About
Community
Bad Ideas
Drugs
Ego
Artistic Endeavors
But Can You Dance to It?
Cult of the Dead Cow
Literary Genius
Making Money
No Laughing Matter
On-Line 'Zines
Science Fiction
Self-Improvement
Erotica
Fringe
Society
Technology
register | bbs | search | rss | faq | about
meet up | add to del.icio.us | digg it

Quotes from famous people - Part 3

Every saint has a bee in his halo.
- E. V. Hubbard -

The patient is not likely to recover who makes the doctor his heir.
-Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)

Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses,
cattle and dogs before he matches them: but when he comes to his own marriage
he rarely, or never, takes any such care.
- Charles Darwin -

No craftsman, if he aspires to the highest work in his profession,
will accept [inferior] tools; and no employer, if he appreciates
the quality of work, will ask a craftsman to accept them.
- Weinberg, p.204

The priest's friend loses his faith,
the doctor's his health, the lawyer's his fortune.
-- Venetian proverb --

Whenever 'A' attempts by law to impose his moral
standards upon 'B', 'A' is most likely a scoundrel.
- H. L. Mencken -

What time he can spare from the adornment of his person
he devotes to the neglect of his duties.
-- Alan Gregg, an Oxford don, describing a colleague --

One may be better than his reputation,
but never better than his principles.
- Nicholas V. de Latena -

Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.

The author of the Iliad is either Homer or,
if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.
: Aldous Huxley :

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
:: H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) ::

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

What greater ornament to a father than a son's honorable conduct?
-Sophocles -

I have learned to spell hors d'oeuvres,
Which grates on many people's nerves.

In Duluth there's a hostess, forsooth,
Who doesn't know gin from vermouth.
But this lubricant lapse
Isn't noticed perhaps
Because nobody does in Duluth.

Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day.
:: Harry S Truman ::

The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to
win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.
-- Adlai Stevenson --

Will Rogers never met Howard Cosell.

There are few sorrows, however poignant,
in which a good income is of no avail.
:: L. P. Smith ::

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Absolute detachment is a polar region, unfit for human life;
but one might well make an effort to get out of the steaming
jungles and come a bit closer to the pole.
-- Crane Brinton --

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blest.
Pope (1688-1744)

There ARE no limits to the human will,
For limits are but doubts to be dispelled;
A limit pressed, all limits shrink until
The universe has measurably swelled.
- Michael Brown -

Wealth -- any income that is at least one hundred dollars
more a year than the income of one's wife's sister's husband.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man's, I mean.
-- Mark Twain --

I will ... endeavor never to write more clearly than I think.
-- Niels Bohr--

The older I grow the more I distrust
the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
-H.L. MENCKEN

I never refuse. I never contradict. Sometimes I forget.
-- Benjamin Disraeli, explaining his successful
dealings with Queen Victoria, 1877 --

I am not sure just what the unpardonable sin is, but I believe
it is a disposition to evade the payment of small bills.
-- E. Hubbard --

Kiss me twice. I'm schizophrenic.

Clone: One of the many advanced-technology computers IBM is
beginning to wish it had built.

It would seem that men always need some idiotic fiction
in the name of which they can hate one another.
Once it was religion.
Now it is the State.
-Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly
unless one has plenty of work to do.

Set your goals and set them high. You can't run the race if you
don't know where the finish line is.

There's no point in burying the hatchet if you're
going to put a marker on the site.
- Anon.

Imbesi's Law:
In order for something to become clean, something else must become dirty.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
: Wilde :

What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?
An inconceivable disturbance.
- Anon.

We always keep God waiting while we admit more importunate suitors.
--Chazal --

Sweer's Impossibility Theorem:
Nothing can be both completely general
and internally consistent at the same time.

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters;
united with it, she is the mother of the arts
and the origin of marvels.
- Goya -

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-Mark Twain (1835-1910)

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

A motion to adjourn is always in order.
- Lazarus Long

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
- Robert Frost -

The mark of a true M.B.A. is that he is often wrong, but seldom in doubt.

A poor man sells his saucepan to buy something to put in it.

An engineer is someone who does list processing in Fortran.

I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
-Ashleigh Brilliant

What orators lack in depth they make up in length.

Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
- John Dewey -

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.
:: Will Rogers (1879-1935) ::

A well-prepared mind hopes in adversity and fears in prosperity.
Horace (B.C. 65-8)

One of the first things schoolchildren in California
must learn is how to compose a simple declarative
sentence without the word "fuck" in it.

Patience is something that you admire greatly in the
driver behind you but not in the one ahead of you.

Real Programmers don't write in FORTRAN.
FORTRAN is for pipe stress freaks and crystallography weenies...

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

Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.
Burke (1729-1797)

The lost secret of eternal life is in the
*** Sector not found reading drive C: ***

The pride of dying rich raises the loudest laugh in hell.
John Foster (1836-1917)

There was an old priest in Peru
Who kept a small cat in a pew.
He taught it to speak
alphabetical Greek,
But it never got farther than "Mu".

Everybody is trying to convince people that kids are interested in ecology,
that kids are interested in economy, that kids are interested in politics.
That's bullshit. Kids are interested in the same things that have always
excited them: sex and violence.
:: Alice Cooper ::

To individuals insanity is rare, but in groups,
parties, nations and epochs it is the rule.
-- Nietzsche --

For the guidance of all men in their choices in life
let it be solemnly remembered that it is often
easier to find the truth than to accept it.
- Richard L. Evans -

Life is a long lesson in humility.
- Sir James M. Barrie -

If it is hard to believe in God, it is no easier to believe in man.
:: Margot Asquith ::

In the mountains of truth, you never climb in vain.
Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Deceive not thyself by overexpecting happiness in the
married estate. Remember the nightingales which sing
only some months in the spring, but commonly are
silent when they have hatched their eggs.
-Thomas Fuller

Q: What do you have when you have three lawyers up to their necks in shit?
A: Not enough shit.
:: Blake Clark ::

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
-Shakespeare (Merchant of Venice, V, I)

All of us who are worth anything, spend our manhood in unlearning
the follies, or expiating the mistakes of our youth.
:: Shelley ::

Life is like playing a violin solo in public
and learning the instrument as one goes on.
-- Samuel Butler --

Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

When in darkness or in doubt,
Run in circles, scream and shout.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle
deliberation how it shall be spent.
Johnson (1709-1784)

If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.
-Gen. Philip H. Sheridan (Speech, 1855)

It is not worth while to go around the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.
Thoreau (1817-1862)

Never try to learn more from an experience than there is in it.
There are some vivid and painful experiences that have little to teach us.
-- D. Sutten --

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.
Leon Trotsky (1879-1940)

Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal,
if you don't use your thumbs.
Counting in binary is just like counting in decimal,
if you are all thumbs.

To make astute people believe one is what one is not is, in most
cases, harder than actually to become what one wishes to appear.
-- Lichtenberg --

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which
a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, then
especially, being free from flatterers.
Johnson (1709-1784)

At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy
to importune you with emphatic trifles.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson -

Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe -

There are two tragedies in life.
One is not to get your heart's desire.
The other is to get it.
-George Bernard Shaw

Democracy substitutes selection by the incompetent many
for appointment by the corrupt few.

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on
examination; of false, that it lessens.
Greville (1554-1628)

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
-Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970)

Individualists unite!

Q: How can lawyers swim unscathed in shark-infested waters?
A: Professional courtesy.

Listen within yourself and look into the infinitude of Space and Time.
There can be heard the songs of the Constellations,
the voices of the Numbers, and the harmonies of the Spheres.
The Divine Pymander (BC 2500?-200 AD?)

Where there's a will, there's an inheritance tax.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity!
- Henry David Thoreau -

All progress is based upon a universal innate desire
on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
- Samuel Butler -

An honest election, under democracy, is an act of innocence which
does not take place more than once in the history of a given nation.
:: Jose Maria Gil Robles: Speech, Madrid, 1933 ::

All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.
G. B. Shaw (1856-1950)

Do not clog intellect's sluices
with knowledge of questionable uses.

Nobody ever does anything deliberately in the interests of
evil, for the sake of evil. Everybody acts in the interests
of good, as he understands it. But everybody understands
it in a different way. Consequently men drown, slay, and
kill one another in the interests of good.
Gurdjieff (1873-1949)

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.
- Thomas Carlyle -

It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.
-- Newman --

The first mistake in public business is the going into it.
:: Benjamin Franklin, in Poor Richard's Almanac, 1758 ::

Man doesn't need to be led into temptation;
he usually can find his own way.
- Brigham Young -

The traditionalist believes that foolishness frozen into custom
is preferable to foolishness fresh off the vine.
-- D. Sutten --

How many of our daydreams would turn into nightmares,
were there any danger of their coming true.
-- L. P. Smith --

A man who marries a woman to educate her falls into the
same fallacy as the woman who marries a man to reform him.
-- E. Hubbard --

Seymour's Investment Principle:
Never invest in anything that eats.

Flee at once! All is discovered.

Too far east is west.
- English proverb -

The only thing more costly than education is ignorance.

The believer is happy; the doubter is wise.
- Hungarian Proverb -

Though everything is not permitted, everything is possible.
-Roger Bacon

Your not knowing a man's purpose does not mean he is confused.

He who hesitates is last.

To act sincerely with the insincere is dangerous.
-Taoist proverb

Not to know is bad; not to wish to know is worse.
-- African proverb --

If you are standing upright, don't worry if your shadow is crooked.
-- Chinese proverb --

Begin. The rest is easy.

Too much of a good thing is wonderful.
- Mae West

It is a poor thing for anyone to fear that which is inevitable.
-Tertullian -

The true object of war is PEACE.
-Sun Tzu

The difference between intelligence and education is this-
that intelligence will make you a good living.
Charles Kettering (1876-1958)

To strive with an equal is dangerous;
with a superior, mad;
with an inferior, degrading.
Seneca (B.C. 3-65 A.D.)

When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong.
So we were very often angry at each other.
-- Charles de Gaulle --

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not
believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
G. B. Shaw (1856-1950)

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
-Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

Agree, for the law is costly.
-William Camden (1551-1623)

Alia jacta est. (The die is cast.)
--Julius Caesar after crossing the Rubicon

To learn what is true in order to do what is right
is the summing up of the whole duty of man.
- Thomas Henry Huxley -

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
-Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

In the Information Age, the first step to sanity is FILTERING.
Filter the information; extract the knowledge.
Filter first for substance. Filter second for significance.
These filters protect against advertising.
Filter third for reliability. This filter protects against politicians.
Filter fourth for completeness. This filter protects against the media.
-Zetetic Commentaries

The unnatural, that too is natural.
-Goethe (1749-1832)

The trouble with good ideas is that
they quickly degenerate into hard work.
-PETER DRUCKER

When it is not in our power to determine what is true,
we ought to follow what is most probable.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

The difference between journalism and literature is that
journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
:: Wilde ::

Among politicians the esteem of religion is profitable;
the principles of it are troublesome.
:: Benjamin Whichcote, 1753 ::

To know the truth is easy;
to follow it is difficult.
Chinese Proverb

The supreme triumph of reason is to
cast doubt upon its own validity.
: Miguel de Unamuno :

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
-Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Journalism largely consists of saying "Lord Jones is dead!"
to people who never new Lord Jones was alive.
-G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Truth is tough.
It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about
all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.
:: Leo Rosten ::

The secret of happiness is not
in doing what one likes to do,
but in liking what one has to do.
- Sir James M. Barrie -

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The power of accurate observation is commonly
called cynicism by those who have not got it.
:: George Bernard Shaw ::

What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that
a writer is working when he's staring out the window.

Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his
banker, but his drafts are seldom honored since there is
often a heavy balance against him, because he draws largely
on a small capital and is not yet in possession.
Colton (1780-1832)

I'm all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as
good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next
step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.
-- Leo Szilard --

Doing easily what others find difficult is talent;
doing what is impossible for talent is genius.
-Amiel (1856)

We are here and it is now.
Further than that all human
knowledge is moonshine.
-H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Real Programmers don't document. Documentation is for
simps who can't read the listing or the object deck.

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.
Thomas Huxley (1825-1895)

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
-Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

The essence of Truth is eternal;
Individual truths wax and wane.
A. L. Linall, Jr. (born 1947)

The superior man understands what is right;
The inferior man understands what will sell.
(A gentleman considers what is right;
the vulgar consider what will pay.)
- Confucius -

I would almost say that my country is like
a conquered province with foreign rulers,
except that they are not foreigners and
we are responsible for what they do.
:: Paul Goodman ::

The reason why so few good books are written is that
so few people who can write know anything.
-Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)

By wisdom wealth is won;
but riches purchased wisdom yet for none.
Bayard Taylor (1825-1878)

Know ye that on the right hand of the Indies there is an island called
California, very near the Terrestrial Paradise.
-Garcia Rodriguez Ordonez de Montalvo, circa 1510

Living in the lap of luxury isn't bad,
except that you never know when luxury
is going to stand up.
-ORSON WELLES

Don't marry for money; you can borrow it cheaper.
Scottish Proverb

If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
-Ashleigh Brilliant

No one is exempt from talking nonsense; the mistake is to do it solemnly.
-Montaigne

The mistake you make is in trying to figure it out.
-Tennessee Williams

Experience teaches you to recognize a mistake when you've made it again.

The first myth of management is that it exists.

When you drink of the water don't forget the spring from which it flows.
- Charles Dickens -

You want it WHEN???

A thing just comes -- or it doesn't.
Usually doesn't.
:: Ralph Vaughan Williams ::

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
Buddha (B.C. 568-488)

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
-A. H. Weiler

All politicians have read history; but one might say that they read it only
in order to learn from it how to repeat the same calamities all over again.
:: Paul Valery (1871-1945) ::

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were
merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the
morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a
desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
-- E. B. White --

He who has known best how to employ the fox has succeeded best. But it is
necessary to know well how to disguise this characteristic, and to be a great
pretender and dissembler; and men are so simple, and so subject to present
necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who
will allow himself to be deceived.
:: Niccolo Machiavelli: The Prince, 1513 ::

The nature of programming being what it is,
there is no relationship between the 'size'
of the error and the problems it causes.
- Weinberg, p.247

When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport;
When the tiger wants to murder him, he calls it ferocity.
The distinction between crime and justice is no greater.
G. B. Shaw (1856-1950)

I have seen hypocrisy that was so artful that it was
good judgment to be deceived by it.
-- H. W. Shaw --

There's never enough time to do it right,
but there's always time to do it over.

You can always tell white trash, but you can't tell it much.
:: Alvin Doyle Moore ::

The hardest trial of the heart is, whether it can
bear a rival's failure without triumph.
- Aikin -

...by then I had known for many years that in a democracy it is
frequently necessary to enter the polling booth holding one's nose.
:: Bernard Levin ::

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is
a tragedy, but that it is a bore.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
Lincoln (1809-1865)

Genius does what it must, talent does what it can.
Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)

Putting off an easy thing makes it hard,
and putting off a hard one makes it impossible.
-- George Horace Lorimer --

If a person offends you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was
intentional or not, do no resort to extreme measures; simply watch
your chance and hit him with a brick.
-Mark Twain

There are no little events with the heart. It magnifies
everything; it places in the same scales the fall of an empire
of fourteen years and the dropping of a woman's glove, and
almost always the glove weighs more than the empire.
Balzac (1799-1850)

Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly
destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable,
and others extremely difficult.
Johnson (1709-1784)

I see the right, and I approve it, too;
Condemn the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.
-Ovid

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere,
diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is
difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime, makes
the ridiculous; and one step above the ridiculous, makes it sublime again.
- Thomas Paine

What is not to be, will not be; if it is to be, it cannot
be otherwise; why do you not drink this antidote that
destroys the poison of care?
The Hitopadesa (600?-1100? A.D.)

There is a piece missing; I have never been able to discover what it is.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte, of Tsar Alexander I --

If it's more than you need, it's greed.

Expert advice is a great comfort...even when it's wrong.

If you're early, it's cancelled.
If you're on time, it's late.
If you're late, you're late.

If you have to eat crow, eat it while it's hot.
:: Alven Barkley, Vice President of the United States ::

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

An object never serves the same function as its image- or its name.
-Rene Magritte

The usefulness of a meeting is inversely proportional to its attendance.

The course of a river is almost always disapproved of by its source.
:: Cocteau ::

There is more to life than increasing its speed.
-Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.
-Johann von Goethe (1749-1832)

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but Greed is its father.
(We're all ashamed of Greed, so he isn't mentioned much.)
- R. Geis

Not every end is a goal. The end of a melody is not its goal;
however, if the melody has not reached its end, it would also
not have reached its goal. A parable.
-- Nietzsche --

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows,
but only empties today of its strength.
Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders
than from the arguments of its opposers.
- William Penn -

If a nation values anything more than freedom it will lose its freedom;
and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values
more, it will lose that too.
- William Somerset Maugham -

Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter.
Had he run unopposed he would have lost.
-Mort Sahl

Man's rich with little, were his judgement true;
Nature is frugal, and her wants are few;
These few wants answer'd bring sincere delights;
But fools create themselves new appetites.
Young (1683-1765)

Make me chaste and continent, but not just yet.
-- Saint Augustine --

An unjust peace is better than a just war.
Cicero (B.C. 106-43)

"His Majesty does not know what the Band has just played,
but it is never to be played again!
:: King George V ::

Satires which the censor can understand are justly forbidden.
:: Kraus ::

No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.
-Lily Tomlin

The politician is an acrobat. He keeps his
balance by saying the opposite of what he does.
:: Maurice Barres (1862-1923) ::

Ketterling's Law:
Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.

Memory-Resident: Ready at the press of a key to
disable any currently running program.

Misers are very kind people:
they amass wealth for those who wish their death.
Stanislaus Leszczynski (1677-1766)

The nobility, say its members, is the intermediary between the King and
the People .... Quite; just as the hounds are the intermediary between
the men and the hares.
:: Chamfort ::

Kitman's Law:
Pure drivel tends to drive ordinary drivel off the TV screen.

No matter how much you know, you'll never know enough.

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him
by this sign, that the dunces are all in a confederation against him.
-Jonathan Swift

Socrates told his students to know themselves.
He couldn't guarantee that they had the equipment.
:: Antisthenes ::

Controversy equalizes fools and wise men - and the fools know it.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything.
That points clearly to a political career.
:: George Bernard Shaw: Major Barbara, 1907 ::

One man who has a mind and knows it
can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.
G. B. Shaw (1856-1950)

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not;
and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.
- Longfellow -

A wise man knows everything;
A shrewd one, everybody.
- Chinese Fortune Cookie

C'est la vie.

People do not lack strength; they lack will.
- Victor Hugo -

A little caution outflanks a large cavalry.
- Bismarck -

Laser Printer:
A xerographic copying machine with additional malfunctioning parts.

I did it! I found the program's last bug!
last bug!
bug!
bug!
bug!
bug!
bug!
bug!

I just found the last bug!
- Unanimous -

The hawk kissed the hen -- up to the last feather.

And with the guts of the last priest,
let us strangle the last king.
:: Denis Diderot ::

A Lawyer's function:
To protect his clients from being persuaded by persons whom
they do not know to enter into contracts which they do not
understand to purchase goods which they do not want with
money which they have not got.
-- Lord Greene --

The qualities that get a man into power are not those that lead him,
once established, to use power wisely.
-- Llyman Bryson --

By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First, by reflection which is noblest;
second, by imitation, which is the easiest;
and third, by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius (B.C. 551-479)

If lies were Latin, there would be many learned men.

He who trains his tongue to quote the learned sages
will be known, far and wide, as a smart-ass.

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.
-Montaigne

Happiness is like a sunbeam, which the least shadow
intercepts, while adversity is often as the rain of spring.
Chinese Proverb

Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve;
we may give somewhat of novelty to that which was old;
condensation to that which was diffuse, perspicuity to that
which was obscure, and currency to that which was recondite.
Colton (1780-1832)

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind
only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
- Franz Kafka -

As a fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined
for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price
of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel
to watch the city while they sleep.
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton -

I have found men more kind than I expected, and less just.
Johnson (1709-1784)

When something defies description--let it.
-ARNOLD H. GLASOW

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them
make their experiments on journalists and politicians.
:: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) ::

A man finds it awfully hard to lie to
the women he loves -- the first time.

Fortune knocks at every man's door once in a life, but
in a good many cases the man is in a neighboring saloon
and does not hear her.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

The hardest thing to learn in life is
which bridge to burn and which to cross.

A heavy purse makes a light heart.
English Proverb

Pros are people who do jobs well even when they don't feel like it.

Opportunity is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Baseball is like church.
Many attend.
Few understand.
-- Leo Durocher --

Sex is like euchre;
if you don't have a partner, you'd better have a good hand!

There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys;
they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having
worked out the sum for themselves.
-- Soren Kierkegaard --

To understand the world, and to like it,
are two things not easily to be reconciled.
-- Halifax --

Though a program be but three lines long,
some day it will have to be maintained.

Be honest with yourself until the end of your life. Then listen to
the slow movement of the Schubert Quintet and kick the bucket.
:: Nathan Milstein ::

Those who have been given a little authority
begin to think what they could do with a little more authority.
- Richard L. Evans -

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
-Emerson (1803-1882)

You live and you learn - or you don't live long.

To live long, it is necessary to live slowly.
Cicero (B.C. 106-43)

Seems it strange that thou shouldst live forever?
Is it less strange that thou shouldst live at all?
- Edward Young -

Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government.
But there are dishonest men in national government too.
-RICHARD M. NIXON

Wickedness may prosper for awhile, but at the long run,
he that sets all knaves at work will pay them.
:: L'Estrange ::

If peace cannot be maintained with honor, it is no longer peace.
John Russell (1792-1878)

A book is a mirror: when an ass looks in, no apostle can look out.
-- George C. Lichtenberg --

A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg that looked like
he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
-- Mark Twain --

The Lord prefers common-looking people.
That is the reason He made so many of them.
-- Attributed to Abraham Lincoln

The world is full of people looking for
spectacular happiness while they snub contentment.
-DOUG LARSON

Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.
-Frank Lloyd Wright

Lost interest? It's so bad I've lost apathy.

He who does not enjoy solitude will not love freedom.
--Schopenhauer --

If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;
but if you really make them think they'll hate you.

Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it,
and those who love it are not equal to those who live it.
- Confucius -

Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.
:: Chamfort ::

Love for life is still possible, only one loves differently;
it is like love for a woman whom one does not trust.
-- Nietzsche --

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring,
close-knit family in another city.
-George Burns

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.
- H. L. Mencken

The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by
someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.
:: Thomas Merton ::

What men usually ask of God when they pray is that two and two not make four.

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
- Edward John Pheles

If you cry "Forward" you must be sure to make clear
the direction in which to go.
Don't you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word
to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?
-- Anton Chekhov --

Chaste makes waste.

He is always right who suspects he makes mistakes.
- Spanish Proverb

If we cannot imagine, we cannot foresee.
- Gaston Bachelard

Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns...
He should be drawn and quoted!

Take care. It is so easy to break eggs without making omelettes.
- Clive Staples Lewis -

Malek's Law:
Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.

Physicians shouldn't say, "I have cured this man," but,"This man didn't
die under my care." In physics, too, instead of saying, "I have explained
such and such a phenomenon," one might say,"I have determines causes for
it the absurdity of which cannot be conclusively proved."
:: Lichtenberg ::

The wicked flee when no man pursueth --
but they make better time when the righteous are after them.
-- Charles Henry Parkhurst --

A prohibitionist is the sort of man one
wouldn't care to drink with -- even if he drank.
:: H. L. Mencken ::

Plasticity loves new moulds because it can fill them, but for a man of
sluggish mind and bad manners there is decidedly no place like home.
-- George Santayana --

Anybody who believes that the way to a man's heart
is through his stomach flunked geography.
-Robert Byrne

I would like to live in Manchester, England.
The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable.
:: Mark Twain ::

A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.
Plutarch (46-120 A.D.)

You have letters but no learning that understand so many languages,
turn over so many volumes, and yet are but asleep when all is done.
-- John Milton --

Having lived long, I have experienced many instances
of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration
to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once
thought right, but found to be otherwise.
- Benjamin Franklin -

Power is always gradually stealing away from the many to
the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.
Johnson (1709-1784)

Marks' Law:
A fool and your money are soon partners.

Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance
of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.
-Emerson (1803-1882)

A politician weakly and amiably in the right, is no match for
a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong.
:: Edwin Percy Whipple (1819-1886) ::

Matz's Maxim:
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

Those who depend on the merits of their ancestors may be
said to search in the roots of the tree for those fruits
which the branches ought to produce.
Isaac Barrow (1630-1677)

Less good from genius we may find
Than that from perseverance flowing;
So have good grist at hand to grind,
And keep the mill a-going.
Thomas English (1819-1902)

Rivers and mountains may change...
Human nature never.
Chinese Proverb

What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted.
-Burns

Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may indulge
in to excess without injury to their moral or religious feelings.
Addison (1672-1719)

McGowan's Axiom:
If a Christmas gift is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's not $19.95.

Give me Librium, or give me Meth.
Graffito, ca. 1965

Mad? I who have solved the secret of life, you call me mad?
- Dr. Otto von Niemann

Liberty means responsibility.
That is why most men dread it.
G. B. Shaw (1856-1950)

Enthusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to be measured by
the horse-power of the understanding.
Emerson (1803-1882)

If you would avoid suspicion, don't lace your shoes in a melon field.
-- Chinese proverb --

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
: Alphonse Karr :

To those who want salvation cheap, and most men do,
there is very little comfort to be had out of the great teachers.
-- Walter Lippmann --

Make no little plans. They have no Magic to stir Men's blood.
-D. B. Hudson

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge,
but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.
Montaigne (1533-1592)

I worked for a menial's hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have gladly paid.
Jessie Rittenhouse (1869-1948)

Merkin's Maxim:
When in doubt, predict that the trend will continue.

Every child comes with the message that
God is not yet discouraged of man.

Meyer's law:
It is a simple task to make things complex,
but a complex task to make them simple.

Clear conscience never fears midnight knocking.
Chinese Proverb

Miller's Law:
You can't tell how deep a puddle is until you step in it.

And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
-A. E. Housman

The most merciful thing in the world is the inability of the human mind to
correlate all its contents.
-H. P. Lovecraft

Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed.
Bovee (1820-1904)

Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes. --Wilde --

The marvels of today's modern technology
include the development of a soda can, which when
discarded will last forever...and a $17,000 car which
when properly cared for will rust out in two or three years.

There is much to be said in favor of modern journalism.
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated
it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
-Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

There are scores of thousands of sects who are ready at a moment's notice
to reveal the will of God on every possible subject.
G. B. Shaw (1856-1950)

When a fellow says it hain't the money but
the principle o' the thing, its th' money.

Satyrs have more faun.

No man is so old as to believe he cannot live one more year.
- Sean O'Casey -

No one is so old as to think he cannot live one more year.
Cicero (B.C. 106-43)

Young folks ought to know that we old folks know more about
being young than they know about being old.

Contentment consisteth not in adding more fuel,
but in taking away some fire.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)

What is it that makes men suppose that they can more easily
do twice tomorrow what they didn't do once today!
- Richard L. Evans

Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important
than that of not praising where praise is not due.
-- Sydney Smith --

Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious.
-- Saint Thomas Aquinas --

One never dives into the water to save a drowning man more eagerly
than when there are others present who dare not take the risk.
-- Nietzsche --

Almost all our faults are more pardonable
than the methods we resort to to hide them.
-- La Rochefoucauld --

When the gods were more manlike,
Men were more godlike.
Schiller (1759-1805)

Things which you don't hope happen more frequently
than things which you do hope.
Plautus (B.C. 254-184)

There is a mean in all things; and, moreover, certain
limits on either side of which right cannot be found.
Horace (B.C. 65-8)

Success, the mark no mortal wit,
Or surest hand, can always hit:
For whatsoe'er we perpetrate,
We do but row, we're steer'd by Fate,
Which in success oft disinherits,
For spurious causes, noblest merits.
Samuel Butler (1612-1680)

Words are like leaves, and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
-Alexander Pope

The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure
when it lights on the flyswatter.
: Lichtenberg :

Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by Jostling in the Street.
:: William Blake ::

The other line always moves faster.

Too much doubt is better than too much credulity.
-Robert G. Ingersoll

Murphy's Philosophy:
Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse.

Found on a door in the MSU music building:
This door is baroquen, please wiggle Handel.
(If I wiggle Handel, will it wiggle Bach?)

One special form of contact, which consists of mutual approxi-
mation of the mucous membranes of the lips in a kiss, has received
a sexual value among the civilized nations, though the parts of
the body do not belong to the sexual apparatus and merely form
the entrance to the digestive tract.
-Sigmund Freud, in The Sexual Aberrations

Don't ask me; I was hired for my looks.

A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
-Mark Twain

"Adam," cried Eve, "Hear my beef!
I've nothing to wear but a leaf.
So call Niemann Marcus
To outfit my carcass,
Or your sex life is coming to grief."

Honest, Officer, had I known my health
stood in jeopardy I would never have lit one.
- MAXIM OF THE HELLS ANGELS -

If I chased the straight line of my thoughts,
what a maze I'd write!
- Brian W. Aldiss, Earthworks

The little I know, I owe to my ignorance.
: Sacha Guitry :

The song I came to sing remains unsung. I have spent my life
stringing and unstringing my instrument.
- Rabindranath Tagore -

What to such as you anyhow such a poet as I? therefore leave my works
And go lull yourself with what you can understand, and with piano-tunes,
For I lull nobody, and you will never understand me.
:: Walt Whitman ::

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 seashore,
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 --

A progressive professor named Winners
Held classes each evening for sinners.
They were graded and spaced
So the vile and debased
Would not be held back by beginners.

A flatulent fellow named Ray
Emitted a flatus, one day.
The shock was reported
In Maine and recorded
On a seismograph out in L.A.

There was a young man named Rex
Who really was small for his sex.
When tried for exposure
The judge's disclosure
Was "De minimis non curat lex."

There was a young poet named Dan
Whose poetry never would scan.
When told this was so,
He said, "Yes, I know,
It's because I try to put every conceivable syllable into that
lousy last line that I possibly can."

There was a young lady named Ciss
Who said, "I think skating's a bliss."
But she'll never restate,
For a wheel off her skate
.siht ekil gnihtemos pu hsinif reh edam

A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody as nasty as
himself, and hates them for it.
G. B. Shaw (1856-1950)

A citizen of an advanced industrialized nation consumes
in six months the energy and raw materials that have to
last the citizen of a developing country his entire lifetime.
:: Maurice F. Strong ::

Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial,
compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong,
as silly and as wise, as bad and as good.
- Abraham Lincoln -

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality
can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
- George Washington -

It is dangerous for a national candidate
to say things that people might remember.
- Eugene McCarthy -

If computers take over (which seems to be their natural tendency),
it will serve us right.
-- Alistair Cooke.

Prudence consists in the power to recognize the nature of
disadvantages and to take the less disagreeable as good.
Machiavelli (1469-1527)

But, by all thy nature's weakness,
Hidden faults and follies known,
Be thou, in rebuking evil,
Conscious of thine own.
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)



 
To the best of our knowledge, the text on this page may be freely reproduced and distributed.
If you have any questions about this, please check out our Copyright Policy.

 

totse.com certificate signatures
 
 
About | Advertise | Bad Ideas | Community | Contact Us | Copyright Policy | Drugs | Ego | Erotica
FAQ | Fringe | Link to totse.com | Search | Society | Submissions | Technology
Hot Topics
Neutral English Accent
ah le francais...
Most amount of languages someone can learn
what language do you like to hear?
On a certain annoyance of speaking English..
GPP is bad grammar
Les Verbes Rares Francais! Aidez-moi!
Words that piss you Off
 
Sponsored Links
 
Ads presented by the
AdBrite Ad Network

 

TSHIRT HELL T-SHIRTS