Europa Chat - IRC chat on European current affairs hosted by the European Commission.
blah "This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) "We have so little presumption that we should like to be known in the world, even to those who come after when we are no more. We have so little vanity that the esteem of five people, say six, amuses Conceit causes more conversation than wit.
-- LaRouchefoucauld The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. But not in that order.
-- Brian Pickrell "If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." (Anatole France) Chats and Forums I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
-- Mae West I don't know as much as God, but I know more than He did at my age.
-- Henry Kissinger The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without
the sympathy of the community.
-- William James Chats and Forums
That government is best which governs least.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849 The time is always right to do what is right.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. "I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is." (Alan Watts) 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 Drink to me.
-- Pablo Picasso, dying words Chats and Forums You have a cough? Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax--tomorrow you'll be afraid to
cough.
-- Pearl Williams Youth is wasted on the young.
-- George Bernard Shaw Age does not protect you from love but love to some extent protects you from age.
-- Jeanne Moreau Chats and Forums
Politics have no relation to morals.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing
popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.
-- Dave Barry I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.
-- Mark Twain They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own.
-- Antonio Porchi Live truth instead of professing it.
-- Elbert Hubbard Chats and Forums Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet
not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
-- François de La Rouch "Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is like expecting a bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian." (Dennis Wholey) Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
-- Marion Barry, Mayor, Washington, D.C. Chats and Forums
Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I
love you."
-- Erich Fromm Never try to teach a pig to sing. It's a waste of your time and annoys the pig.
-- Anon. Marriage is like a cage--one sees the birds outside desperate to get in and those inside equally
desparate to get out.
-- Di Peatlins Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any
antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
-- Alfred Hitchcock Character is what you are in the dark.
-- Dwight L. Moody Chats and Forums I married beneath me. All women do.
-- Lady Nancy Astor, attributed A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness.
-- Elsa Schiapirelli The planting of trees is the least self-centered of all that we can do. It is a purer act of faith than
the procreation of children.
-- Thornton Wilder Chats and Forums
"I put on an act sometimes, and people think I'm insensitive. Really, it's like a kind of armor because I'm too sensitive. If there are two hundred people in a room and one of them doesn't like me, I' I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.
-- Nathan Hale Good Night, Good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,
that I shall say good night till it be morrow.
-- Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare. Act II, Scene II, lines 220-221 "If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." (Abraham Lincoln, 1809-65) Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.
-- Baskins Chats and Forums There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It's called marriage. -- James Holt McGavran "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." (Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 1872-1970) There are only two things a child will share willingly communicable diseases and his mother's
age.
-- Modern Maturity Chats and Forums
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 Depart Music is the art of thinking with sounds.
-- Jules Combarieu Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
-- Tom Robbins No other success can compensate for failure in the home.
-- David O. McKay, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Advice to parents at General Conference of he
LDS Church, April, 1964 We had a lot in common. I loved him and he loved him.
-- Shelley Winters Chats and Forums It is better to be looked over than overlooked.
-- Mae West Sign in a marriage counselor's window: "Out to lunch - Think it over." "The key to wisdom is knowing all the right questions." (John A. Simone Jr.) Chats and Forums
It is a product of Einstein's genius -- taking a commonplace observation, combining it with some
simple imaginary experiments, and arriving at a revolutionary conclusion.
-- Clifford M. Wills, 1986 I'm not indecisive. Am I indecisive?
-- Jim Scheibel, mayor, St. Paul MN The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.
-- Honore de Balzac I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.
-- Wilson Mizner I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.
-- Wilson Mizner Chats and Forums Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.
-- G. K. Chesterton "The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn." (David Russell) "I've decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks." (Andy Warhol, The Andy Warhol Diaries, 1989) Chats and Forums
I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.
-- Albert Einstein I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need.
- Francois-Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), when asked how he managed to make his remarkable
statues It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
-- Albert Einstein The tragedy of life is not that man loses, but that he almost wins.
-- Heywood Brown "Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the Chats and Forums There's too much blood in my caffeine system.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker Sir, I would rather be right than be President.
-- Henry Clay, Speech, 1850, referring to the Compromise Measure Better to have loved a short man than never to have loved a tall.
-- David Chambless Chats and Forums
He who dies a thousand deaths meets the final hour with the calmness of one who approaches a
well remembered door.
-- Heywood Brown Facts are the enemy of truth.
- Don Quixote - Man of La Mancha Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances
continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the
distance Thanksgiving is so called because we are all so thankful that it only comes once a year.
-- P. J. O'Rourke Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas
doctors rob you and kill you too.
-- Anton Chekhov Chats and Forums "There cannot be a God because, if there were one, I would not believe that I was not He." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.
-- Nancy Mitford Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on Earth. -- John Lyly Chats and Forums
Love is the delusion that one man or woman differs from another.
-- H. L. Mencken "Learn from the mistakes of others--you can never live long enough to make them all yourself." (John Luther) Is fuel efficiency really what we need most desperately? I say what we really need is a car that
can be shot when it breaks down.
-- Russell Baker "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, Whea The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical
deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
-- Albert Einstein Chats and Forums Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of
humor is just common sense, dancing.
-- Clive James If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." (John Cage) There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing
worth killing for.
-- Tom Robbins Chats and Forums
Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "The monster a child knows best and is most concerned with [is] the monster he feels or fears himself to be. " (Bruno Bettelheim, child psychologist) "Goodwill is the only asset that competition cannot undersell or destroy." (Mrshall Field, businessman and philanthropist) We do not remember days; we remember moments.
-- Anonymous "The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right." (Mark Twain) Chats and Forums "As is our confidence, so is our capacity." (William Hazlitt) Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting someone else to do the work.
-- John G. Pollard "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." (William Blake) Chats and Forums
