"Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience." (George Bernard Shaw) The wit of a graduate student is like champagne. Canadian champagne.
-- Robertson Davies 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 Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
-- John Galsworthy "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." (William Blake) Society and Culture This search for what you want is like tracking something that doesn't want to be tracked. It takes
time to get a dance right, to create something memorable.
-- Fred Astaire My Alma mater was books, a good library . . . . I could spend the rest of my life reading, just
satisfying my curiosity.
--Malcolm X A really busy person never knows how much he weighs.
-- Ed Howe Society and Culture
"Ugliness is in a way superior to beauty because it lasts." (Serge Gainsbourg) "Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame." (Erica Jong) "We always get bored with those whom we bore." (François VI Duke (duc) de La Rochefoucauld, 1616-80) Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less.
Rabbi Julius Gordon I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.
-- Ogden Nash, Song of the Open Road, 1945 Society and Culture Marriage is a matter of give and take, but so far I haven't been able to find anybody who'll take what I have to give. -- Cass Daley A man's reach should exeed his grasp, or else what's a heaven for?
-- Robert Browning 2,400,000 Americans play the accordian - hopefully not at the same time.
-- inside of a Pepsi cap Society and Culture
Great eaters and great sleepers are incapable of anything else that is great.
-- William Shakespeare, Henry IV The gods too are fond of a joke.
- Aristotle The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.
-- Joan Borysenko May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm
upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields and, until we meet again, may God hold you in
the palm 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 Society and Culture You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
-- Beverly Sills I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children they just about throw up.
-- Barbara Bush, first lady, 1989 Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
-- Samuel Butler Society and Culture
blah "Some of the worlds greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible. unattributed" (Anonymous) "Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings." (Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet) Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best
to become the best you are capable of becoming.
-- John R. Wooden, Practical Modern Basketball "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." (William Blake) A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.
-- Fr. Jerome Cummings Society and Culture Colleges are places where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed.
-- Robert G. Ingersoll, (seen attributed to "R.S. Ingersoll" - a typo?) "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." (Blaise Pascal) The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it.
- George Bernard Shaw Society and Culture
"The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced." (André Gide) Men are strong only so long as they represent a strong idea. They become powerless when they
oppose it.
-- Sigmund Freud "If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive." (Samuel Goldwyn) Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so you apologize for truth.
-- Benjamin Disraeli A man who marries a woman to educate her falls a victim to the same fallacy as the woman who
marries a man to reform him.
-- Elbert Hubbard Society and Culture "Crime like death is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims." (Charles Dickens, 1812-70, Oliver Twist) Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
-- Tom Robbins Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Society and Culture
I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it
does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it
ha "I met someone on the street who said wasn't it great that we're going to have a movie star for president, that it was so Pop, and (laughs) when you think about it like that, it is great, it's so Amer In a great romance, each person plays a part the other really likes.
-- Elizabeth Ashley "It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend." (William Blake) "Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details." (Andy Warhol, America, 1985) Society and Culture Here's to you and here's to me,
and I hope we never disagree.
But, if that should ever be,
to HELL with you, here's to ME!
-- Anonymous A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
Robert Frost (1874-1963) "Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared." (Eddie Rickenbacker) Society and Culture
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer Marriage is an institution--but who wants to live in an institution? "... adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them." (Theodor Seuss Geisel, a.k.a. Dr. Seuss, 1904-1991, quoted in his obituary, Time) Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive, difficult to redirect, awe-
inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least
expect i "God's creatures, great and small ... eat them one, eat them all." (John A. Simone Sr.) Society and Culture These people have served a longer sentence than some people who have committed murder.
-- Jeff Greenfield, news analyst, describing the jury in the OJ Simpson murder trial, 1995 Talent does what it can; genius does what it must.
- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton "As a child, I thought I hated everybody, but when I grew up I realized it was just children I didn't like." (Philip Larkin) Society and Culture
I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. we are for the most part
more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.
-- Thoreau Reading computer manuals without the hardware is a frustrating as reading sex manuals without
the software.
-- Arthur C. Clarke We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?
- Niels Bohr "If all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world." (Blaise Pascal) Morality consists in suspecting other people of not being legally married.
-- George Bernard Shaw Society and Culture "Ninety percent of my salary I spent on booze and women ... and the other ten percent I wasted." (Tug McGraw, Major League Baseball pitcher) "Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world." (Oscar Wilde) The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.
-- Anonymous Society and Culture
"A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." (Roald Dahl) In great matters men show themselves as they wish to be seen; in small matters, as they are.
-- Gamaliel Bradford A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
- Sir Winston Churchill Courage is the price that Love exacts for granting peace.
-- Amelia Earhart Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
- Will Durant Society and Culture "Any intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences." (Isadora Duncan) If ever I get married again it would have to be under an anaesthetic.
-- Marie Tonkin We haven't the money, so we've got to think.
-- Lord Rutherford Society and Culture
At every crossroads on the path that leads to the future, tradition has placed 10,000 men to guard
the past.
-- Maurice Maeterlink True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is
always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness.
-- Friedrich Nietzsch You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.
-- Ziggy, character in comic strip by Tom Wilson Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
-- Vince Lombardi Men marry because they are tired, women because they are curious; both are disappointed.
-- Oscar Wilde Society and Culture All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.
-- Oscar Wilde "The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason." (John Cage) He who knows nothing, knows nothing. But he who knows he knows nothing knows something. And he who knows someone whose friend's wife's brother knows nothing, he knows something. Or something like that Society and Culture
Marriage is like a hot bath. Once you get used to it, it's not so hot. Love is only the game that is not called on account of darkness.
-- M. Hirschfield Virtue is like health: the harmony of the whole man.
-- Thomas Carlyle "Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains." (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher, The Social Contract) There's too much blood in my caffeine system.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker Society and Culture You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.
-- John Ciardi "You are rewarding a teacher poorly if you remain always a pupil." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) "A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery." (James Joyce) Society and Culture
