"The man who never made a mistake never made anything." (Derek Longdon, Tongariro Power Development, Turangi, New Zealand) Why don't you write books people can read?
-- Nora Joyce, to her husband James A straight line is the shortest in morals as in mathematics.
-- Maria Edgeworth Hell is other people.
- Jean-Paul Sartre "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." (James Madison) Society and Culture blah "Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.
-- Peter Ustinov My opinions are my wife's, and she says I'm lucky to have them. Society and Culture
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it's their fault.
- Henry Kissinger Hell is paved with good samaritans.
-- William M. Holden Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can
only read the title.
-- Virginia Woolf Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
-- G. K. Chesterton "A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward." (Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1882 - 1945, 32nd U.S. President) Society and Culture Two souls with but a single thought,
Two hearts that beat as one.
-- Fredrich Halm A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
-- G. K. Chesterton "This is slavery, not to speak one's thought." (Euripides) Society and Culture
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson When you're experimenting you have to try so many things before you choose what you want,
and you may go days getting nothing but exhaustion.
-- Fred Astaire "I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs." (Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol's Exposures, 1980) Marriage is not just a having a wife, but also worries inherited forever. blah bla "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough." (Albert Einstein) Society and Culture Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
- Mark Twain We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.
-- Voltaire I told my wife that a husband is like a fine wine; he gets better with age. The next day, she locked
me in the cellar.
-- Anonymous Society and Culture
A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.
-- St. Augustine 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 Even overweight cats instinctively know the cardinal rule: when fat, arrange yourself in slim
poses.
-- John Weitz, American Designer Every day I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I'm not
there, I go to work.
- Robert Orben Never moon a werewolf.
-- Mike Binder Society and Culture Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
-- James Joyce "We have to be able to criticise what we love, to say what we have to say 'cause if your not trying to make something better, than as far as I can tell, you are just in the way." (Ani Difranco) Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror.
-- Byrd Baggett Society and Culture
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.
-- Gandhi Under capitalism man exploits man; under socialism the reverse is true.
-- Polish proverb 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 The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline
luggage.
-- Mark Russell The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.
-- Paula Poundstone Society and Culture I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-- Anonymous In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been
widely regarded as a bad move.
-- Douglas Adams If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning.
-- Aristotle Onassis Society and Culture
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, 1850, line 27, stanza 4 History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
-- Winston Churchill It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.
-- Aldous Huxley I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
-- Gandhi Someday is not a day of the week.
-- Anon. Society and Culture "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." (William Blake) It's not as great a day for the bride as she thinks. She's not marrying the best man.
-- Anonymous This is the fourth?
-- Thomas Jefferson, dying words Society and Culture
The wise see knowledge and action as one; they see truly.
-- Bhagava Gita A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.
- Paul Erdos America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a
chair.
-- Arnold Toynbee "The sickness of our times for me has been just this damn thing that everything has been getting smaller and smaller and less and less important, that the romantic spirit has dried up, that there is n Love is friendship set on fire.
- Jeremy Taylor Society and Culture Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
-- George Jean Nathan "Don't let your ego get too close to your position, so that if your position gets shot down, your ego doesn't go with it." (Colin Powell) In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how
many can get through to you.
-- Mortimer J. Adler Society and Culture
Dew knot trussed yore spell chequer two fined awl yore mistakes.
-- Brendan Hills "If you believe everything you read, you better not read." (Japanese Proverb) Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson There is no realizable power that man cannot, in time, fashion the tools to attain, nor any power
so secure that the naked ape will not abuse it. So it is written in the genetic cards - only physics "Beauty without expression is boring." (Ralph Waldo Emerson) Society and Culture Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
- Will Durant Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about
his taste, not condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.
-- George Santayana That government is best which governs least.
-- Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1849 Society and Culture
Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing.
-- Georges Danton, to his executioner This isn't right, this isn't even wrong.
- Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), upon reading a young physicist's paper 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 Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a
dozen.
-- John Steinbeck I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible
by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
- Umberto Eco Society and Culture Before you put on a frown, make absolutely sure there are no smiles available.
-- Jim Beggs I admire the serene assurance of those who have religious faith. It is wonderful to observe the
calm confidence of a Christian with four aces.
-- Mark Twain Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on Earth.
-- John Lyly Society and Culture
With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.
-- Abraham Lincoln Marriage is a thing which puts a ring on a woman's finger and two under the man's eyes. 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 Why don't you write books people can read?
-- Nora Joyce, to her husband James A government is the only known vessel that leaks from the top.
-- James Reston Society and Culture I didn't accept it. I received it.
-- Richard Allen, National Security Advisor to President Reagan, explaining the $1000 in cash and
two watches he was given by two Japanese journalists after he hel "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." (George Bernard Shaw) Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous
and dreadful.
-- Samuel Johnson Society and Culture
I sometimes think that God, in creating man, overestimated His ability.
-- Oscar Wilde Never tell. Not if you love your wife... In fact, if your old lady walks in on you, deny it. Yeah. Just
flat out and she'll believe it: "I'm tellin' ya. This chick came downstairs with a sign around Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.
-- Phillip Brooks "I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead." (Oscar Wilde) "We're all proud of making little mistakes. It gives us the feeling we don't make any big ones." (Andrew A. Rooney) Society and Culture There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing
worth killing for.
-- Tom Robbins Opera in English is, in the main, about as sensible as baseball in Italian.
-- H. L. Mencken Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.
- Isaac Asimov Society and Culture
