- Moses Hadas, book reviewer
I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.
-- Nathan Hale
Two souls with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat as one.
-- Fredrich Halm
Whenever I dwell for any length of time on my own shortcomings, they gradually begin to seem mild harmless, rather engaging little things, not at all like the staring defects in other people's characters.
-- Margaret Halsey
If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you are overdressed
-- Kate Halverson
The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
-- Dag Hammarskjold
Cute little babies that fall out of swings - These are a few of my favourite things.
-- Oscar Hammerstein, working lyric for a piece from "The Sound of Music"
When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we'd all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us. It wasn't until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear.
-- Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts
Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin.
-- Grace Hansen
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
-- Lucille S. Harper
People need loving the most when they deserve it the least.
-- John Harrigan
Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening. [...] The average American (should be) content with their humble role in life, because they're not tempted to think about any other role.
-- William Torrey Harris, U.S. Commissioner of Education, 1889
The marriage of Marxism and feminism has been like the marriage of husband and wife depicted in English common law: Marxism and feminism are one, and that one is Marxism.
-- Heidi Hartmann, The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism
Love is the great miracle cure. Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives.
-- Louise Hay
The story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.
-- Helen Hayes
Prejudice is the child of ignorance.
-- William Hazlitt
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
-- Ben Hecht
Beware of men on airplanes. The minute a man reaches thirty thousand feet, he immediately becomes consumed by distasteful sexual fantasies which involve doing uncomfortable things in those tiny toilets. These men should not be encouraged, their fantasies are sadly low-rent and unimaginative. Affect an aloof, cool demeanor as soon as any man tries to draw you out. Unless, of course, he's the pilot.
-- Cynthia Heimel
Never judge someone by who he's in love with; judge him by his friends. People fall in love with the most appalling people. Take a cool, appraising glance at his pals.
-- Cynthia Heimel
When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.
-- Cynthia Heimel, "Lower Manhattan Survival Tactics" in Village Voice
Dieu me pardonnera. C'est son métier. Translation: God will forgive me. It's his job.
-- Heinrich Heine, dying words
Women and Cats will do as they please. Men and dogs had better get used to it.
-- Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, Lazarus Long
Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football.
-- John Heisman
He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.
-- J. Heller
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
-- Joseph Heller, Catch 22
The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.
-- Joseph Heller, Catch-22
... there is wisdom in madness and strong probability of truth in all accusations, for people are complete, and everyone is capable of everything.
-- Joseph Heller, God Knows
The promises of maniacs, like those of women, are not safely relied upon.
-- Joseph Heller, God Knows
Only the little people pay taxes.
-- Leona Helmsley, hotel owner and prison inmate, 1989
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.
-- Ernest Hemingway
We need a president who's fluent in at least one language.
-- Buck Henry
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death!
-- Patrick Henry
Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.
-- Katharine Hepburn
If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.
-- Katharine Hepburn
Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.
-- Katharine Hepburn
All is flux, nothing stays still.
-- Heraclitus
There is nothing permanent except change.
-- Heraclitus
Bigamy is one way of avoiding the painful publicity of divorce and the expense of alimony.
-- Oliver Herford
Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.
-- Oliver Herford
Wedding is destiny, and hanging likewise.
-- John Heywood
Dew knot trussed yore spell chequer two fined awl yore mistakes.
-- Brendan Hills
Love is only the game that is not called on account of darkness.
-- M. Hirschfield
Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
-- Alfred Hitchcock
What luck for the rulers that men do not think.
-- Adolf Hitler
I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.
-- Bill Hoest
When you're away, I'm restless, lonely
Wretched, bored, dejected; only
here's the rub, my darling dear,
I feel the same when you are here.
-- Samuel Hoffenstein
Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important.
-- Lisa Hoffman
It depends on your definition of asleep. They were not stretched out. They had their eyes closed. They were seated at their desks with their heads in a nodding position.
-- John Hogan, Commonwealth Edison Supervisor of News Information, responding to a charge by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector that two Dresden Nuclear Plant operators were sleeping on the job
Hell is paved with good samaritans.
-- William M. Holden
They think they can make fuel from horse manure.... Now, I don't know if your car will be able to get 30 miles to the gallon, but it's sure gonna put a stop to siphoning.
-- Billie Holliday
Every calling is great when greatly pursued.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes
If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing badly.
-- Gustav Holst, on amateur music-making
There it was, hidden in alphabetical order.
-- Rita Holt
In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
-- Gerald Holton

There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
-- Homer, Odyssey, ninth century B.C.
Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.
-- Herbert Hoover
There is nothing better for the spirit or the body than a love affair. It elevates the thoughts and flattens the stomachs.
-- Barbara Howar
When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
-- E. W. Howe
A man should be taller, older, heavier, uglier, and hoarser than his wife.
-- Edgar Watson Howe
There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.
-- Fred Hoyle
A man who marries a woman to educate her falls a victim to the same fallacy as the woman who marries a man to reform him.
-- Elbert Hubbard
Experience is the name every one gives his mistakes.
-- Elbert Hubbard
If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.
-- Elbert Hubbard
Live truth instead of professing it.
-- Elbert Hubbard
The love we give away is the only love we keep.
-- Elbert Hubbard
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one.
-- Ellen Hubbard
A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost pays to be one.
-- Kin Hubbard
The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them.
-- Kin Hubbard
And now, in keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing you the latest in blood and guts, in living color, you're about to see another first -- an attempted suicide.
-- Chris Hubbock, who shot herself during a broadcast
A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.
-- Charles Evans Hughes
A compliment is like a kiss through a veil.
-- Victor Hugo
Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
-- Victor Hugo
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world; and that is an idea whose time has come.
-- Victor Hugo
Thought is the labour of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.
-- Victor Hugo
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
-- Hubert Humphrey
An undefined problem has an infinite number of solutions.
-- Robert A. Humphrey

Sometimes we live no particular way but our own.
Sometimes we visit your country and live in your home.
Sometimes we ride on your horses, sometimes we walk alone.
Sometimes the songs that we sing are just songs of our own.
-- Robert Hunter, Eyes of the World
Love, I find, is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much.
-- Zora Neale Hurston
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
-- Robert Hutchins, Great Books, 1954
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.
-- Aldous Huxley
Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.
-- Aldous Huxley
Experience teaches only the teachable.
-- Aldous Huxley
It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
-- Aldous Huxley
Maybe this world is another planet's hell.
-- Aldous Huxley
Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not.
-- Aldous Huxley
Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of a great sculpture.
-- Aldous Huxley
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
-- Aldous Huxley
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.
-- Aldous Huxley
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
-- Thomas Henry Huxley
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.
-- Thomas Henry Huxley
The great tragedy of science, the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact.
-- Thomas Henry Huxley
Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.
-- D. H. Lawrence

I
People think we make $3 million and $4 million a year. They don't realize that most of us only make $500,000.
-- Pete Incaviglia, baseball player, 1990
The closer I'm bound in love to you, the closer I am to free.
-- Indigo Girls, song lyric
Worry is interest paid on trouble before it is due.
-- William Ralph Inge
Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll, (seen attributed to "R.S. Ingersoll" - a typo?)
Courage without conscience is a wild beast.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
I would rather live and love where death is king than have eternal life where love is not.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
In nature there are neither rewards nor punishment - there are consequences.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
Asking an incumbent member of Congress to vote for term limits is a bit like asking a chicken to vote for Colonel Sanders.
-- Bob Inglis, 1995
Because modeling is lucrative, I'm able to save up and be more particular about the acting roles I take.
-- Kathy Ireland, star of 'Alien From L.A.' and 'Danger Island'
By the time (the Leaning Tower of Pisa) was 10% built, everyone knew it would be a total disaster. But the investment was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it cost a fortune to maintain and is still in danger of collapsing. There are no plans to replace it, since it was never needed in the first place. I expect every installation has its own pet software which is analogous to the above.
-- Ken Iverson
I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.
-- Molly Ivins

J
The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.
-- Alexander Jablokov, The Place of No Shadows
Why did Nature create man? Was it to show that she is big enough to make mistakes, or was it pure ignorance?
-- Holbrook Jackson
Two rights don't make a wrong, but three will get you back on the freeway.
-- James Wesley Jackson
All over Washington today, the politicians and the power brokers are happy. In fact, if you listen closely, you can hear the sound of champagne corks popping.
-- Paul Jacob, Term Limits Executive Director
Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
-- Clive James
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
-- P. D. James
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
-- William James
The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.
-- William James
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
-- Thomas Jefferson
This is the fourth?
-- Thomas Jefferson, dying words
It is amazing at how small a price may the wedding ring be placed upon a worthless hand; but, by the beauty of our law, what heaps of gold are indispensable to take it off!
-- Douglas Jerold, 1858
Say goodbye to the oldies, but goodies, because the good old days weren't always good and tomorrow aint as bad as it seems.
-- Billy Joel
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.
-- Pope John Paul I
He who does not mind his belly will hardly will hardly mind anything else.
-- Samuel Johnson
I hate mankind, for I think myself to be one of them, and I know how bad I am.
-- Samuel Johnson
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
-- Samuel Johnson
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
-- Samuel Johnson
Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
-- Samuel Johnson

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
-- Samuel Johnson
Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.
-- Thomas Jones
Women are the only exploited group in history to have been idealized into powerlessness.
-- Erica Jong
If authorities were well organized, there would not be an Unknown Warrior.
-- Joseph Joubert
To teach is to learn twice.
-- Joseph Joubert
Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
-- James Joyce
Why don't you write books people can read?
-- Nora Joyce, to her husband James
Do you not know, my son, with what little understanding the world is ruled?
-- Pope Julius III
An understanding heart is everything is a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
-- Carl Gustav Jung
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
-- Carl Gustav Jung
Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood.
-- Carl Gustav Jung
There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.
-- Carl Gustav Jung

K
Learn to laugh at your troubles and you'll never run out of things to laugh at.
-- Lyn Karol
If men knew all that women think, they'd be twenty times more daring.
-- Alphonse Karr
The only thing worse than a man you can't control is a man you can.
-- Margo Kaufman
Saying that Windows95 is equal to Macintosh is like finding a potato that looks like Jesus and believing you've witnessed the second coming.
-- Guy Kawasaki
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.
-- Helen Keller
When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.
-- Helen Keller
Such is life.
-- Ned Kelly, Last words, before being hung at Old Melbourne Gaol
Now is the time for all good men to come to.
-- Walt Kelly
Well, I think that it's a- it's had some difficult times but I think we have- we, I think, have been able to make some very good progress and it's- I would say that it's- it's- it's delightful that we're able to- to share the time and the relationship that we- that we do share.
-- Edward Kennedy, U.S. Senator, during a 4 November 1979 interview with Roger Mudd trying to answer the question "What is the present state of your marriage?"
The real test of friendship is: Can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy together those moments of life that are utterly simple? They are the moments people looks back on at the end of life and number as their most sacred experiences.
-- Eugene Kennedy
Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
-- John F. Kennedy
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
-- John F. Kennedy
Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.
-- John F. Kennedy
There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?
-- Robert Francis Kennedy
I'm like old wine. They don't bring me out very often, but I'm well preserved.
-- Rose Kennedy, (1890-1995) family matriarch, on her 100th birthday, 1991
Life isn't a matter of milestones, but of moments.
-- Rose Kennedy
Marrying a man is like buying something you've been admiring for a long time in a shop window. You may love it when you get it home, but it doesn't always go with everything in the house.
-- Jean Kerr
The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible.
-- Jean Kerr
People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.
-- Søren Kierkegaard
To love another person is to help them love God.
-- Søren Kierkegaard
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
-- Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham City Jail, 1963
Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. you only need a heart full of grace. a soul generated by love.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.
Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.
Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. the foundation of such a method is love.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
The church must be the critic and guide of the state, and never its tool.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. Do to us what you will and we shall continue to love you.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
When you are right, you cannot be too radical; When you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years.
-- Sam Kinison
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.
-- Henry Kissinger
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
-- Henry Kissinger
A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.
-- Marvin Kitman
Love to eat them mousies
Mousie's what I love to eat.
Bite they little heads off
Nibble on they tiny feet.
-- B. Kliban
An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible.
-- Alfred A. Knopf
Marriage is a lottery, but you can't tear up your ticket if you lose.
-- F. M. Knowles
Television: A medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done.
-- Ernie Kovacs
This is New York, and there's no law against being annoying.
-- William Kunstler, lawyer, 1994

L
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
-- Soren Kierkegaard
I will try to follow the advice that a university president once gave a prospective commencement speaker. "Think of yourself as the body at an Irish wake" he said. "They need you in order to have the party, but no one expects you to say very much."
-- Anthony Lake, national security advisor, at University of Massachusettes, Amhurst, Graduation 1995
Laywers, I suppose, were children once.
-- Charles Lamb
To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.
-- Lao Tzu
Practice random acts of kindness and sensless acts of beauty.
-- Adair Lara
Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana...The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two, but can't remember what they are.
-- Matt Lauer, on NBC's "Today" show, August 22, 1996
The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision.
-- Lynn Lavner
Experience is the worst teacher; it gives the test before presenting the lesson.
-- Vernon Law
I'd wipe the machines off the face of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch absolutely, like a black mistake.
-- D. H. Lawrence
Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.
-- D.H. Lawrence
Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
-- Stephen Leacock
Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.
-- Stephen Leacock
Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-five years and you pay it back and then -- one day -- you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then -- one day -- you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe.
-- Denis Leary
Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women it is merely a good excuse not to play football.
-- Fran Lebowitz
I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not.
-- Fran Lebowitz
Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast the disc jockey is not allowed to talk.
-- Fran Lebowitz
He who limps is still walking.
-- Stanislaw J. Lec
Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier.
-- Stanislaw J. Lec
Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?
-- Stanislaw J. Lec
Value your words. Each one may be the last.
-- Stanislaw J. Lec
You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.
-- Stanislaw J. Lec
Eh! Je suis leur chef, il fallait bien les suivre. (Ah well! I am their leader, I really ought to follow them.)
-- Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin
The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
-- Harper Lee
Live TV died in the late 1950s, electronic bulletin boards came along in the mid-1980s, meaning there was about a 25-year gap when it was difficult to put your foot in your mouth and have people all across the country know about it.
-- Mark Leeper
Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987
Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things!
-- Tom Lehrer
I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.
-- Tom Lehrer
I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.
-- Carol Leifer
New York: the only city where people make radio requests like "This is for Tina -- I'm sorry I stabbed you."
-- Carol Leifer
You can close your eyes to reality, but not to memories.
-- Stanislaw J. Lem
I went into a McDonald's yesterday and said, "I'd like some fries." The girl at the counter said, "Would you like some fries with that?"
-- Jay Leno
The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.
-- Gloria Leonard
Every St. Patrick's Day every Irishman goes out to find another Irishman to make a speech to.
-- Shane Leslie
Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War.
2) Advising the President.
3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin.
-- David Letterman
Fine art and pizza delivery: what we do falls neatly in between.
-- David Letterman

For the love of God, folks, don't do this at home.
-- David Letterman, CBS Late Show, demonstrating the Donut-o-pult, 1995
Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that.
-- Michael Leunig
Harpo, she's a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one.
-- Oscar Levant, to Harpo Marx upon meeting Harpo's fiancee
I envy people who drink -- at least they know what to blame everything on.
-- Oscar Levant
So little time, so little to do.
-- Oscar Levant
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.
-- Oscar Levant
Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
-- Aaron Levenstein
Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.
-- Michael Levine, Lessons at the Halfway Point
The speed of time is one second per second.
-- Kip Lewis
We are all either fools or undiscovered geniuses.
-- Bonnie Lin
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing.
-- Abraham Lincoln
And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
-- Abraham Lincoln
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
-- Abraham Lincoln
I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.
-- Abraham Lincoln, discussing the issue of slavery
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.
-- Abraham Lincoln
I have come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason, I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.
-- Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Mrs. O.H. Browning, April 1, 1838
If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.
-- Abraham Lincoln
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
-- Abraham Lincoln
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
-- Abraham Lincoln
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
-- Abraham Lincoln
My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
-- Abraham Lincoln

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
-- Abraham Lincoln
People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
-- Abraham Lincoln
The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.
-- Abraham Lincoln
The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
-- Abraham Lincoln
What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Whatever you are, be a good one.
-- Abraham Lincoln
With the catching end the pleasures of the chase.
-- Abraham Lincoln
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
-- Abraham Lincoln
Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
It's not hard to tell we was poor--when you saw the toilet paper dryin' on the clothesline.
-- George Lindsey
Know thyself.
-- Linnaeus
Jimmy Carter as President is like Truman Capote marrying Dolly Parton. The job is just too big for him.
-- Rich Little
It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get back up.
-- Vince Lombardi
Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
-- Vince Lombardi
If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.
-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice.
-- Trini Lopez
Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.
-- Konrad Lorenz
An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as an act of love that succeeds, for love is measured by fullness, not by reception.
-- Harold Loukes
It's true that I did get the girl, but then my grandfather always said, "Even a blind chicken finds a few grains of corn now and then."
-- Lyle Lovett, musician, upon marying actress Julia Roberts, 1994
Reputation is in itself only a farthing candle, of a wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.
-- James Russell Lowell
A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.
-- James Lowell
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.
-- Sir J. Lubbock
We seek the comfort of another. Someone to share and share the life we choose. Someone to help us through the neverending attempt to understand ourselves. And in the end, someone to comfort us along the way.
-- Marlin Finch Lupus
There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage
-- Martin Luther
Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on Earth.
-- John Lyly
For the memory of love is sweet, though the love itself were in vain. And what I have lost of pleasure, assuage what I find of pain.
-- Lyster
In endowing us with memory, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unreflective creation, the truth of immortality....The most ideal human passion is love, which is also the most absolute and animal and one of the most ephemeral.
-- George Santayana, Reason in Religion

M

Marriage is a great institution, but who wants to live in an institution?
-- Marx Groucho, the film "Animal Crackers"
From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea--written in red on every beachhead form Australia to Tokyo--There is no substitute for victory!
-- General Douglas MacArthur
I shall return.
-- General Douglas MacArthur
Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.
-- General Douglas MacArthur
There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn't cure.
-- Ross MacDonald
The imaginary friends I had as a kid dropped me because their friends thought I didn't exist.
-- Aaron Machado
There is no one so bound to his own face that he does not cherish the hope of presenting another to the world.
-- Antonio Machado
War is a profession by which a man cannot live honorably; an employment by which the soldier, if he would reap any profit, is obliged to be false, rapacious, and cruel.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli
Politics have no relation to morals.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli
It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Sex is hardly ever just about sex.
-- Shirley Maclaine
The best way to get husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they are too old to do it.
-- Shirley MacLaine
I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence.
-- Doug MacLeod
The closest I've ever come to saying "no" is "Not now, we're landing."
-- Sam Malone, character played by Ted Danson on Cheers, U.S. television show, in respsonse to Diane telling him to say "no" to her friend's alleged sexual advances.
People may or may not say what they mean ... but they always say something designed to get what they want.
-- David Mamet
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
-- Nelson Mandela, A Long Walk to Freedom
In a novel, the hero can lay ten girls and marry a virgin for the finish. In a movie, that is not allowed. The villain can lay anybody he wants, have as much fun and as he wants cheating, stealing, getting rich, and whipping servants. But you have to shoot him in the end.
-- Herman Mankiewicz
Many a man has finally succeeded only because he has failed after repeated efforts. If he had never met defeat he would never have known any great victory.
-- Orison Swett Marden
Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.
-- Orison Swett Marden
A love affair with knowledge will never end in heartbreak.
-- Michael Garrett Marino
He who awaits much can expect little.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Let go of your attachment to being right, and suddenly your mind is more open. You're able to benefit from the unique viewpoints of others, without being crippled by your own judgment.
-- Ralph Marston
Your goals, minus your doubts, equal your reality.
-- Ralph Marston
I belong to Bridegrooms Anonymous. Whenever I feel like getting married, they send over a lady in a housecoat and hair curlers to burn my toast for me.
-- Dick Martin
If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.
-- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners" columnist and author
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.
-- Groucho Marx
I find television very educating. Every time sombody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.
-- Groucho Marx
I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.
-- Groucho Marx
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.
-- Groucho Marx
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Groucho Marx
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx
Politics doesn't make strange bedfellows, marriage does.
-- Groucho Marx
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.
-- Groucho Marx
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
-- Groucho Marx
We in the industry know that behind every successful screenwriter stands a woman. And behind her stands his wife.
-- Groucho Marx
Whoever called it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.
-- Groucho Marx
Wives are people who feel they don't dance enough.
-- Groucho Marx
Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.
-- Karl Marx
Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.
-- Karl Marx, dying words to his housekeeper

We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.
-- Abraham Maslow
Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe.
-- Jackie Mason
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
Love is what happens to men and women who don't know each other.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to find in their butlers.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
-- W. Somerset Maugham
In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
-- André Maurois
It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.
-- Eugene McCarthy
There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It's called marriage.
-- James Holt McGavran
Marriage was all a woman's idea and for man's acceptance of the pretty yoke, it becomes us to be grateful.
-- Phyllis McGinley
No other success can compensate for failure in the home.
-- David O. McKay, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Advice to parents at General Conference of he LDS Church, April, 1964
I'm for abolishing and doing away with redundancy.
-- J. Curtis McKay, Wisconsin State Elections Board
No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.
-- Mignon McLaughlin
I owe the government $3400 in taxes. So I sent them two hammers and a toilet seat.
-- Michael McShane
A multiple personality is in a certain sense normal.
-- George H. Mead
Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible.
-- Margaret Mead
A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age.
-- Meat Loaf, from the song "Wasted Youth" on the album Bat Out of Hell II
Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart, don't know how to laugh either.
-- Golda Meir
Considering the flames and intolerance, shouldn't USENET be spelled ABUSENET?
-- Michael Meissner
A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
-- H. L. Mencken

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
-- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't, they'd be married too.
-- H. L. Mencken
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
-- H. L. Mencken
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
-- H. L. Mencken
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
-- H. L. Mencken
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.
-- H. L. Mencken
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
Los Angeles: nineteen suburbs in search of a metropolis.
-- H. L. Mencken
Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.
-- H. L. Mencken
Love is the delusion that one man or woman differs from another.
-- H. L. Mencken
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
-- H. L. Mencken
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
Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in their readiness to doubt.
-- H. L. Mencken
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
Opera in English is, in the main, about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
-- H. L. Mencken
Sin is a dangerous toy in the hands of the virtuous. It should be left to the congenitally sinful, who know when to play with it and when to let it alone.
-- H. L. Mencken
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right.
-- H. L. Mencken
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
-- H. L. Mencken
Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage, they are giving evidence at an inquest.
-- H. L. Mencken
Love cures people, both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.
-- Dr. Karl Menninger
Children should be like waffles--you should be able to throw the first one away.
-- Mary Alice Messenger
There is intelligent life on earth, but I will go back home on Monday.
-- Davorin Mestric
Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
-- John Stuart Mill
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
-- John Stuart Mill
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.
-- John Stuart Mill
The worth of the state, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it.
-- John Stuart Mill
We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.
-- John Stuart Mill
In view of all the deadly computer viruses that have been spreading lately, Weekend Update would like to remind you: when you link up to another computer, you're linking up to every computer that that computer has ever linked up to.
-- Dennis Miller, "Saturday Night Live," U.S. television show
Even if it doesn't work, there is something healthy and invigorating about direct action.
-- Henry Miller
When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.
-- Henry Miller
You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.
-- Olin Miller
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
-- A. A. Milne
Life is like a movie--since there aren't any commercial breaks, you have to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of it.
-- Nick Mirov
I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.
-- Nancy Mitford
I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.
-- Wilson Mizner
When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.
-- Wilson Mizner
Intelligence has nothing to do with politics.
-- Londo Molari
A lover tries to stand in well with the pet dog of the house.
-- Moliere
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
-- Michel de Montaigne
Ambition is not a vice of little people.
-- Michel de Montaigne
Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside desperate to get out.
-- Michel de Montaigne
Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.
-- Michel de Montaigne

There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline.
-- Michel de Montaigne
There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.
-- Michel de Montaigne
Author: A fool, who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting the generations to come.
-- Montesquieu
Age does not protect you from love but love to some extent protects you from age.
-- Jeanne Moreau
What I have to say is far more important than how long my eyelashes are.
-- Alanis Morissette, singer, 1995
If a relationship is to evolve, it must go through a series of endings.
-- Lisa Moriyama
A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life.
-- Christopher Morley
In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.
-- Christopher Morley
My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
-- Christopher Morley
And life is what we make it. Always has been, always will be.
-- Grandma Moses
If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
-- Mother Teresa
Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.
-- Mother Teresa
The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.
-- Mother Teresa
We can do no great things; only small things with great love.
-- Mother Teresa
Watching the debate this afternoon it was apparent they loved term limits in the House -- as Brutus loved Caesar.
-- Bill Moyers
Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
-- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
-- Martin Mull
The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.
-- Iris Murdoch
Give the people not hell, but hope and courage.
-- John Murray

Miscellaneous

Byron Elbows' two rules of human nature:
* No one is as weird as they think they are.
* Everyone is weirder than others think they are.
Epperson's law:
When a man says it's a silly, childish game, it's probably something his wife can beat him at.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. {2} If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. {3} If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. {4} Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. {5} It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. {6} Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. {7} It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. {8} Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. {9} For we know in part and we prophesy in part, {10} but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. {11} When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. {12} Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. {13} And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. , 1 Corinthians 13 NIV
Love and stoplights can be cruel. , Sesame Street, U.S. children's television show
Some birds aren't meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up, does rejoice. I guess I just miss my friend. , Shawshank Redemption
You have to kiss a lot of toads before you find a handsome prince.
-- American Proverb
I don't know exactly what democracy is. But we need more of it.
-- Anonymous Chinese Student, during protests in Tianamen Square, Beijing, 1989
I have been a stranger in a strange land.
-- Bible, Exodus 2:22
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
-- Charlie Brown, character in "Peanuts" comic strip, created by Charles Schultz
Insurance is like marriage. You pay, pay, pay, and you never get anything back.
-- Al Bundy, character on "Married with Children," U.S. television show
Nothing says lovin' like marrying your cousin!
-- Al Bundy, character on "Married with Children," U.S. television show
Once a boy becomes a man, he's a man all his life, but a woman is only sexy until she becomes your wife.
-- Al Bundy, character on "Married with Children," U.S. television show
I hate work. That's why I got married.
-- Peg Bundy, character on "Married with Children," U.S. television show
I just want what every married woman wants, someone besides her husband to sleep with.
-- Peg Bundy, character on "Married with Children," U.S. television show
The only thing that holds a marriage together is the husband bein' big enough to keep his mouth shut, to step back and see where his wife is wrong.
-- Archie Bunker, character on "All in the Family," U.S. television show
Usenet is like Tetris for people who still remember how to read.
-- Button from the Computer Museum, Boston, MA
Govern a family as you would cook a small fish - very gently.
-- Chinese Proverb
Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.
-- Chinese Proverb
Women: If they're not turning down your proposals for marriage, they're accusing you of suspicious behavior in the women's lingerie changing room.
-- Cliff Clavin, character on "Cheers", U.S. Television show
I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.... This is an ex-parrot.
-- John Cleese, Monty Python, British comedy television show
C is for cookie, it's good enough for me; oh cookie cookie cookie starts with C.
-- Cookie Monster, character on "Sesame Street," U.S. children's television program
Want him to be more of a man? Try being more of a woman!
-- Coty Perfume Ad
We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
-- Decca Recording Company, rejecting the Beatles, 1962
Endless Loop: n., see Loop, Endless.
Loop, Endless: n., see Endless Loop.
-- definitions, Random Shack Data Processing Dictionary
Tear open packet, unfold and use.
-- Directions on moist towelette package
This compact disc is made from analog masters recorded without noise reduction. Half the tracks, in fact, were recorded in a dismal, cheap basement eight-track studio with puddles of water on the floor. Digital technology will now faithfully reproduce these noisy, low-fi, un-professional masters at great expense. feel stupid yet?
-- Disclaimer on a CD
I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones.
-- The Doctor, Timewyrm: Genesys, author, John Peel
In Palm Springs, they think homelessness is caused by bad divorce lawyers.
-- Doonesbury, U.S. comic strip
There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the tools to attain, nor any power so secure that the naked ape will not abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards - only physics and war hold him in check. And the wife who wants him home by five, of course.
-- Encyclopaedia Apocryphia
Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.
-- Engineer's Motto
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
-- English Professor, Ohio University
A small family is soon provided for.
-- English Proverb
Children are a poor man's riches.
-- English proverb
In a cat's eyes, all things belong to cats.
-- English Proverb
We never know the worth of water 'til the well is dry.
-- English Proverb
Beginning in February 1976 your assistance benefits will be discontinued ... Reason: it has been reported to our office that you expired on January 1, 1976.
-- excerpt from a letter, Illinois Department of Public Aid
I think, therefore I'm single.
-- Female philosopher
Love makes the time pass. Time makes love pass.
-- French Proverb
Love is the dawn of marriage, and marriage is the sunset of love.
-- French saying
Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun.
-- Matt Groening, Love is Hell
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
-- Matt Groening, Love is Hell
Tauzin backs term limits -- But he thinks it's a bad idea.
-- Headline, story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Feb 20, 1995
Good hours, excellent pay, fun place to work, paid training, mean boss. Oh well, four out of five isn't bad.
-- Help Wanted Ad, PA newspaper, 1994
The case has, in some respects, been not entirely devoid of interest.
-- Sherlock Holmes, character from author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
-- Indian proverb
2,400,000 Americans play the accordian - hopefully not at the same time.
-- inside of a Pepsi cap
May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields and, until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.
-- Irish Blessing
I don't know as much as God, but I know more than He did at my age.
-- Henry Kissinger
The crime bill passed by the Senate would reinstate the Federal death penalty for certain violent crimes: assassinating the President; hijacking an airliner; and murdering a government poultry inspector.
-- Knight Ridder News Service dispatch
To the ass, or the sow, their own offspring appears the fairest in creation.
-- Latin Proverb
For best results: wash in cold water separately, hang dry and iron with warm iron. For not so good results: drag behind car through puddles, blow-dry on roofrack.
-- Laundry instructions on a shirt made by HEET (Korea)
No problem is so big and complicated that it can't be run away from.
-- Linus, character in "Peanuts" comic strip, created by Charles Schultz
The telephone company is urging people to *please* not use the telephone unless it is absolutely necessary in order to keep the lines open for emergency personnel. We'll be right back after this break to give away a pair of Phil Collins tickets to caller number 95.
-- Los Angeles disc jockey, right after the February 1990 earthquake
To love another person is to see the face of God.
-- Lyric from Les Miserables
My father was a minister. I had to make up for the lack of sin.
-- Milwuakee mayor, on why he became a politician
Question: If you could live forever, would you and why? Answer: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.
-- Miss Alabama, in the 1994 Miss Universe contest
Never eat more than you can lift.
-- Miss Piggy, character on "The Muppet Show," U.S. television show
It's not the bullet with your name on it you have to worry about. It's the twenty-thousand-odd other bullets labeled "Occupant".
-- Murphy's laws of combat
A man can't get rich if he takes proper care of his family.
-- Navaho saying
The west wasn't won on salad.
-- ND Beef Council, billboard advertisement, 1990
Oregon Democratic Senate candidate Tom Bruggere, in describing his support for comprehensive health care during a candidates' forum, said he supported "erection-to-resurrection" coverage. He later amended that to "cradle to grave."
-- News report
... postmodernity, once the plaything of smarty-pants French guys, in truth belongs to the engagingly stupid.
-- Newsweek
When the mouse laughs at the cat, there is a hole nearby.
-- Nigerian Proverb
Nun-beating? Good Lord, man, I can't condone THAT!
-- Opus, character in "Bloom County," comic strip by Berkely Breathed
If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war.
-- Pentagon official, on why US military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
-- Pogo, character in "Pogo," comic strip by Walt Kelly
Look alive. Here comes a buzzard.
-- Pogo, character in "Pogo," comic strip by Walt Kelly
A hippo does not have a sting in its tail, but a wise man would still rather be sat on by a bee.
-- Polish proverb
Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true.
-- Polish proverb
A White House well filled, a little peanut field well tilled, and a wife who will go to the Bronx are great riches.
-- Poor Jimmy's Almanac
When yer in a funk, people in love are a royal pain in the patookus.
-- Portnoy, character in "Outland," comic strip by Berkely Breathed
As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.
-- Proverbs 23:7
An egg is dear on Easter day.
-- Russian proverb
Waiting until the last minute may be too late.
-- Safety poster
Never marry for money. Ye'll borrow it cheaper.
-- Scottish Proverb
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-- Seen in a .signature file
I plan to accumulate as many shoes as Imelda Marcos while cultivating an aura of virtue exceeding that of Mother Theresa.
-- Seen in a .signature file
A flashlight is a case for holding dead batteries.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker
Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker

He who laughs last thinks slowest.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker
I want to die in my sleep like my friend.... Not screaming and yelling like the passengers in his car.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker
If God had meant us to vote, He would have given us candidates.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker
If God wanted women to understand men, football would never have been created.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker
Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker
There are three types of people in this world: Those who can count, and those who can't.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker
There's too much blood in my caffeine system.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker
Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my clothes.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker
Does anal retentive have a hyphen?
-- Seen on a t-shirt
Men. You can't live with them. You don't have to.
-- Seen on a t-shirt
I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know why I'll do it again.
-- Bart Simpson, young character from The Simpsons, U.S. animated television show
Why doesn't she like me? Is it my hair, my overbite, the fact that I've worn the same shirt and shorts for the last four years?
-- Bart Simpson, young character from The Simpsons, U.S. animated television show
Sung to the tune of the theme to "The Flinstones":
Simpson!
Homer Simpson!
I'm the greatest guy in history!
From the
Town of Springfield!
I'm about to hit a chestnut tree!
WHAAUH! (*crash*)
-- Homer Simpson, character from The Simpsons, U.S. animated television show
Weaseling out of things is good. It's what separates us from the other animals....except weasels.
-- Homer Simpson, character from The Simpsons, U.S. animated television show
Great Spirit, help me never to judge another until I have walked in his moccasins.
-- Sioux Indian Prayer
Why would anyone jump out of a perfectly good airplane? Because the door was open.
-- Skydiving T-shirt, Parachutist Magazine
The philosophy exam was a piece of cake -- which was a bit of a surprise, actually, because I was expecting some questions on a sheet of paper.
-- Smith & Jones
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
-- Some Christmas Carol, (I have a feeling I used this one on a day when we had unexpected snow here in Boulder, CO and I wasn't happy about it)
Hey, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!
-- Dr. Strangelove
Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?
-- The Artist Formerly Known As Prince
Icky icky icky icky fKANG zoop-boing n zowzyin...
-- The Knights who so recently said "Nee!", Monty Python, British comedy television show
In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. Therefore:
" In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties.
" Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.
-- The Peter Principle
Work is a four-letter word.
-- The Smiths (Morrissey)
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country.
-- Typewriting exercise
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software.
-- Unknown author, Levitating Trains and Kamikaze Genes: Technological Literacy for the 1990's, describing the difference between computer hardware and software
Sir Francis Drake circumsized the world with a 100-foot clipper.
-- Unknown history student
The sun never sets on the British empire because Britain is in the east and the sun sets in the west.
-- Unknown history student
He who fights fire with fire burns his house down twice as fast.
-- Vietnamese proverb
Here's a toast to your new bride who has everything a girl could want in her life, except for good taste in men!
-- Wedding Toast
With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly good I thee endow.
-- Wedding Vow, Book of Common Prayer
My husband used to make all the decisions in our family. But now that he's a Promise Keeper, we always talk first and then he makes the decision.
-- Wife of a Promise Keeper, a U.S. men's religious group focusing on mens' commitments to their families
For I am a bear of very little brain and long words bother me.
-- Winnie the Pooh, character from author A. A. Milne
I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.
-- Winnie the Pooh, character created by author A. A. Milne
The innkeeper loves the drunkard, but not for a son-in-law.
-- Yiddish Proverb
Do or do not. There is no try.
-- Yoda, character in the movie The Empire Strikes Back
You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.
-- Ziggy, character in comic strip by Tom Wilson

N
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.
-- Vladimir Nabokov
We are drowning in information, but starved for knowledge.
-- John Naisbilt
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
Victory belongs to the most persevering.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte
A husband is a guy who tells you when you've got on too much lipstick and helps you with your girdle when your hips stick.
-- Ogden Nash
The trouble with a kitten is
THAT
Eventually it becomes a
CAT.
-- Ogden Nash
To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up.
-- Ogden Nash
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.
-- Ogden Nash, Song of the Open Road, 1945
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
-- George Jean Nathan
Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.
-- George Jean Nathan
We do not have censorship. What we have is a limitation on what newspapers can report.
-- Louis Nel, Deputy Minister of Information, South Africa
We were born to die and we die to live. As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven.
-- Russell M. Nelson, LDS Church News, April 1992 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
A good marriage is at least 80 percent good luck in finding the right person at the right time. The rest is trust.
-- Nanette Newman, British actress
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
-- Isaac Newton, Brewster's Memoirs of Newton. Vol. ii. Chap. xxvii.
A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Love matches, so called, have illusion for their father and need for their mother.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Woman was God's second mistake.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, First Part: On Reading and Writing
I was under medication when I made the decision not to burn the tapes.
-- Richard Nixon, U.S. President
I would have made a good Pope.
-- Richard Nixon, U.S. President
Solutions are not the answer.
-- Richard Nixon
As for courage and will - we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead.
-- Andre Norton
We have been friends together in sunshine and in shade.
-- Caroline Norton
When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate now knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
-- Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude

O
Everywhere I go, I'm asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.
-- Flannery O'Connor
There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
-- Flannery O'Connor
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
Even a band of angels can turn ugly and start looting if enough angels are unemployed and hanging around the Pearly Gates convinced that all the succubi own all the liquor stores in Heaven.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
Never be unfaithful to a lover, except with your wife.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
Thanksgiving is so called because we are all so thankful that it only comes once a year.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
The Middle Eastern states aren't nations; they're quarrels with borders.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
I couldn't remember when I had been so disappointed. Except perhaps the time I found out that M&Ms really do melt in your hand...
-- Peter Oakley
The last good thing written in C++ was the Pachelbel Canon.
-- Jerry Olson
There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
-- Kenneth H. Olson, President of DEC, Convention of the World Future Society, 1977
If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.
-- Aristotle Onassis
I am become death, shatterer of worlds.
-- Robert J. Oppenheimer, citing from the Bhagavadgita, after witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion
Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not there, I go to work.
-- Robert Orben
Never raise your hand to your children; it leaves your midsection unprotected.
-- Robert Orben
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell
Chance is always powerful. - Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.
-- Ovid

P
Don't look back -- something might be gaining on you.
-- Satchel Paige
The purpose of time is to keep everything from happening all at once. It's not working.
-- Jim Paradis
When you don't know that you don't know, it's a lot different than when you do know that you don't know. He knows now that he doesn't know. Last year, he didn't know that.
-- Bill Parcels, New England Patriots head coach, on 2nd year quarter-back Drew Bledsoe
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
-- Dorothy Parker
How could they tell?
-- Dorothy Parker, upon hearing that President Coolidge had died
I require three things in a man: He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.
-- Dorothy Parker
If all these sweet young things were laid end to end, I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised.
-- Dorothy Parker
This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but hurled with great force.
-- Dorothy Parker
You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think.
-- Dorothy Parker
You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.
-- Dolly Parton
The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
-- Blaise Pascal, Pens&eactue;es, trans. A.J. Krailsheimer
The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
-- Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A.J. Krailsheimer
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
-- Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, Chap. x. 1., Translated by O. W. Wight
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.
-- Samuel Paterson
If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
-- George S. Patton, Jr.
The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
-- General George Patton
No woman marries for money; they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him first.
-- Cesare Pavese
Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.
-- William Penn
Public office is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
-- Boies Penrose, 1931
Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.
-- Bob Perelman
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at being incompetent.
-- Laurence J. Peter
All science is concerned with the relationship of cause and effect. Each scientific discovery increases man's ability to predict the consequences of his actions and thus his ability to control future events.
-- Lawrence J. Peter
To be able to say how much love, is love but little.
-- Petrarch
Some mornings it just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.
-- Emo Philips
Boredom, after all, is a form of criticism.
-- William Phillips
Drink to me.
-- Pablo Picasso, dying words
Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.
-- Pablo Picasso
Give me a museum and I'll fill it.
-- Pablo Picasso
The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. But not in that order.
-- Brian Pickrell
Sex is like bridge: If you don't have a good partner, you better have a good hand.
-- Charles Pierce
The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.
-- Robert M. Pirsig
Research is the act of going up alleys to see if they are blind.
-- Plutarch
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
-- Edgar Allan Poe
No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut.
-- Channing Pollack
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting someone else to do the work.
-- John G. Pollard
He who laughs, lasts.
-- Mary Pettibone Poole
The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.
-- Paula Poundstone
Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
-- Colin Powell
Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself, for he shall never cease to be entertained.
-- John Powell
I was a pilot flying an airplane and it just so happened that where I was flying made what I was doing spying.
-- Francis Gary Power, U-2 reconnaissance pilot held by the Soviets for spying, in an interview after he was returned to the U.S.
Life - a sexually transmitted terminal condition.
-- Walter Prager
Of course, it is very important to be sober when you take an exam. Many worthwile careers in the street-cleansing, fruit-picking and subway-guitar-playing industries have been founded on a lack of understanding of this simple fact.
-- Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
A university professor set an examination question in which he asked what is the difference between ignorance and apathy. The professor had to give an A+ to a student who answered: I don't know and I don't care.
-- Richard Pratt, Pacific Computer Weekly, 20 July 1990
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
-- Elvis Presley
If a man is considered guilty for what goes on in his mind, give me the electric chair for all my future crimes.
-- Prince

Q
I support efforts to limit the terms of members of Congress, especially members of the House and members of the Senate.
-- Dan Quayle, Former Vice-President
The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history...this century's history.... We all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.
-- Dan Quayle, then Indiana senator and Republican vice-presidential candidate during a news conference in which he was asked his opinion of the Holocaust
Lawyers are... operators of the toll bridge which anyone in search of justice must pass.
-- Jane Bryant Quinn

R
I drink no more than a sponge.
-- Francis Rabelais, Works. Book i. Chap. v.
Remember your dreams.
-- Maryanne Radmacher-Herhey
I base my fashion sense on what doesn't itch.
-- Gilda Radner
Every major horror of history was committed in the name of an altruistic motive.
-- Ayn Rand
Time is at once the most valuable and most perishable of all our possessions.
-- John Randolph
Giving a man space is like giving a dog a computer: the chances are he will not use it wisely.
-- Bette-Jane Raphael
Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining.
-- Jeff Raskin
The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.
-- Lady Stella Reading
I know I'm not in government anymore. In fact I'm out of work.
-- Ronald Reagan, Former U.S. President, on a speaking tour of Japan, 1989
Trust, but verify.
-- Ronald Reagan
Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
-- Ronald Reagan, Saturday Evening Post, 1965
Sex is the mathematics urge sublimated.
-- M. C. Reed
Love is an attempt to change a piece of the dream-world into reality.
-- Theodor Reik
I don't know if God exists, but it would be better for His reputation if He didn't.
-- Jules Renard
When one find's oneself in a hole of one's own making, it is a good time to examine the quality of the workmanship.
-- John Renmerde
A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever, and generally stopping before it gets there.
-- Agnes Repplier
We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.
-- Agnes Repplier
A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.
-- James Reston
Being in therapy is great. I spend an hour just talking about myself. It's kinda like being the guy on a date.
-- Caroline Rhea
Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.
-- Mary Roberts Rhinehart

The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.
-- Anne Rice, Taltos
If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.
-- Hyman Rickover
At the bottom no one in life can help anyone else in life; this one experiences over and over in every conflict and every perplexity: that one is alone. That isn't as bad as it may first appear; and again it is the best thing in life that each should have everything in himself; his fate, his future, his whole expanse and world.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
Do not assume that she who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. Her life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, she would never have been able to find these words.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not a poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see each other whole against the sky.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours
Less and grayer hair.
-- Cal Ripkin Jr., baseball player, describing how he has changed over the course of his consecutive games record
The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It's only the people who make them unsafe.
-- Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia
Laundry increases exponentially in the number of children.
-- Miriam Robbins
Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
-- Tom Robbins
Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.
-- Tom Robbins
If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
-- Tom Robbins
It was the greatest of the imperfect ventriloquist acts: when his lips moved, her body sang.
-- Tom Robbins
Politics is for people who have a passion for changing life but lack a passion for living it.
-- Tom Robbins
The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.
-- Tom Robbins
There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for.
-- Tom Robbins
To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being.
-- Tom Robbins
Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.
-- Tom Robbins
We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.
-- Tom Robbins
I believe in nothing, everything is sacred.
I believe in everything, nothing is sacred.
-- Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.
-- Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
Of the seven dwarves, only Dopey had a shaven face. This should tell us something about the custom of shaving.
-- Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All
What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other peoples' decisions for them?
-- Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
-- Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker
Why yes -- a bulletproof vest.
-- James Rodges, murderer, on his final request before the firing squad
I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.
-- Francois-Auguste Rodin, when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues
It doesn't much signify whom one marries, for one is sure to find out next morning it was someone else.
-- Rogers
Propel, propel, propel your craft softly down liquid solution. Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, Existence is simply illusion.
-- Fred Rogers, parody of "Row, row, row your boat" on his television show, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."
Grad school is the snooze button on the clock-radio of life.
-- John Rogers, comedian (who holds a graduate degree in physics)
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers
I guess the only way to stop divorce is to stop marriage.
-- Will Rogers
I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat!
-- Will Rogers
See what will happen if you don't stop biting your fingernails?
-- Will Rogers, to his niece on seeing the Venus de Milo
The man with the best job in the country is the Vice President. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, "How's the President?"
-- Will Rogers
There ought to be one day - just one - when there is open season on senators.
-- Will Rogers
This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
-- Will Rogers
We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.
-- Will Rogers
You can't say civilization isn't advancing: in every war they kill you in a new way.
-- Will Rogers
Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage, he'll fall asleep before you finish saying it.
-- Helen Roland
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
Women are like tea bags; put them in hot water and they get stronger.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt
Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, "Certainly, I can!" Then get busy and find out how to do it.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.
-- Jean Jacques Rousseau
A husband is what's left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.
-- Helen Rowland
In olden times, sacrifices were made at the altar, a practice which is still very much practiced.
-- Helen Rowland
When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one.
-- Helen Rowland
When you see what some girls marry, you realize how they must hate to work for a living.
-- Helen Rowland
I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.
-- Rita Rudner
Most turkeys taste better the day after; my mother's tasted better the day before.
-- Rita Rudner
Whenever I date a guy, I think, is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?
-- Rita Rudner
It may be that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -- but that is the way to bet.
-- Damon Runyan
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
-- Bertrand Russell
It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results. The wish to preserve the past rather that the hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.
-- Bertrand Russell
Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty -- a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
-- Bertrand Russell
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
-- Bertrand Russell
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
-- Bertrand Russell
The Republicans have a new healthcare proposal: Just say NO to illness!
-- Mark Russell
The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
-- Mark Russell
The only thing you will ever be able to say in the so-called 'social' sciences is: "some do, some don't."
-- Ernest Rutherford
We haven't the money, so we've got to think.
-- Lord Rutherford
If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.
-- Voltaire


S
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
-- Carl Sagan
It is best to learn as we go, not go as we have learned.
-- Leslie Jeanne Sahler
Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward.
-- Patricia Sampson
A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
-- Carl Sandburg
A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.
-- George Santayana
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.
-- George Santayana
Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabline it to make its peace with its destiny.
-- George Santayana
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
-- George Santayana
Friends need not agree in everything or go always together, or have no comparable other friendships of the same intimacy. On the contrary, in friendship union is more about ideal things: and in that sense it is more ideal and less subject to trouble than marriage is.
-- George Santayana
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experience.
-- George Santayana
Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, not condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.
-- George Santayana
Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.
-- George Santayana
The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise.
-- George Santayana
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
-- George Santayana
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-- George Santayana
To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
-- George Santayana
Good friends are good for your health.
-- Irwin Sarason
Hell is other people.
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, you can't take part. And you've got to put your body upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.
-- Mario Savio, (1943-1996)
Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.
-- Rabbi H. Schachtel, The Real Enjoyment of Living
I'm not indecisive. Am I indecisive?
-- Jim Scheibel, mayor, St. Paul MN
A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.
-- Elsa Schiapirelli
If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.
-- Schopenhauer
To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer
What would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?
-- Robert Schuller
What would you attempt to do if you knew you would not fail?
-- Robert Schuller
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.
-- Charles Schultz
There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music and cats.
-- Albert Schweitzer
They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist---
-- John B. Sedgwick, general, dying words, 1864
Actually, the only memory I have of being a Cub Scout was trying to get my hat back. That was all I did. Run back and forth at my bus stop going "Quit it."
-- Jerry Seinfeld
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.
-- Semisonic, Closing Time
It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
-- Seneca
We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing.
-- Seneca
We can say 'Peace on Earth,' we can sing about it, preach about it or pray about it, but if we have not internalized the mythology to make it happen inside us, then it will not be.
-- Betty Shabazz
The course of true love never did run smooth.
-- William Shakespeare
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
-- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act i. Sc. 1.
Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts.
-- William Shakespeare, King Henry the Sixth
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
-- William Shakespeare, King Richard II, Act V, Scene V
Truth is truth
To the end of reckoning.
-- William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act v. Sc. 1.
... then the world 's mine oyster
-- William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor
A critic is one who leaves no turn unstoned.
-- George Bernard Shaw
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
-- George Bernard Shaw
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend upon the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for the appointment by the corrupt few.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
-- George Bernard Shaw
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
-- George Bernard Shaw
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
-- George Bernard Shaw
It is most unwise for people in love to marry.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Morality consists in suspecting other people of not being legally married.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
The fickleness of the women I love is only equalled by the infernal consistency of the women who love me.
-- George Bernard Shaw
The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
-- George Bernard Shaw
The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
-- George Bernard Shaw
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
-- George Bernard Shaw
There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.
-- George Bernard Shaw
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.
-- George Bernard Shaw
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Youth is wasted on the young.
-- George Bernard Shaw
The Churches must learn humility as well as teach it.
-- George Bernard Shaw, St. Joan
If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?
-- Harry Shearer
If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.
-- Wilfred Sheed
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Soul meets soul on lovers lips.
-- Percy Bysshe Shelley
We have to keep trying things we're not sure we can pull off. If we just do the things we know we can do... you don't grow as much. You gotta take those chances on making those big mistakes.
-- Cybill Shepherd
Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.
-- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for a federal anti-smoking campaign
Trouble is a part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person that loves you enough chance to love you enough.
-- Dinah Shore
The church is the great lost and found department.
-- Robert Short
Everything is drive-through. In California, they even have a burial service called Jump-In-The-Box.
-- Wil Shriner
You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
-- Beverly Sills
The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise.
-- Roger Simon
The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.
-- Edith Sitwell
The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
-- B. F. Skinner
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
-- B.F. Skinner
A man gazing at the stars is proverbially at the mercy of the puddles in the road.
-- Alexander Smith
I cannot imagine any condition which would cause this ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.
-- E. I. Smith, Captain of the Titanic
He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful.
-- Sydney Smith, referring to Macaulay
It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.
-- Sydney Smith
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
-- Sydney Smith
Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.
-- Sydney Smith
Whatever you are from nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousands times worse than nothing.
-- Sydney Smith
One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: "Give little, give seldom, and above all, give grudgingly." Otherwise, what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.
-- Ruth Smythers, Marriage advice for women, 1894
If unix is the face of the future I wanna go back to quill pens.
-- Joseph Snipp
Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as true strength.
-- Ralph Sockman
By all means marry. If you get a good wife you will become happy, and if you get a bad one you will become a philosopher.
-- Socrates
Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
-- Socrates
Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?
-- Socrates, dying words
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
-- Socrates
One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.
-- Sophocles
Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it.
-- Gene Spafford
Marriage: A ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.
-- Herbert Spencer
Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.
-- Dr. Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician, address to new parents
I think every woman is entitled to a middle husband she can forget.
-- Adela Rogers St. John
Start slow and taper off.
-- Walt Stack, marathon runner
If addiction is judged by how long a dumb animal will sit pressing a lever to get a 'fix' of something, to its own detriment, then I would conclude that netnews is far more addictive than cocaine.
-- Rob Stampfli
Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.
-- Don Stanford
It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
-- Gertrude Stein
What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?
-- Gertrude Stein, dying words
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
-- Gloria Steinem

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.
-- Gloria Steinem
Someone once asked me why women don't gamble as much as men do and I gave the commonsensical reply that we don't have as much money. That was a true but incomplete answer. In fact, women's total instinct for gambling is satisfied by marriage.
-- Gloria Steinem
Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.
-- James Stephens
If you want to sing out, sing out, and if you want to be free, be free, 'cause there's a million ways to be, you know that there are...
-- Cat Stevens, from a song lyric
That's a hard question. I don't answer hard questions.
-- Justice John Paul Stevens
A beauty is a woman you notice; A charmer is one who notices you.
-- Adlai Stevenson
In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take.
-- Adlai Stevenson
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 Stevenson
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.
-- Robert L. Stevenson
Like a prune, you are not getting any better looking, but you are getting sweeter.
-- N. D. Stice
I once asked my history teacher how we were expected to learn anything useful from his subject, when it seemed to me to be nothing but a monotonous and sordid succession of robber baron scumbags devoid of any admirable human qualities.
I failed history.
-- Sting
Love is stronger than justice.
-- Sting
But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one: men know him not-and to know not is to care not for.
-- Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897
Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.
-- Tom Stoppard
Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
-- Harriet Beecher Stowe
Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them.
-- Richard Strauss, on conducting
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
-- Igor Stravinsky
After finding no qualified candidates for the position of principal, the school board is extremely pleased to announce the appointment of David Steele to the post.
-- Philip Streifer, Superintendent of Schools, Barrington, Rhode Island
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
-- August Strindberg
Ninety percent of everything is crap.
-- Theodore Sturgeon

... it is certain that the real function of art is to increase our self-consciousness; to make us more aware of what we are, and therefore of what the universe in which we live really is. And since mathematics, in its own way, also performs this function, it is not only aesthetically charming but profoundly significant. It is an art, and a great art.
-- John W. N. Sullivan
I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.
-- Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, explaining why we should export toxic wastes to Third World countries
Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
-- Billy Sunday
Try praising your wife, even if it does frighten her at first.
-- Billy Sunday
To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.
-- Karen Sunde
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.
-- Johnathan Swift
The mathematician lives long and lives young; the wings of his soul do not early drop off, nor do its pores become clogged with the earthy particles blown from the dusty highways of vulgar life.
-- James Joseph Sylvester
The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.
-- Publilius Syrus
Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.
-- Thomas Szasz
If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
-- Thomas Szasz
When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.
-- Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973
Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else does and thinking something different.
-- Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, 1937 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine

T
Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball.
-- Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand
Church is only society on earth that exists for the benefit of non-members.
-- William Temple
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, 1850, line 27, stanza 4
I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.
-- Mother Teresa
Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.
-- Margaret Thatcher
When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment... it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands.
-- Margaret Thatcher, on the Falklands Conflict
We can do not great things - only small things with great love.
-- Mother Theresa
Why is it that wherever I go, the resident idiot heads straight for me?
-- Gwynn Thomas
Love is blind -- marriage is the eye-opener.
-- Pauline Thomason
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
Men have become the tools of their tools.
-- Henry David Thoreau
The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.
-- Henry David Thoreau
That government is best which governs least.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
Celestial navigation is based on the premise that the Earth is the center of the universe. The premise is wrong, but the navigation works. An incorrect model can be a useful tool.
-- Kelvin Throop III
Early to rise and early to bed.
Makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead.
-- James Thurber
I hate women because they always know where things are.
-- James Thurber
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
-- James Thurber
Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.
-- Henrik Tikkanen
God help the man who won't marry until he finds a perfect woman, and God help him still more if he finds her.
-- Benjamin Tillett
The first duty of love is to listen.
-- Paul Tillich
"These are days you'll remember." If you recall nothing else from your graduation ceremony, remember you heard the New Jersey Governor quote from 10,000 Maniacs.
-- Christine Todd, NJ Governor, Wheaton College Graduation, 1995
Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.
-- Alvin Toffler
Change is not merely necessary to life, it is life.
-- Alvin Toffler
All that is gold does not glitter. Not all those who wander are lost;
-- J.R.R. Tolkein
If love is the answer, could you rephrase the question?
-- Lily Tomlin
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
-- Lily Tomlin
The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
-- Lily Tomlin
Assassins!
-- Arturo Toscanini, to his orchestra
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
-- Arnold Toynbee
Do not let yourselves be discouraged or embittered by the smallness of the success you are likely to achieve in trying to make life better. You certainly would not be able, in a single generation, to create an earthly paradise. Who could expect that? But, if you make life ever so little better, you will have done splendidly, and your lives will have been worthwhile.
-- Arnold Toynbee
Not much meat on her, but what's there is choice.
-- Spencer Tracy, about Katharine Hepburn
Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
-- G. M. Trevelyan
Health food makes me sick.
-- Calvin Trillin
If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?
-- Calvin Trillin
The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
-- Calvin Trillin
Life is not an easy matter.... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
-- Leon Trotsky, Diary In Exile, Entry for April 3, 1935
...And since the stench of death will always attract flies and vermin, the arrival of Geraldo was perhaps inevitable.
-- Garry Trudeau

There is nothing that can be said by mathematical symbols and relations which cannot also be said by words. The converse, however, is false. Much that can be and is said by words cannot successfully be put into equations, because it is nonsense.
-- C. Truesdell
If you can't convince them, confuse them.
-- Harry S. Truman
Wherever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.
-- Harry S. Truman
In answer to the question of why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our Universe is simply one of those things which happen from time to time.
-- Edward P. Tryon
Once all struggle is grasped, miracles are possible.
-- Mao Tse-tung
Technology makes it possible for people to gain control over everything, except over technology.
-- John Tudor
Mathematics transfigures the fortuitous concourse of atoms into the tracery of the finger of God.
-- Herbert Westren Turnbull
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
-- Lana Turner
Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-- Mark Twain
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
-- Mark Twain
Faith is believing what you know ain't so.
-- Mark Twain
Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
-- Mark Twain
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
-- Mark Twain
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
-- Mark Twain
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
-- Mark Twain
I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.
-- Mark Twain
I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.
-- Mark Twain
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
-- Mark Twain
I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
-- Mark Twain
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, "I don't know."
-- Mark Twain
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
It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.
-- Mark Twain
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
-- Mark Twain
Man is the only animal that blushes--or needs to.
-- Mark Twain
Often it does seem a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
-- Mark Twain
Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very"; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
-- Mark Twain
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-- Mark Twain
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.
-- Mark Twain
The more I know about people, the better I like my dog.
-- Mark Twain
The principle of give and take is the principle of diplomacy - give one and take ten.
-- Mark Twain
Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
-- Mark Twain
Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.
-- Mark Twain
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
-- Mark Twain
Women's liberationists spread the word that...the only peaceful family is one in which either the wife is enslaved or the husband is androgynous.
-- R. Emmett Tyell, The Liberal Crack-Up, 1984
Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
-- Sun Tzu
You can not apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality.
-- Hermann Weyl

U
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people's patience.
-- John Updike
Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.
-- Peter Ustinov
Parents are the bones upon which children sharpen their teeth.
-- Peter Ustinov
. . . the social sciences were for all those who had not yet decided what to do with their lives, and for all those whose premature frustrations led them into the sterile alleys of confrontation.
-- Peter Ustinov, Dear Me

V
A person who is "of sound mind" is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
-- Paul Valery
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
-- Paul Valery
Science is a collection of successful recipes.
-- Paul Valery
If you want a place in the sun, you've got to put up with a few blisters.
-- Abigail Van Buren
Happiness is inward, and not outward; and so, it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are.
-- Henry Van Dyke
I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.
-- Vincent Van Gogh
One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney and continue on their way.
-- Vincent Van Gogh
That is the best -- to laugh with someone because you think the same things are funny.
-- Gloria Vanderbilt
Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.
-- Bill Vaughn
A narcissist is someone better-looking than you are.
-- Gore Vidal
I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
-- Gore Vidal
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal
Marriage isn't a word... it's a sentence.
-- King Vidor, in the 1928 film, The Crawl
Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.
-- Pancho Villa, dying words
Infatuation is when you think that he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Conners, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger, and nothing like Robert Redford--but you'll take him anyway.
-- Judith Viorst
Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket, or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.
-- Judith Viorst
Love is the same as like except you feel sexier.
-- Judith Viorst
Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
-- Frank L. Visco, How to Write Good
Anything too stupid to be said, is sung.
-- Voltaire
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
-- Voltaire
If God created us in His image we have certainly returned the compliment.
-- Voltaire
The first clergyman was the first rascal who met the first fool.
-- Voltaire
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.
-- Voltaire
Friends applaud, the Comedy is over.
-- Ludwig von Beethoven, dying words
Basic research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Wernher Von Braun
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin.
-- John Von Neuman
Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Cat's Cradle
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

W
Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.
-- Karl Wallenda
This world is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.
-- Horace Walpole
Journalism is merely history's first draft.
-- Geoffrey C. Ward
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains.The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.
-- William Arthur Ward
The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.
-- Andy Warhol
If your professor wrote it, it's as near to the truth as you ever need to get.
-- John Watson, University of Canterbury
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.
-- Bill Watterson, in his comic strip Calvin and Hobbes
If a man is talking in the forest, and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?
-- Jenny Weber
I still live.
-- Daniel Webster, dying words
We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry.
-- John Webster
Even overweight cats instinctively know the cardinal rule: when fat, arrange yourself in slim poses.
-- John Weitz, American Designer
Change before you have to.
-- Jack Welch
Go away...I'm alright.
-- H. G. Wells, dying words
Beware you be not swallowed up in books! An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.
-- John Wesley
A man in the house is worth two in the street.
-- Mae West
A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful for a good one.
-- Mae West
I like two kinds of men: domestic and foreign.
-- Mae West
I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
-- Mae West
It is better to be looked over than overlooked.
-- Mae West
It's not the men in my life that count, it's the life in my men.
-- Mae West
Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
-- Mae West
When women go wrong, men go right after them.
-- Mae West
Whenever I'm caught between two evils, I take the one I've never tried.
-- Mae West
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
-- Rebecca West, 1913
Lose an hour in the morning, and you will spend all day looking for it.
-- Richard Whately
If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.
-- James McNeill Whistler
I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
-- E. B. White
Whatever women do they must do it twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult.
-- Charlotte Whitton
A true gentleman is one who is never intentionally rude.
-- Oscar Wilde
Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.
-- Oscar Wilde, dying words
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.
-- Oscar Wilde
As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.
-- Oscar Wilde
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
-- Oscar Wilde
Biography lends to death a new terror.
-- Oscar Wilde
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
-- Oscar Wilde
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.
-- Oscar Wilde
Experience is the name that everyone gives to their mistakes.
-- Oscar Wilde
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde
For those who like that sort of thing, it's the sort of thing that they like.
-- Oscar Wilde
I am not young enough to know everything.
-- Oscar Wilde
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
-- Oscar Wilde
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.
-- Oscar Wilde
It is absurd to divide people into good or bad. People are either charming or tedious.
-- Oscar Wilde
It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.
-- Oscar Wilde
Its failings notwithstanding, there is much to be said in favor of journalism in that by giving us the opinion of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
-- Oscar Wilde
Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable.
-- Oscar Wilde
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
Marriage is the one subject on which all women agree and all men disagree.
-- Oscar Wilde
Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.
-- Oscar Wilde
Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious; both are disappointed.
-- Oscar Wilde
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.
-- Oscar Wilde
Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
-- Oscar Wilde
Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.
-- Oscar Wilde
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.
-- Oscar Wilde
Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
-- Oscar Wilde
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
-- Oscar Wilde
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
-- Oscar Wilde
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
-- Oscar Wilde
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
-- Oscar Wilde
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox--the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
-- Oscar Wilde
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
-- Oscar Wilde
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
-- Oscar Wilde
The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.
-- Oscar Wilde
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
-- Oscar Wilde
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.
-- Oscar Wilde
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
-- Oscar Wilde
Who, being loved, is poor?
-- Oscar Wilde
Work is the curse of the drinking class.
-- Oscar Wilde
Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.
-- Oscar Wilde
Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.
-- Thornton Wilder
Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings.
-- George F. Will, journalist, political commentator, 1994
Books had instant replay long before televised sports.
-- Bern Williams
You have a cough? Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax--tomorrow you'll be afraid to cough.
-- Pearl Williams
Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.
-- Marianne Williamson
Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.
-- Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.
-- Colin Wilson
A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
-- Walter Winchell
We had a lot in common. I loved him and he loved him.
-- Shelley Winters
Guys are lucky because they get to grow mustaches. I wish I could. It's like having a little pet for your face.
-- Anita Wise
The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure.
-- George E. Woodberry
Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.
-- John R. Wooden, Practical Modern Basketball
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience--well, that comes from poor judgement.
-- Cousin Woodman
The Church is an organism that grows best in an alien society.
-- C. Stacey Woods
Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.
-- Virginia Woolf
For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.
-- Virginia Woolf
Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.
-- Virginia Woolf
I have lost friends, some by death, others through sheer inability to cross the street.
-- Virginia Woolf

I read the book of Job last night - I don't think God comes out well in it.
-- Virginia Woolf
I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.
-- Virginia Woolf
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
-- Virginia Woolf
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.
-- Virginia Woolf
Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.
-- Virginia Woolf
On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.
-- Virginia Woolf
One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
-- Virginia Woolf
The first duty of a lecturer: to hand you after an hour's discourse a nugget of pure truth to wrap up between the pages of your notebooks, and keep on the mantlepiece forever.
-- Virginia Woolf
The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.
-- Virginia Woolf
Why are women so much more interesting to men than men are to women?
-- Virginia Woolf
Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.
-- Virginia Woolf, Bernard, in The Waves, 1931; repr. 1943, p. 189
Conversation, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will.
-- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
The child is the father of the man.
-- William Wordsworth
A doctor can bury his mistakes but an architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
The truth is more important than the facts.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
-- Steven Wright
I have a large seashell collection, which I keep scattered on beaches around the world. Maybe you've seen it.
-- Steven Wright
I have an existential map; it has 'you are here' written all over it.
-- Steven Wright
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Steven Wright
Imagine if birds were tickled by feathers. You'd see a flock of birds come by, laughing hysterically!
-- Steven Wright
On the other hand, you have different fingers.
-- Steven Wright
There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.
-- Steven Wright
What's another word for "Thesaurus?"
-- Steven Wright
When I have a kid, I wanna put him in one of those strollers for twins, then run around the mall looking frantic.
-- Steven Wright
We have children because we want immortality and this is the most reliable way of getting it.
-- Woodrow Wyatt



Y
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
-- William Butler Yeats, from "He wishes for the cloths of heaven"
We didn't send you to Washington to make intelligent decisions. We sent you to represent us.
-- Kent York, Baptist minister to US Rep. Bill Sarpalius
I take my wife everywhere I go. She always finds her way back.
-- Henny Youngman
You can't buy love, but you can pay heavily for it.
-- Henny Youngman

Z
It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
-- Emiliano Zapata
Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.
-- Frank Zappa
Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's Practical Gamekeeping.
-- Ed Zern, Field and Stream, November 1959
When making public policy decisions about new technologies for the Government, I think one should ask oneself which technologies would best strengthen the hand of a police state. Then, do not allow the Government to deploy those technologies.
-- Philip Zimmermann
The fantasy which serves as a support for the figure of the Stalinist Communist is therefore exactly the same as the fantasy which is at work in the Tom and Jerry cartoons.
-- Slavoj Zizek
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together....
-- Carl Zwanzig