Guardian: Smallweed - Archives of David McKie's weekly Smallweed column which appears on Saturdays.
Guardian: David McKie - Archives of David McKie's weekly Elsewhere column which appears on Thursdays.
Guardian Unlimited Books: Balfour's bubble - Review of David McKie's biography of the Victorian politician and swindler 'Jabez' and the parallels with Enron and WorldCom. Kathryn Hughes.
MARRIAGE, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two
slaves, making in all, two.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911 "He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." (Thomas Paine) If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you are overdressed
-- Kate Halverson "Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily." (Napoleon Bonaparte) The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
-- B. F. Skinner McKie, David We seek the comfort of another. Someone to share and share the life we choose. Someone to
help us through the neverending attempt to understand ourselves. And in the end, someone to
comfort us along Honor's a good brooch to wear in a man's hat at all times.
-- Jonson, Ben 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 McKie, David
"Beauty without expression is boring." (Ralph Waldo Emerson) To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer Before marraige a man will like awake all night thinking about something you said. After marriage
he will fall asleep before you have finished saying it.
-- Anon. Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.
Rabbi Julius Gordon I am ready at any time. Do not keep me waiting.
-- John Brown - last words McKie, David "Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax-deductible." (Andy Warhol, Andy Warhol's Exposures, 1980) Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting someone else to do the work.
-- John G. Pollard Free will is a golden thread running through the frozen matrix of fixed events.
-- Robert A. Heinlein _The Rolling Stones_ McKie, David
You can observe a lot by watching.
-- Yogi Berra "Every now and then say, 'What the fu(c)k.' 'What the fu(c)k' gives you freedom. Freedom brings opportunity. Opportunity makes your future." (Curtis Armstrong, Risky Business, 1983) Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
-- John-Paul Sartre The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.
-- George Bernard Shaw The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.
-- Lou Holtz McKie, David When marriage is outlawed, only outlaws will have inlaws. The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
-- Lucille S. Harper Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera.
- James Stephens McKie, David
Before you put on a frown, make absolutely sure there are no smiles available.
-- Jim Beggs "Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) It was just him and me. He fought with honor. If it weren't for his honor, he and the others would
have beaten me together. They might have killed me, then. His sense of honor saved my life. I
didn' No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
-- Abraham Lincoln A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
-- Carl Sandburg McKie, David Facts are the enemy of truth.
- Don Quixote - Man of La Mancha Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
-- Laurence J. Peter 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 McKie, David
My wife ran off with my best friend last week. I miss him! The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by
trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, the finish by l Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant
day into your answers.
-- Rainer Maria Rilke Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.
-- Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other peoples'
decisions for them?
-- Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All McKie, David The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.
-- Nicholas Murray Butler A narcissist is someone better-looking than you are.
-- Gore Vidal "The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves." (William Hazlitt) McKie, David
University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
-- Henry Kissinger Marriage is not just a having a wife, but also worries inherited forever. Thank God - every morning when you get up - that you have something to do which must be
done, whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you
a hundre 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 A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
-- Arthur Schoperhauer McKie, David Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down.
- Jimmy Durante Every calling is great when greatly pursued.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes Why bother with marriage? Just find a woman you hate and buy her a house. McKie, David
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
-- Steven Wright The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.
-- Cicero "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 Wilhelm Nietzsche) The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline
luggage.
-- Mark Russell "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go." (Oscar Wilde, his last recorded words) McKie, David The church must be the critic and guide of the state, and never its tool.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. "The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all." (Harry S. Truman) Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that
cannot be taken from you.
-- Oscar Wilde McKie, David
With the catching end the pleasures of the chase.
-- Abraham Lincoln The church must be the critic and guide of the state, and never its tool.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr. There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.
-- Kenneth H. Olson, President of DEC, Convention of the World Future Society, 1977 Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
-- Samuel Johnson Imagine if birds were tickled by feathers. You'd see a flock of birds come by, laughing hysterically!
-- Steven Wright McKie, David The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
- Charles de Gaulle Generations to come will find it difficult to believe that a man such as Gandhi ever walked the
face of this earth.
-- Albert Einstein It is not because it is difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are
difficult.
-- Lucius Anneaus Seneca McKie, David
You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
-- Albert Camus "Life is a great surprise. I don't see why death should not be an even greater one." (Vladimir Nabokov) ARDOR, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.
-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911 Whenever you eliminate the inedible, whatever remains, however unpalatable, must be food.
-- Anonymous Whatever women do they must do it twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily this
is not difficult.
-- Charlotte Whitton McKie, David Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.
-- Dr. Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician, address to new parents Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without
feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex,
the ugl "I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him." (Galileo Galilei) McKie, David
Time is at once the most valuable and most perishable of all our possessions.
-- John Randolph We never reflect how pleasant it is to ask for nothing.
-- Seneca My wife ran off with my best friend last week. I miss him! Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for
appointment by the corrupt few.
-- George bernard Shaw It is much more comfortable to be mad and know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts.
- G. B. Burgin McKie, David "People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult." (Anne "Murder is the very bed-rock of our social institutions." (Octave Mirbeau, The Torture Garden) "We're an embarrasment to college graduates across America." (James Douglas Morrison, lead singer of The Doors) McKie, David
We have only one person to blame, and that's each other.
-- Barry Beck, New York Ranger, on who started a fight furing a hockey game "There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it." (Christopher Darlington Morley) I find television very educating. Every time sombody turns on the set, I go into the other room and
read a book.
-- Groucho Marx It's impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune.
-- Woody Allen It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
-- Abraham Lincoln McKie, David Every flower must grow through dirt.
-- Anonymous "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." (George Bernard Shaw) How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.
-- Alexandre Dumas fils McKie, David
