HUMAN BEHAVIOR QUOTES

-- Richard Braunstein

-- Samuel Butler

-- Rose Kennedy, (1890-1995) family matriarch, on her 100th birthday, 1991

-- Oscar Levant

-- Francis Rabelais, Works. Book i. Chap. v.

-- Seen on a bumper sticker

"Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer."

-- Dave Barry.

"Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times."

-- Mark Twain.

"I drink therefore I am."

-- WC Fields.

"An alcoholic is anyone you don't like who drinks more than you do."

-- Dylan Thomas.

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."

-- Hunter S Thompson.

"Reality is an illusion created by a lack of alcohol."

-- NF Simpson.

"My dad was the town drunk. Most of the time that's not so bad; but New York City?"
Henny Youngman.

"Cocaine is God's way of saying you're making too much money."

-- Robin Williams.

"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal labotomy."

-- Fred Allen.

"I once shook hands with Pat Boone and my whole right side sobered up."

-- Dean Martin.

I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then I'm in no hurry."

-- Robert Benchley.

"He once had his toes amputated so he could stand closer to the bar."

-- Mike Harding.

"I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine."

-- HL Mencken.

"I smoke ten to fifteen cigars a day. At my age I have to hold on to something."

-- George Burns.

"I don't like people who take drugs... Customs men for example."

-- Mick Miller.

"I drink too much. The last time I gave a urine sample it had an olive in it."

-- Rodney Dangerfield.

"Reality is just a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs."

-- Robin Williams.

"Prohibition is better than no liquor at all."

-- Will Rogers.

"Real ale fans are just like train-spotters, only drunk."

-- Christopher Howse.

"I am a drinker with writing problems."

-- Brendan Behan.

"The best pitch I ever heard about cocaine was back in the early eighties when a
street dealer followed me down the sidewalk going: I got some great blow man. I got
the stuff that killed Belushi."

-- Denis Leary.

"I've stopped drinking, but only while I'm asleep."

-- George best.

"I'm not really a heavy smoker any more. I only get through two lighters a day now."

-- Bill Hicks.

"I make it a rule never to smoke while I'm sleeping."

-- Mark Twain.

"What I like to drink most is wine that belongs to others."

-- Diogenes.

"If I had to live my life over, I'd live over a saloon."

-- WC Fields.

"I feel sorry for people who don't drink. They wake up in the morning and that's the
best they're going to feel all day."

-- Dean Martin.

"The difference between a drunk and a alcoholic is that a drunk doesn't have to
attend all those meetings."

-- Arthur Lewis.

"A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle."

-- Jonathan Swift.

"The answer to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a beer bottle, they're on TV."

-- Homer Simpson.

FUNNY FOOD QUOTES

"I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick, not wounded, dead."

-- Woody Allen.

"I like children - fried."

-- WC Fields.

"Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our
grandparents breathe through their noses when they're eating sandwiches."

-- Jim Carrey.

"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).

"If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what
happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?"

-- Steven Wright.

"Nouvelle Cuisine, roughly translated, means: I can't believe I paid ninety-six dollars
and I'm still hungry."

-- Mike Kalin.

"Is Elizabeth Taylor fat? Her favourite food is seconds."

-- Joan Rivers.

"A winkle is just a bogey with a crash helmet on."

-- Mick Miller.

"I like my coffee like I like my women. In a plastic cup."

-- Eddie Izzard.

"I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at any time". So I ordered French
Toast during the Renaissance."

-- Steven Wright.

"You piss me off you Salmon... You're too expensive in restaurants."

-- Eddie Izzard.

"In Spain, attempting to obtain a chicken salad sandwich, you wind up with a dish
whose name, when you look it up in your Spanish-English dictionary, turns out to
mean: Eel with big abcess."

-- Dave Barry.

"A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch."

-- James Beard.

"I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol."

-- Steven Wright.

"Did you ever notice they never take any fat hostages? You never see a guy coming
out of Lebanon going: I was held hostage for seven months and I lost 175 pounds, I
feel good and I look good and I learned self-discipline. That's the important thing."

-- Denis Leary.

"'Escargot' is French for 'fat crawling bag of phlegm'."

-- Dave Barry.

"Ice-cream is exquisite. What a pity it isn't illegal."

-- Voltaire.

"Anything is good if it's made of chocolate."

-- Jo Brand.

"The perfect lover is one who turns into pizza at 4am."

-- Charles Pierce.

"Who bothers to cook TV dinners? I suck them frozen."

-- Woody Allen.

QUOTES ABOUT DEATH

"Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours."

-- Yogi Berra.

"Death is a low chemical trick played on everybody except sequoia trees."

-- JJ Furnas.

"Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it."

-- W. Somerset Maugham.

"Early to rise and early to bed. Makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead."

-- James Thurber.

"Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die."

-- Joe Louis.

"He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt."

-- Joseph Heller.

"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."

-- Winston Churchill.

"Death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down. 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.

"All our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that
know nothing."

-- Maurice Maeterlinck.

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

-- Joseph Stalin.

"Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it."

-- Woody Allen.

"Everything is drive-through. In California, they even have a burial service called
Jump-In-The-Box."

-- Wil Shriner.

"In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes."

-- Benjamin Franklin.

"The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident
for someone who's dead."

-- Albert Einstein.

"I wouldn't mind dying - it's the business of having to stay dead that scares the shit
out of me."

-- R. Geis.

"It's impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune."

-- Woody Allen.

"For if he like a madman lived, At least he like a wise one died."

-- Cervantes.

"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.

"Am I lightheaded because I'm not dead or because I'm still alive?"

-- Heidi Sandige.

"After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one."

-- Cato the Elder (234-149 B.C.).

SOCIAL COMMENTARY QUOTES

"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."

-- Groucho Marx.

"The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable."

-- Oscar Wilde ('A Woman of No Importance' 1893).

"She had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the power of speech."

-- George Barnard Shaw.

"The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their
fault."

-- Henry Kissinger.

"Camping is nature's way of promoting the motel business."

-- Dave Barry.

"Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat
anything."

-- Herb Caen.

"The cocktail party is a device for paying off obligations to people you don't want to
invite for dinner."

-- Charles Smith.

"Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes."

-- Oscar Wilde ('Lady Windemere's Fan' 1892).

"As yet, Bernard Shaw hasn't become prominent enough to have any enemies, but
none of his friends like him."

-- Oscar Wilde.

"He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really
is dead."

-- Voltaire.

"It always rains on tents. Rainstorms will travel thousands of miles, against prevailing winds for the opportunity to rain on a tent."

-- Dave Barry.

"I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members."

-- Groucho Marx.

"I went to a general store. They wouldn't let me buy anything specifically."

-- Steven Wright.

"If you're going to do something tonight that you'll be be sorry for tomorrow
morning, sleep late."

-- Henry Youngman.

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

-- Mark Twain.

"A positive attitude will not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people
to make it worth the effort."

-- Herm Albright.

"Those who can do, those who can't teach."

-- George Bernard Shaw.

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the
experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."

-- Douglas Adams.

"I always arrive late at the office, but I make up for it by leaving early."

-- Charles Lamb.

"It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But... it is better to be good than to be
ugly."

-- Oscar Wilde ('The Picture of Dorian Gray' 1891).

"To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice."

-- Ambrose Bierce.

"There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being
talked about."

-- Oscar Wilde ('The Picture of Dorian Gray' 1891).

"Last week I stated that this woman was the ugliest woman I had ever seen. I have
since been visited by her sister and now wish to withdraw that statement."

-- Mark Twain.

"I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally."

-- WC Fields.

"We live in an age when pizza gets to your home before the police."

-- Jeff Marder.

"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception."

-- Groucho Marx.

"Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability."

-- George Bernard Shaw.

"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans are suffering from
some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then
it's you."

-- Rita Mae Brown.

"My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you'll be happy; if not, you'll
become a philosopher."

-- Socrates.

"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't
help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that but not with all those flies and
death and stuff."

-- Maria Carey.

EDUCATIONAL QUOTES

"We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world."

-- Dan Quayle.

"I'm a philosophy major. That means I can think deep thoughts about being
unemployed."

-- Bruce Lee.

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

-- Edgar Wallace.

"I can speak Esperanto like a native."

-- Spike Milligan.

"What's on your mind, if you'll forgive the overstatement?"

-- Fred Allen.

"Ever wonder if illiterate people get the full effect of alphabet soup?"

-- John Mendosa.

"Why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning
anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the
smartest race of people on Earth."

-- Will Rogers.

"College atheletes used to get a degree in bringing your pencil."

-- Ruby Wax.

"If a man is a fool, you don't train him out of being a fool by sending him to
university. You merely turn him into a trained fool, ten times more dangerous."

-- Desmond Bagley.

"Grammar schools are public schools without the sodomy."

-- Tony Parsons.

"There's nothing as stupid as an educated man, if you can get him off the thing he
was educated in."

-- Will Rogers.

"My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some
indication of the misery I've endured over the past twenty-five years."

-- Paul Merton.

"Dublin university contains the cream of Ireland: Rich and thick."

-- Samuel Beckett.

"Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children."

-- Dan Quayle.

"I have been described as a lighthouse in the middle of a bog: Brilliant but useless."

-- Connor Cruise O'Brien.

"An encyclopedia is a system for collecting dust in alphabetical order."

-- Mike Barfield.

"What's another word for thesaurus?"

-- Steven Wright.

"Chess is the most elaborate waste of human intelligence outside of an advertising
agency."

-- Raymond Chandler.

"You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle-aged woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life."

-- Emo Philips.

"I won't say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner. We used to
write essays like: What I'm going to be if I grow up."

-- Lenny Bruce.

NATIONALITIES & PLACES QUOTATIONS

"The Middle Eastern states aren't nations, they're quarrels with borders."

-- PJ O'Rouke.

"Boy, those French: They have a different word for everything!"

-- Steve Martin.

"On my first day in New York a guy asked me if I knew where Central Park was. When I told him I didn't he said, 'Do you mind if I mug you here?'."

-- Paul Merton.

"In an underdeveloped country don't drink the water. In a developed country don't
breathe the air."

-- Jonathan Raban.

"I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix."

-- Dan Quayle.

"They'll always be an England, even if it's in Hollywood."

-- Bob Hope.

"My first rule of travel is never to go to a place that sounds like a medical condition
and Critz is clearly an incurable disease involving flaking skin."

-- Bill Bryson.

"Many people are surprised to hear that we have comedians in Russia, but they are
there. They are dead, but they are there."

-- Yakov Smirnoff.

"Of course America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always
been hushed up."

-- Oscar Wilde.

"He was so depressed, he tried to commit suicide by inhaling next to an Armenian."

-- Woody Allen.

"The curtain rises on a vast primitive wasteland, not unlike certain parts of New
jersey."

-- Woody Allen.

"China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese."

-- Charles de Gaulle.

"In the Societ army it takes more courage to retreat than advance."

-- Joseph Stalin.

"In America you can always find a party. In Russia the party always finds you."

-- Yakov Smirnoff.

"New Zealand is a country of thirty thousand million sheep, three million of whom
think they are human."

-- Barry Humphries.

"If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks."

-- Brendan Behan.

"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a 'part' of NATO. We have a firm
commitment to Europe. We are a 'part' of Europe."

-- Dan Quayle.

"I shook hands with a friendly Arab. I still have my right arm to prove it."

-- Spike Milligan.

"The most hazardous part of our expedition to Africa was crossing Piccadilly Circus."

-- Joseph Thomson.

"I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world."

-- Malcolm Bradbury.

"Traditionally most of Australia's imports come from overseas."

-- Keppel Enderbery.

"The only English words I saw in Japan were Sony and Mitsubishi."

-- Bill Gullickson.

"The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll look exactly the
same afterwards."

-- Billy Connolly.

"Wales is the land of my fathers. And my fathers can have it."

-- Dylan Thomas.

"The Irish gave the bagpipes to the Scotts as a joke, but the Scotts haven't seen
the joke yet."

-- Oliver Herford.

"Homosexuality in Russia is a crime and the punishment is seven years in prison,
locked up with the other men. There is a three year waiting list."

-- Yakov Smirnoff.

"Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name BZJXXLLWCP is pronounced Jackson."

-- Mark Twain.

"It is wonderful to be here in the great state of Chicago."

-- Dan Quayle.

"Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the
sun."

-- Ashleigh Brilliant.

"Americans have different ways of saying things. They say "elevator", we say "lift" ... they say "President", we say "stupid psychopathic git."

-- Alexai Sayle.

Death/Immortality

What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.: -- Dave Barry
He who dies a thousand deaths meets the final hour with the calmness of one who approaches a well remembered door.: -- Heywood Brown
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
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
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 regret that I have but one life to give for my country.: -- Nathan Hale
He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt.: -- J. Heller
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
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
I am become death, shatterer of worlds.: -- Robert J. Oppenheimer, citing from the Bhagavadgita, after witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion
How could they tell?: -- Dorothy Parker, upon hearing that President Coolidge had died
There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for.: -- Tom Robbins
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.: -- George Santayana
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
Everything is drive-through. In California, they even have a burial service called Jump-In-The-Box.: -- Wil Shriner
Early to rise and early to bed. Makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead.: -- James Thurber
I have lost friends, some by death, others through sheer inability to cross the street.: -- Virginia Woolf
It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees.: -- Emiliano Zapata

Art

Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.: -- Al Capp
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
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.: -- G. K. Chesterton
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
The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.: -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Give me a museum and I'll fill it.: -- Pablo Picasso
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
See what will happen if you don't stop biting your fingernails?: -- Will Rogers, to his niece on seeing the Venus de Milo
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
Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.: -- Oscar Wilde

Virtue/Decadence

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
My good intentions are completely lethal.: -- Margaret Atwood
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
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.: -- G. K. Chesterton
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.: -- François de La Rouchefoucauld, Maxims, 1665
I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.: -- Alexandre Dumas pere
If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.: -- Elbert Hubbard
I hate mankind, for I think myself to be one of them, and I know how bad I am.: -- Samuel Johnson
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.: -- Abraham Lincoln
The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.: -- W. Somerset Maugham
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
There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline.: -- Michel de Montaigne
The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.: -- Paula Poundstone
I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.: -- Mae West
Whenever I'm caught between two evils, I take the one I've never tried.: -- Mae West
As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.: -- 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
It is absurd to divide people into good or bad. People are either charming or tedious.: -- Oscar Wilde
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.: -- Oscar Wilde
The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.: -- Virginia Woolf

Advice

Count your age with friends but not with years.: -- 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
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
Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.: -- Anonymous
Never practice two vices at once.: -- Tallulah Bankhead
Never moon a werewolf.: -- Mike Binder
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.: -- Niels Bohr
Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.: -- Erma Bombeck
Always behave like a duck--keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath.: -- Jacob Braude
If someone offers you a breath mint, accept it.: -- H. Jackson Brown, Jr., Life's Little Treasure Book, on wisdom
Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.: -- H. Jackson Brown
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
Never go to bed angry. Stay up and fight.: -- Phyllis Diller
Never judge a book by its movie.: -- J. W. Eagan
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
Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.: -- William Faulkner
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
Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.: -- Robert Frost
You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.: -- Indira Gandhi
Always go to the bathroom when you have a chance.: -- King George V
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
A good time to keep your mouth shut is when you're in deep water.: -- Sidney Goff
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
Dew knot trussed yore spell chequer two fined awl yore mistakes.: -- Brendan Hills
Live truth instead of professing it.: -- Elbert Hubbard
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.: -- Indian proverb
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.: -- John F. Kennedy
When you are right, you cannot be too radical; When you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.: -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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
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)
For the love of God, folks, don't do this at home.: -- David Letterman, CBS Late Show, demonstrating the Donut-o-pult, 1995
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
If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.: -- Mother Teresa
Give the people not hell, but hope and courage.: -- John Murray
Never be unfaithful to a lover, except with your wife.: -- P. J. O'Rourke
Don't look back -- something might be gaining on you.: -- Satchel Paige
Trust, but verify.: -- Ronald Reagan
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
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
Start slow and taper off.: -- Walt Stack, marathon runner
If you can't convince them, confuse them.: -- Harry S. Truman
Always do right; this will gratify some people and astonish the rest.: -- Mark Twain
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.: -- Mark Twain
Change before you have to.: -- Jack Welch

Attitudes

Jealousy is the only vice that gives no pleasure.: -- Anonymous
Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.: -- Josh Billings
When people have no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.: -- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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
Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.: -- Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort
The optimist sees opportunity in every danger; the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity.: -- Winston Churchill
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
Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open.: -- Thomas Dewar
Trust everybody, but cut the cards.: -- Finley Peter Dunne
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteeen.: -- Albert Einstein
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.: -- W. C. Fields
Love me or hate me, but spare me your indifference.: -- Libbie Fudim
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.: -- John Galsworthy
Success is just a matter of attitude.: -- Darcy E. Gibbons
It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.: -- Andre Gide
Prejudice is the child of ignorance.: -- William Hazlitt
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
A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost pays to be one.: -- Kin Hubbard
The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.: -- William James
You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.: -- Stanislaw J. Lec
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
Criticism is prejudice made plausible.: -- H. L. Mencken
My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music.: -- Vladimir Nabokov
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.: -- Friedrich Nietzsche
As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.: -- Proverbs 23:7
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
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 power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.: -- George Bernard Shaw
Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.: -- Thomas Szasz
Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.: -- Margaret Thatcher
You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.: -- Ziggy, character in comic strip by Tom Wilson

Communication

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
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.: -- Anonymous
The only weapon that becomes sharper with constant use is the tongue.: -- Anonymous
There's nothing wrong with having nothing to say -- unless you insist on saying it.: -- Anonymous
The best time to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.: -- Josh Billings
The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it.: -- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
I have noticed that nothing I have never said ever did me any harm.: -- Calvin Coolidge
Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.: -- Gandhi
Silence is argument carried out by other means.: -- Ernesto "Che" Guevara
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.: -- Ernest Hemingway
The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them.: -- Kin Hubbard
Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of a great sculpture.: -- Aldous Huxley
I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.: -- Tom Lehrer
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.: -- Abraham Lincoln
Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.: -- Abraham Lincoln
Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.: -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why.: -- Mignon McLaughlin
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.: -- 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
Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.: -- Mother Teresa
It was the greatest of the imperfect ventriloquist acts: when his lips moved, her body sang.: -- Tom Robbins
The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.: -- George Bernard Shaw
He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful.: -- Sydney Smith, referring to Macaulay
If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.: -- James McNeill Whistler
Conversation, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will.: -- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

Creativity/Ideas

If I have not seen as far as others, it is because giants were standing on my shoulders.: -- Hal Abelson
Creativity is allowing oneself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.: -- Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle
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
Most people are more comfortable with old problems than with new solutions.: -- Anonymous
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
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.: -- John Cage
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
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
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.: -- Albert Einstein
There are no days in life so memorable as those which vibrated to some stroke of the imagination.: -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
There's a saying among prospectors: "Go out looking for one thing, and that's all you'll ever find.": -- Robert Flaherty
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
Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.: -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
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 one thing stronger than all the armies in the world; and that is an idea whose time has come.: -- Victor Hugo
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.: -- Isaac Newton
If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.: -- George S. Patton, Jr.
Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.: -- William Penn
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
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.: -- Will Rogers
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.: -- Bertrand Russell
The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.: -- Publilius Syrus
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
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.: -- Mark Twain

Desire

The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but you still have to mow it.: -- Anonymous

I had ambition, by which sin: The angels fell;
I climbed, and step by step, oh Lord,: Ascended into Hell; -- W. H. Davies, Ambition
Everyone believes very easily whatever they fear or desire.: -- Jean de La Fontaine
What we anticipate seldom occurs: but what we least expect generally happens.: -- Benjamin Disraeli
I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.: -- Bill Hoest
People may or may not say what they mean ... but they always say something designed to get what they want.: -- David Mamet
He who awaits much can expect little.: -- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ambition is not a vice of little people.: -- Michel de Montaigne
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
We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing.: -- Seneca
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.: -- Oscar Wilde

Education

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
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
Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.: -- Francis Bacon
Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a losttradition.: -- Jacques Barzun
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.: -- Hector Louis Berlioz
It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.: -- Alec Bourne, A Doctor's Creed
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
The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.: -- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.: -- Albert Camus
A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.: -- Thomas Carruthers
Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.: -- Chinese Proverb
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students.: -- John Ciardi
The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.: -- Cicero
The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.: -- Robertson Davies
Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.: -- 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
Education is the state-controlled manufacture of echoes.: -- Norman Douglas
How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.: -- Alexandre Dumas fils
If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others.: -- Tryon Edwards
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.: -- Albert Einstein
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.: -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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
You are educated when you have the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence.: -- Robert Frost
Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater.: -- Gail Godwin
The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth which it prevents you from achieving.: -- Russell Green
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
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
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
Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.: -- Robert G. Ingersoll, (seen attributed to "R.S. Ingersoll" - a typo?)
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have studied harder.: -- Pope John Paul I
To teach is to learn twice.: -- Joseph Joubert
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
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.: -- Henry Kissinger
Learning is what most adults will do for a living in the 21st century.: -- Bob Perelman
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
Grad school is the snooze button on the clock-radio of life.: -- John Rogers, comedian (who holds a graduate degree in physics)
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
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.: -- George Bernard Shaw
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.: -- B.F. Skinner
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
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.: -- Socrates
Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.: -- G. M. Trevelyan
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.: -- Mark Twain
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains.The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.: -- William Arthur Ward
If your professor wrote it, it's as near to the truth as you ever need to get.: -- John Watson, University of Canterbury
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

Egotism/Humility

People say "I want peace." If you remove I {ego}, and your want {desire}, you are left with peace.: -- Satya Sai Baba
Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.: -- Benjamin Disraeli
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 nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.: -- Lucille S. Harper
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.: -- Carl Gustav Jung
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.: -- H. L. Mencken
You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.: -- Olin Miller
I would have made a good Pope.: -- Richard Nixon, U.S. President
Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.: -- Colin Powell
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
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.: -- Bertrand Russell
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
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 only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.: -- Oscar Wilde
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.: -- Oscar Wilde
We had a lot in common. I loved him and he loved him.: -- Shelley Winters

Food/Dieting

Whenever you eliminate the inedible, whatever remains, however unpalatable, must be food.: -- Anonymous
I have a great diet. You're allowed to eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people.: -- Ed Bluestone
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
Since Eve ate the apple, much depends on dinner.: -- Lord Byron
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 don't even butter my bread; I consider that cooking.: -- Katherine Cebrian
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
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
The second day of a diet is always easier than the first. By the second day you're off it.: -- Jackie Gleason
My mother's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it.: -- Buddy Hackett
He who does not mind his belly will hardly will hardly mind anything else.: -- Samuel Johnson
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
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
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.: -- Groucho Marx
Never eat more than you can lift.: -- Miss Piggy, character on "The Muppet Show," U.S. television show
The west wasn't won on salad.: -- ND Beef Council, billboard advertisement, 1990
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
No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut.: -- Channing Pollack
Most turkeys taste better the day after; my mother's tasted better the day before.: -- Rita Rudner
A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.: -- Elsa Schiapirelli
There is no sincerer love than the love of food.: -- George Bernard Shaw
Health food makes me sick.: -- 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
One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.: -- Virginia Woolf

Friendship

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
My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.: -- Richard Adams, Watership Down
It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.: -- Arnold Bennett
Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.: -- Samuel Butler
A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.: -- Fr. Jerome Cummings
It destroys one's nerves to be amiable everyday to the same human being.: -- Benjamin Disraeli
I hate it in friends when they come too late to help.: -- Euripides
There are three great friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.: -- Benjamin Franklin
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
Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.: -- Thomas Jones
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
The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.: -- Abraham Lincoln
The imaginary friends I had as a kid dropped me because their friends thought I didn't exist.: -- Aaron Machado
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
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
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
Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen.: -- Samuel Paterson
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
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
Good friends are good for your health.: -- Irwin Sarason
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.: -- Sydney Smith
A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.: -- Walter Winchell
Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.: -- Virginia Woolf, Bernard, in The Waves, 1931; repr. 1943, p. 189

Language

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.: -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.: -- Tom Robbins
Does anal retentive have a hyphen?: -- Seen on a t-shirt
Icky icky icky icky fKANG zoop-boing n zowzyin...: -- The Knights who so recently said "Nee!", Monty Python, British comedy television show
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
Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer.: -- Mark Twain
You can not apply mathematics as long as words still becloud reality.: -- Hermann Weyl
For I am a bear of very little brain and long words bother me.: -- Winnie the Pooh, character from author A. A. Milne
The limits of my language means the limits of my world.: -- Ludwig Wittgenstein
What's another word for "Thesaurus?": -- Steven Wright

Music

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
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.: -- Samuel Butler
Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.: -- G. K. Chesterton
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.: -- George Clemenceau
Music is the art of thinking with sounds.: -- Jules Combarieu
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
We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.: -- Decca Recording Company, rejecting the Beatles, 1962
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
Hell is a half-filled auditorium.: -- Robert Frost
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"
If a thing is worth doing at all, it is worth doing badly.: -- Gustav Holst, on amateur music-making
After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.: -- Aldous Huxley
2,400,000 Americans play the accordian - hopefully not at the same time.: -- inside of a Pepsi cap
Opera in English is, in the main, about as sensible as baseball in Italian.: -- H. L. Mencken
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
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.: -- Elvis Presley
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."
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
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
"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
Assassins!: -- Arturo Toscanini, to his orchestra
Anything too stupid to be said, is sung.: -- Voltaire
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
Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.: -- Frank Zappa

Virtue/Decadence

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
My good intentions are completely lethal.: -- Margaret Atwood
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
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.: -- G. K. Chesterton
Repentance is not so much remorse for what we have done as the fear of the consequences.: -- François de La Rouchefoucauld, Maxims, 1665
I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.: -- Alexandre Dumas pere
If pleasures are greatest in anticipation, just remember that this is also true of trouble.: -- Elbert Hubbard
I hate mankind, for I think myself to be one of them, and I know how bad I am.: -- Samuel Johnson
It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.: -- Abraham Lincoln
The unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.: -- W. Somerset Maugham
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
There is no course of life so weak and sottish as that which is managed by order, method, and discipline.: -- Michel de Montaigne
The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.: -- Paula Poundstone
I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.: -- Mae West
Whenever I'm caught between two evils, I take the one I've never tried.: -- Mae West
As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them.: -- 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
It is absurd to divide people into good or bad. People are either charming or tedious.: -- Oscar Wilde
Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.: -- Oscar Wilde
The older one grows, the more one likes indecency.: -- Virginia Woolf

Writing/Reading

If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.: -- Kingsley Amis
The covers of this book are too far apart.: -- Ambrose Bierce
NOVEL, n. A short story padded.: -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue.: -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
Beneath the rule of men entirely great, / The pen is mightier than the sword.: -- Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu, II. ii
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.: -- 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
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.: -- Tom Clancy
More than kisses, letters mingle souls.: -- John Donne
Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.: -- T. S. Eliot
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
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
Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.: -- Oliver Herford
Why don't you write books people can read?: -- Nora Joyce, to her husband James
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
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
In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.: -- André Maurois
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.: -- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
Author: A fool, who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting the generations to come.: -- Montesquieu
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
This novel is not to be tossed lightly aside, but hurled with great force.: -- Dorothy Parker
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
Anyone nit-picking enough to write a letter of correction to an editor doubtless deserves the error that provoked it.: -- Alvin Toffler
I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.: -- 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 man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.: -- Mark Twain
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.: -- Paul Valery
Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.: -- Frank L. Visco, How to Write Good
I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.: -- E. B. White
Biography lends to death a new terror.: -- Oscar Wilde
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written.: -- Oscar Wilde
I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me.: -- Winnie the Pooh, character created by author A. A. Milne
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.: -- Virginia Woolf
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

HUMAN BEHAVIOR QUOTES

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