Grab a comfy chair, sit back, and relax with some quotes that have
given us pause to reflect on life, to laugh (at others and
ourselves), or to simply be amused...
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-- "Ozymandias", Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818)
|
The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for
experience, while the error of age is to believe experience is a substitute
for intelligence.
-- Lyman Bryson
|
QOTD:
A child of 5 could understand this! Fetch me a child of 5.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
If you think things can't get worse it's probably only because you
lack sufficient imagination.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and
tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will
have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy... neither its pipes nor
its theories will hold water.
-- John William Gardner
|
Re: Graphics:
A picture is worth 1000 words -- but only those to describe
the picture. Hardly any sets of 1000 words can be adequately
described with pictures.
-- Alan Perlis
|
Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you,
and just before you realize what is wrong with it.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
All men are mortal. Socrates was mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates.
-- Woody Allen
|
My brother sent me a postcard the other day with this big satellite photo of
the entire earth on it. On the back it said: Wish you were here.
-- Steven Wright
|
Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and
long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his
pain and his aloneness without regret?
-- Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)
|
This is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. And now you know why.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist. He explained
that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three
assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster's horse would win.
They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they
each propose to ensure a win. When they reconvened the gangster started with
the engineer:
Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got?
Engineer: Well, I've invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle
blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide
electrical shock to the horse.
G: That's very good! But let's hear from the chemist.
Chemist: I've synthesized a powerful stimulant that disolves
into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore
cannot be detected in post-race tests.
G: Excellent, excellent! But I want to hear from the physicist before
I decide what to do. Physicist?
Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion...
|
Laugh when you can; cry when you must.
|
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his attitude on
the continuing viability of FORTRAN.
-- Alan Perlis
|
If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him as if he had
lost his senses. When he looks down, paraphrase the question back at him.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
One seldom sees a monument to a committee.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Life may have no meaning. Or, even worse, it may have a meaning of
which I disapprove.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant, English Author and Cartoonist, (1933-)
|
Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
|
"Some fellows pay a compliment like they expected a receipt."
-- Kin Hubbard, humorist (1868-1930)
|
What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.
-- Thomas Hewitt Key, 1799-1875
|
If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
-- Abraham Maslow, Psychologist (1908-1970)
|
The scene: in a vast, painted desert, a cowboy faces his horse.
Cowboy: "Well, youve been a pretty good hoss, I guess. Hardworkin.
Not the fastest critter I ever come acrost, but..."
Horse: "No, stupid, not feed*back*. I said I wanted a feed*bag*."
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second,
a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man had taken
the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value
of your first.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
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There is not much to choose between a woman who deceives us for another,
and a woman who deceives another for ourselves.
-- Emile Augier, French Dramatist (1820-1889)
|
Life Sucks. Cynical, misanthropic male, 34, looking for soul mate but
certain not to find her. Drop me a note. I'll call you, we'll talk and
I'll ask you out to dinner where I'll probably spend more than I can
afford in a feeble attempt to impress you. Then we'll realize we have
absolutely nothing in common and we'll go our separate ways, more
embittered and depressed than before (if such a thing is possible).
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum --
I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.
-- Ambrose Bierce (1842 - 1914), The Devil's Dictionary
|
"Tell the truth and run."
-- Yugoslav proverb
|
On-line, adj.:
The idea that a human being should always be accessible to a computer.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
It destroys one's nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.
-- Benjamin Disraeli
|
You can't go home again, unless you set $HOME.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and
finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of
murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by
their ignorance the hard way."
-- Kurt Vonnegut, "Cats Cradle"
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It is far better to be deceived than to be undeceived by those we love.
-- Francois Duc de la Rochefoucauld, French philanthropist (1613 - 1680)
|
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James
|
Actor Real Name
Boris Karloff William Henry Pratt
Cary Grant Archibald Leach
Edward G. Robinson Emmanual Goldenburg
Gene Wilder Gerald Silberman
John Wayne Marion Morrison
Kirk Douglas Issur Danielovitch
Richard Burton Richard Jenkins Jr.
Roy Rogers Leonard Slye
Woody Allen Allen Stewart Konigsberg
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
It would be illogical to kill without reason.
-- Spock, "Journey to Babel", stardate 3842.4
|
That unit is a woman. A mass of conflicting impulses.
-- Spock, "The Changeling"
|
Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.
-- Sir Walter Raleigh
|
The hardest thing is to disguise your feelings when you put a lot of
relatives on the train for home.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
It's bad enough that life is a rat-race, but why do the rats always
have to win?
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants,
today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
-- Dave Barry
|
Time and tide wait for no man.
-- Geoffrey Chaucer, Poet (1343-1400)
|
Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.
-- Bergan Evans
|
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be Known as Wheels.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
What one fool can do, another can.
-- Ancient Simian Proverb
|
Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and speech only to
conceal their thoughts.
-- Voltaire
|
Never eat at a place called Mom's.
Never play cards with a man named Doc.
And never lie down with a woman who's got more troubles than you.
-- Nelson Algren, "What Every Young Man Should Know"
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It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a
statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious
to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look,
which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the
highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details,
worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Where I Live"
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Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
-- Indian proverb
|
Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what
one is talking about nor whether what is said is true.
-- Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)
|
Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't
they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning
anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five
years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.
-- The Best of Will Rogers
|
Life is a series of rude awakenings.
-- R.V. Winkle
|
A bug in the code is worth two in the documentation.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
That government is best which governs least.
-- Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience"
|
Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
"Life begins when you can spend your spare time programming instead of
watching television."
-- Cal Keegan
|
"An honest god is the noblest work of man. ... God has always resembled his
creators. He hated and loved what they hated and loved and he was invariably
found on the side of those in power. ... Most of the gods were pleased with
sacrifice, and the smell of innocent blood has ever been considered a divine
perfume."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
|
"A fractal is by definition a set for which the Hausdorff Besicovitch
dimension strictly exceeds the topological dimension."
-- Mandelbrot, _The Fractal Geometry of Nature_
|
The wise man seeks everything in himself; the ignorant man tries to get
everything from somebody else.
-- Anonymous
|
Some of the most interesting documents from Sweden's middle ages are the
old county laws (well, we never had counties but it's the nearest equivalent
I can find for "landskap"). These laws were written down sometime in the
13th century, but date back even down into Viking times. The oldest one is
the Vastgota law which clearly has pagan influences, thinly covered with some
Christian stuff. In this law, we find a page about "lekare", which is the
Old Norse word for a performing artist, actor/jester/musician etc. Here is
an approximate translation, where I have written "artist" as equivalent of
"lekare".
"If an artist is beaten, none shall pay fines for it. If an artist
is wounded, one such who goes with hurdie-gurdie or travels with
fiddle or drum, then the people shall take a wild heifer and bring
it out on the hillside. Then they shall shave off all hair from the
heifer's tail, and grease the tail. Then the artist shall be given
newly greased shoes. Then he shall take hold of the heifer's tail,
and a man shall strike it with a sharp whip. If he can hold her, he
shall have the animal. If he cannot hold her, he shall endure what
he received, shame and wounds."
-- Anonymous
|
Every now and then, when your life gets complicated and the weasels start
closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then
drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at
top volume and at least a pint of ether.
-- Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
|
"One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that
sometimes you must work under adverse conditions... like a state of sheer
terror."
-- W. K. Hartmann
|
The problem with most conspiracy theories is that they seem to believe that
for a group of people to behave in a way detrimental to the common good
requires intent.
-- Anonymous
|
* All articles that coruscate with resplendence are not truly auriferous.
* When there are visible vapors having the prevenience in ignited
carbonaceous materials, there is conflagration.
* Sorting on the part of mendicants must be interdicted.
* A plethora of individuals wither expertise in culinary techniques vitiated
the potable concoction produced by steeping certain coupestibles.
* Eleemosynary deeds have their initial incidence intramurally.
* Male cadavers are incapable of yielding testimony.
* Individuals who make their abode in vitreous edifices would be well
advised to refrain from catapulting projectiles.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Q: Why haven't you graduated yet?
A: Well, Dad, I could have finished years ago, but I wanted
my dissertation to rhyme.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
-- Lao Tsu
|
"I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very
reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."
-- Gautama Buddha
|
The New England Journal of Medicine reports that 9 out of 10 doctors agree
that 1 out of 10 doctors is an idiot.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Be nice to people on the way up, because you'll meet them on your way down.
-- Wilson Mizner
|
Remember...
'tis better to have loved and lost
than to live with a psycho for the rest of your life!
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
The evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand
years of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man
is and will always be a wild animal.
-- Charles Galton Darwin
|
Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
-- Isaac Newton, Mathematician and Physicist (1642 - 1727)
|
Money is its own reward.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental."
-- Yogi Berra
|
If the master dies and the disciple grieves, the lives of both have
been wasted.
-- Anonymous
|
To err is human, to moo bovine.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is none
of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use
excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat
is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
|
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fal-
lacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
selves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too ear-
nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850
|
I was working on a case. It had to be a case, because I couldn't afford a
desk. Then I saw her. This tall blond lady. She must have been tall
because I was on the third floor. She rolled her deep blue eyes towards
me. I picked them up and rolled them back. We kissed. She screamed. I
took the cigarette from my mouth and kissed her again.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Stamp out organized crime!! Abolish the IRS.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the
vices I admire.
-- Winston Churchill
|
Your mode of life will be changed to ASCII.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
kernel, n.:
A part of an operating system that preserves the medieval
traditions of sorcery and black art.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
The door is the key.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Everything might be different in the present if only one thing had
been different in the past.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised
when others believe him.
-- Charles DeGaulle
|
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint
has a past and every sinner has a future.
-- Oscar Wilde
|
Confession is good for the soul, but bad for the career.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
-- Robert Frost, "The Death of the Hired Man"
|
"The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is
that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust."
-- Samuel Butler, English novelist, essayist, and critic, (1835-1902)
|
If all else fails, lower your standards.
-- Anonymous
|
You can always tell the people that are forging the new frontier.
They're the ones with arrows sticking out of their backs.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Don't tell me that worry doesn't do any good. I know better. The things
I worry about don't happen.
-- Watchman Examiner
|
Seems a computer engineer, a systems analyst, and a programmer were
driving down a mountain when the brakes gave out. They screamed down the
mountain, gaining speed, but finally managed to grind to a halt, more by
luck than anything else, just inches from a thousand foot drop to jagged
rocks. They all got out of the car:
The computer engineer said, "I think I can fix it."
The systems analyst said, "No, no, I think we should take it
into town and have a specialist look at it."
The programmer said, "OK, but first I think we should get back
in and see if it does it again."
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glowworm.
-- Winston Churchill
|
Brigands will demand your money or your life, but a woman will demand both.
-- Samuel Butler, English novelist, essayist, and critic, (1835-1902)
|
Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today --
I think he's from the CIA.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
If you wish to be happy for one hour, get drunk.
If you wish to be happy for three days, get married.
If you wish to be happy for a month, kill your pig and eat it.
If you wish to be happy forever, learn to fish.
-- Chinese Proverb
|
On a tous un peu peur de l'amour, mais on a surtout peur de souffrir
ou de faire souffrir.
[One is always a little afraid of love, but above all, one is afraid of
pain or causing pain.]
-- Anonymous
|
A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance
of turning around three times before lying down.
-- Robert Benchley
|
You can have a dog as a friend. You can have whiskey as a friend. But
if you have a woman as a friend, you're going to wind up drunk and kissing
your dog.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Early to bed and early to rise and you'll be groggy when everyone else is
wide awake.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Remember thee
Aye, thou poor ghost while memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee!
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there.
-- William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
|
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of
arithmetic, we should not get very far in our understanding of the physical
world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by
the use of the mathematics of probability.
-- Vannevar Bush
|
Laws of Computer Programming:
(1) Any given program, when running, is obsolete.
(2) Any given program costs more and takes longer.
(3) If a program is useful, it will have to be changed.
(4) If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.
(5) Any given program will expand to fill all available memory.
(6) The value of a program is proportional the weight of its output.
(7) Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of
the programmer who must maintain it.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Let me put it this way: today is going to be a learning experience.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Live in a world of your own, but always welcome visitors.
-- Anonymous
|
It is explained that all relationships require a little give and take. This
is untrue. Any partnership demands that we give and give and give and at the
last, as we flop into our graves exhausted, we are told that we didn't give
enough.
-- Quentin Crisp, "How to Become a Virgin"
|
That is the true season of love, when we believe that we alone can love,
that no one could have loved so before us, and that no one will love
in the same way as us.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
|
To teach is to learn twice.
-- Joseph Joubert
|
"The subspace W inherits the other 8 properties of V. And there aren't
even any property taxes."
-- J. MacKay, Mathematics 134b
|
Women give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them.
-- Arnould
|
Marriage is a lot like the army, everyone complains, but you'd be
surprised at the large number that re-enlist.
-- James Garner
|
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less
than half of you half as well as you deserve.
-- J.R.R. Tolkien
|
The Gurus of Unix Meeting of Minds (GUMM) takes place Wednesday, April
1, 2076 (check THAT in your perpetual calendar program), 14 feet above
the ground directly in front of the Milpitas Gumps. Members will grep
each other by the hand (after intro), yacc a lot, smoke filtered
chroots in pipes, chown with forks, use the wc (unless uuclean), fseek
nice zombie processes, strip, and sleep, but not, we hope, od. Three
days will be devoted to discussion of the ramifications of whodo. Two
seconds have been allotted for a complete rundown of all the user-
friendly features of Unix. Seminars include "Everything You Know is
Wrong", led by Tom Kempson, "Batman or Cat:man?" led by Richie Dennis
"cc C? Si! Si!" led by Kerwin Bernighan, and "Document Unix, Are You
Kidding?" led by Jan Yeats. No Reader Service No. is necessary because
all GUGUs (Gurus of Unix Group of Users) already know everything we
could tell them.
-- "Get GUMMed," Dr. Dobb's Journal, June '84
|
QOTD:
"This is a one line proof... if we start sufficiently far to the
left."
-- Anonymous
|
Religion is the best defense against a religious experience.
-- Carl G. Jung, psychiatrist (1875-1961)
|
Goldenstern's Rules:
(1) Always hire a rich attorney
(2) Never buy from a rich salesman.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been
dead for two years.
-- Tom Lehrer
|
If puns were deli meat, this would be the wurst.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men
should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal
weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine
we own.
-- H.G. Wells
|
Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to
stick to one thing till it gets there.
-- Josh Billings
|
There once was a man who went to a computer trade show. Each day as
he entered, the man told the guard at the door:
"I am a great thief, renowned for my feats of shoplifting. Be
forewarned, for this trade show shall not escape unplundered."
This speech disturbed the guard greatly, because there were millions
of dollars of computer equipment inside, so he watched the man carefully.
But the man merely wandered from booth to booth, humming quietly to himself.
When the man left, the guard took him aside and searched his clothes,
but nothing was to be found.
On the next day of the trade show, the man returned and chided the
guard saying: "I escaped with a vast booty yesterday, but today will be even
better." So the guard watched him ever more closely, but to no avail.
On the final day of the trade show, the guard could restrain his
curiosity no longer. "Sir Thief," he said, "I am so perplexed, I cannot live
in peace. Please enlighten me. What is it that you are stealing?"
The man smiled. "I am stealing ideas," he said.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
|
If you don't know what game you're playing, don't ask what the score is.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Prison Vs. Work Debate
IN PRISON..you spend the majority of your time in an 8x10 cell.
AT WORK..you spend most of your time in a 6x8 cubicle.
IN PRISON..you get three meals a day.
AT WORK..you only get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it.
IN PRISON..you get time off for good behavior.
AT WORK..you get rewarded for good behavior with more work.
IN PRISON..a guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you.
AT WORK..you must carry around a security card and unlock and open
all the doors yourself.
IN PRISON..you can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK..you get fired for watching TV and playing games.
IN PRISON..you get your own toilet.
AT WORK..you have to share.
IN PRISON..they allow your family and friends to visit.
AT WORK..you cannot even speak to your family and friends.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
-- Robert Benchley, Actor, author, and humorist (1889 - 1945)
|
The garden is in mourning;
The rain falls cool among the flowers.
Summer shivers quietly
On its way towards its end.
Golden leaf after leaf
Falls from the tall acacia.
Summer smiles, astonished, feeble,
In this dying dream of a garden.
For a long while, yet, in the roses,
She will linger on, yearning for peace,
And slowly
Close her weary eyes.
-- Hermann Hesse, "September"
|
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
|
No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe;
every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;
if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse,
as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy
friends or of thine owne were;
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde;
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
-- John Donne, poet (1573-1631)
|
Suchness is neither that which is existence, nor that which is
nonexistence, nor that which is at once existence and nonexistence,
nor that which is not at once existence and nonexistence.
-- Ashvaghosha (80 - 150 CE)
|
Did it ever occur to you that fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing?
Or that we drive on parkways and park on driveways?
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
You have taken yourself too seriously.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Only two kinds of witnesses exist. The first live in a neighborhood where
a crime has been committed and in no circumstances have ever seen anything
or even heard a shot. The second category are the neighbors of anyone who
happens to be accused of the crime. These have always looked out of their
windows when the shot was fired, and have noticed the accused person standing
peacefully on his balcony a few yards away.
-- Sicilian police officer
|
My friends, I am here to tell you of the wonderous continent known as
Africa. Well we left New York drunk and early on the morning of February 31.
We were 15 days on the water, and 3 on the boat when we finally arrived in
Africa. Upon our arrival we immediately set up a rigorous schedule: Up at
6:00, breakfast, and back in bed by 7:00. Pretty soon we were back in bed by
6:30. Now Africa is full of big game. The first day I shot two bucks. That
was the biggest game we had. Africa is primerally inhabited by Elks, Moose
and Knights of Pithiests.
The elks live up in the mountains and come down once a year for their
annual conventions. And you should see them gathered around the water hole,
which they leave immediately when they discover it's full of water. They
weren't looking for a water hole. They were looking for an alck hole.
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas, how he got in my
pajamas, I don't know. Then we tried to remove the tusks. That's a tough
word to say, tusks. As I said we tried to remove the tusks, but they were
imbedded so firmly we couldn't get them out. But in Alabama the Tuscaloosa,
but that is totally irrelephant to what I was saying.
We took some pictures of the native girls, but they weren't developed.
So we're going back in a few years...
-- Julius H. Marx [Groucho]
|
If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who wore fur
boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him.
-- Anton Chekhov
|
In most instances, all an argument proves is that two people are
present.
-- Tony Petito
|
"Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all...."
-- Thomas J. Kopp
|
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
-- William Shakespeare, "Hamlet" (III.i.55)
|
Most people would rather be CERTAIN they're miserable, than RISK being
Happy.
-- Robert Newton Anthony
|
The end of labor is to gain leisure.
-- Aristotle (384 - 322 BCE)
|
"...The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!"
"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to
feel interested.
"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little
vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged
Aged Man.'"
"Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
Alice corrected herself.
"No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is
called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!"
"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this
time completely bewildered.
"I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is
"A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
-- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
|
The White Rabbit put on his spectacles.
"Where shall I begin, please your Majesty ?" he asked.
"Begin at the beginning,", the King said, very gravely, "and go on
till you come to the end: then stop."
-- Lewis Carroll
|
Women who want to be equal to men lack imagination.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious.
-- Edsel Murphy
|
It is impossible to defend perfectly against the attack of those who want
to die.
-- Anonymous
|
better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus < north pole > town
cat /etc/passwd > list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty > nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice > giftlist
santa claus < north pole > town
who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | grep bad || good
for (goodness sake) {
be good
}
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
To lead people, you must follow behind.
-- Lao Tsu
|
Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to
examine the laws of heat.
-- Christopher Morley
|
"The fact of the matter is that the fossil record not only documents
evolution, but that it was the fossil record itself which forced natural
scientists to abandon their idea of the fixity of species and look
instead for a plausible mechanism of change, a mechanism of evolution.
The fossil record not only demonstrates evolution in extravagant detail,
but it dashes all claims of the scientific creationists concerning the
origin of living organisms."
-- Kenneth R. Miller, "Scientific Creationism versus Evolution" Science and Creationism, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 22.
|
"Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts."
-- Vice President J. Danforth Quayle
|
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and
theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing
certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of
ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when
scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of
gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend
themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-
like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by
some other yet to be discovered."
-- Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory"
|
"We cannot disprove beliefs like these, especially if it is assumed
that God took care that his interventions always closely mimicked
what would be expected from evolution by natural selection. All that
we can say about such beliefs is, firstly, that they are superfluous
and, secondly, that they assume the existence of the main thing we
want to explain, namely organized complexity. The one thing
that makes evolution such a neat theory is that it explains how
organized complexity can arise out of primeval simplicity."
-- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986), p. 316.
|
"El arroyo de la sierra; Me complace mas que el mar."
[The stream of the mountain; pleases me more than the sea.]
-- Jose Marti, Guantanamera
|
"Now we know the other side advocates intelligent design as a primary
characteristic of intelligent design when it is squared with the fossil
record. The fossil record -- and I can give you specific examples -- is
characertized best by sequences of appearances and disappearances. Now
think what that means. What that means is that the characteristic that
best describes the intelligent designer who would have designed this
fossil record is incompetent because everything the intelligent designer
designed, with about one percent exceptions, has immediately become
extinct. Intelligent design has no explanation for the successive
character in the fossil record, evolution has a perfect explanation,
and that is the appearance of new forms and the extinction of others."
-- Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" _Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 22.
|
"This is ri-god-damn-diculous"
-- Mr. John Wayne (aka Marion Robert Morrison)
|
"In the November7th or November 14th issue of Science magazine, a
number of investigators wanted to test the Darwinian hypothesis that you
folks say is never tested, and the way in which they did this was to take
the receptor protein for the human growth hormone -- it's a receptor to
which the human growth hormoe fits in precisely -- and they did a terrible
genetic disservice. They mutated -- they cut out an essential amino acid
right in the middle of the receptor, called tryptophan. With that gone,
just like that mousetrap, it wouldn't have been expected to work. They
then allowed a natural selection process to take place to see whether the
cells under their own observation could mutate the receptor gene
sufficiently to bind the receptor, and after seven generations, lo and
behold, there it was. It illustrates beautifully the ability of natural
selection to respond to mutations in proteins to co-evolve."
-- Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" _Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 25.
|
"What about complex parasites? Did this designer design complex
parasites or is that evolution? I mean, you get all the good things
and evolutionists get all the bad things."
-- Michael Ruse in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" _Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 35.
|
"Mi verso es un ciervo herido; Que busca en el monte amparo."
[My poems are like a wounded fawn; seeking refuge in the forest.]
-- Jose Marti, Guantanamera
|
"To reject the idea that chance is something that could be used by the
divine is to limit the power of the divine considerably."
-- Barry Lynn in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" _Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 36.
|
"Do you know the mind of God so well that you could rule out the
possibility that God conceived evolution as the process to bring His
design to fruition? [...] The truth is that if you are saying that you
cannot imagine that a God could be that creative, that imaginative,
then aren't you limiting in a very severe fashion your construct of
God?"
-- Barry Lynn in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" _Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, pp. 36-37.
|
"I stand by all the misstatements that I've made."
-- Vice President J. Danforth Quayle to Sam Donaldson, 8/17/89
|
"Mr. Behe has of course compared, like it or not, compared the
extraordinary complexity of the human cell to the mousetrap. He said if
we look at that mousetrap, it was created by a human. In fact, Mr.
Miller improved on it, as you saw earlier tonight. Therefore, if that's
complicated, then indeed the cell must also have been designed by an
intelligence. And as I thought about it tonight, it's a little bit --
we were all talking about nature analogies -- it's a little bit like
looking at a mole build a molehill. You say, That's very interesting.
Then we walk out in the woods the next day and we notice a big mountain
off in the distance. And we say, Good grief, that's enormously large. A
really big mole must have built that. The truth of the matter is, it's
not logical. We should be looking for different forces that result in
different things. Your mousetrap was built by human hands because its
components are inanimate objects. Cellular life is living, vibrant,
breathing, changing matter. You're not just comparing apples to oranges,
you are comparing plastic apples to organic oranges, and I think
therefore this analogy fails."
-- Ken Miller in "Resolved: That evolutionists should acknowledge creation" _Firing Line_, 4 December 1997, p. 50.
|
"If people are good only because they fear punishment,
and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."
-- Albert Einstein
|
I try to take one day at a time... but lately several days have
attacked me at once.
-- Steven Wright
|
"In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that
it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that
apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not
merit equal time in physics classrooms."
-- Stephen J. Gould
|
"As long as there are tests, there will always be prayer in
schools."
-- Melissa Anderson
|
If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains
the same, we must say "no"; if we ask whether the electron's position
changes with time, we must say "no"; if we ask whether the electron is
at rest, we must say "no"; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must
say "no".
-- Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967)
|
"Science has proof without any certainty.
Creationists have certainty without any proof"
-- Ashley Montagu (1905-1999)
|
Violence stinks, no matter which end of it you're on. But now and then
there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a
frying pan. Sometimes people are just begging for that frypan, and if we
weaken for a moment and honor their request, we should regard it as
impulsive philanthropy, which we aren't in any position to afford, but
shouldn't regret it too loudly lest we spoil the purity of the deed.
-- Tom Robbins
|
What we do not understand we do not possess.
-- Goethe
|
Be different: conform.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
I'm sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
The most difficult years of marriage are those following the wedding.
-- Anonymous
|
Every man is apt to form his notions of things difficult to be apprehended,
or less familiar, from their analogy to things which are more familiar.
Thus, if a man bred to the seafaring life, and accustomed to think and talk
only of matters relating to navigation, enters into discourse upon any other
subject; it is well known, that the language and the notions proper to his
own profession are infused into every subject, and all things are measured
by the rules of navigation: and if he should take it into his head to
philosophize concerning the faculties of the mind, it cannot be doubted,
but he would draw his notions from the fabric of the ship, and would find
in the mind, sails, masts, rudder, and compass.
-- Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764
|
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
-- Albert Einstein
|
Always think of something new; this helps you forget your last rotten idea.
-- Seth Frankel
|
It is impossible for an optimist to be pleasantly surprised.
|
love, n.:
When, if asked to choose between your lover
and happiness, you'd skip happiness in a heartbeat.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
To write a sonnet you must ruthlessly
strip down your words to naked, willing flesh.
Then bind them to a metaphor or three,
and take by force a satisfying mesh.
Arrange them to your will, each foot in place.
You are the master here, and they the slaves.
Now whip them to maintain a constant pace
and rhythm as they stand in even staves.
A word that strikes no pleasure? Cast it out!
What use are words that drive not to the heart?
A lazy phrase? Discard it, shrug off doubt,
and choose more docile words to take its part.
A well-trained sonnet lives to entertain,
by making love directly to the brain.
-- Anonymous
|
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring, chances
are 50-50 it will.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Quantity is no substitute for quality, but its the only one we've got.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a man.
-- Trotsky
|
perfect guest:
One who makes his host feel at home.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
Too much is just enough.
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910) on Whiskey
|
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
-- William Shakespeare, Polonius in Hamlet, (I.iii.78)
|
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
-- Gloria Steinem
|
All his life he has looked away... to the horizon, to the sky,
to the future. Never his mind on where he was, on what he was doing.
-- Yoda
|
The years of peak mental activity are undoubtedly between the ages of four
and eighteen. At four we know all the questions, at eighteen all the answers.
-- Anonymous
|
To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn
old falsehoods.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love"
|
Aphasia:
Loss of speech in social scientists when asked
at parties, "But of what use is your research?"
|
'On this point we want to be perfectly clear: socialism has nothing to do
with equalizing. Socialism cannot ensure conditions of life and
consumption in accordance with the principle "From each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs." This will be under communism.
Socialism has a different criterion for distributing social benefits:
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."'
-- Mikhail Gorbachev, _Perestroika_
|
"Laws are only words words written on paper, words that change on society's
whim and are interpreted differently daily by politicians, lawyers, judges,
and policemen. Anyone who believes that all laws should always be obeyed
would have made a fine slave catcher. Anyone who believes that all laws are
applied equally, despite race, religion, or economic status, is a fool."
-- John J. Miller; And Hope to Die, in Jokertown Shuffle Wild Cards IX
|
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he
grows up."
-- Pablo Picasso
|
"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight and his punishment
is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world."
-- Oscar Wilde
|
"A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words
become superfluous."
-- Ingrid Bergman
|
"Time and space are modes by which we think and not conditions in which we
live."
-- Albert Einstein
|
"Take this kiss upon the brow! And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream."
-- Edgar Allan Poe
|
The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war.
Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever see that little Swiss
Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews.
Bottle openers. 'Come on, buddy, let's go. You get past me, the guy in back
of me, he's got a spoon. Back off. I've got the toe clippers right here.'
-- Jerry Seinfeld
|
"In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life:
It goes on."
-- Robert Frost
|
"Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be
restrained."
-- William Blake
|
"We seem to have a compulsion these days to bury time capsules in order to
give those people living in the next century or so some idea of what we are
like. I have prepared one of my own. I have placed some rather large
samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set
to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like."
-- Alfred Hitchcock
|
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who
could not hear the music."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
|
"One man's religion is another man's belly laugh."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
|
"to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and
day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any
human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
-- e e cummings
|
"A man sits with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems shorter than a
minute. But tell that same man to sit on a hot stove for a minute, it is
longer than any hour. That's relativity."
-- Albert Einstein
|
"Time and space, succession and extension, are merely accidental conditions
of thought. The imagination can transcend them, and more in a free sphere
of ideal existences."
-- Oscar Wilde
|
"You can be watching T.V. and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the
President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can
drink Coke too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a
better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All Cokes are
the same and all Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows
it, the bum knows it, and you know it.
NATIONALISM IS A CREATED PRODUCT."
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
"The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love,
and something to hope for."
-- Allan K. Chalmers
|
Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do,
something to love, and something to hope for.
-- Joseph Addison, writer (1672-1719)
|
"One of the proofs of the immortality of the soul is that myriads have
believed it - they also believed the world was flat."
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
|
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he
hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however
measured or far away"
-- Henry David Thoreau
|
"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled
with falsehoods and errors."
-- Thomas Jefferson
|
"In Germany, first they came for the communists, and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I
didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade
unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade
unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came for me -- and by that time
there was nobody left to speak up."
-- Pastor Marton Niemoller
|
"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely
rearranging their prejudices."
-- William James
|
"When the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box."
-- Italian proverb
|
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher
a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balanceaccounts,
build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, giveorders,
cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure,
program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die
gallantly.
Specialization is for insects."
-- Robert A. Heinlein _The Notebook of Lazarus Long_
|
"The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world
its own shame."
-- Oscar Wilde
|
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false,
and by rulers as useful."
-- Seneca the Younger
|
"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not
believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not
believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious
books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers
and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down
for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find
that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit
of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."
-- Buddha
|
And Jesus said unto them, "And whom do you say that I am?" They
replied,"You are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our
being, the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood
revealed." And Jesus replied, "What?"
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
"Clocks slay time ... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by
little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life."
-- William Faulkner
|
"I regard it as the chief duty of the state to protect the individual and
give him the opportunity to develop into a creative personality; that is to
say; the state should be our servant and not we its slaves."
-- Albert Einstein
|
"If Jesus had been killed 20 years ago, Catholic school children would be
wearing little Electric Chairs around their necks instead of crosses"
-- Lenny Bruce
|
"Ask youself whether the dream of heaven and greatness should be waiting
for us in our graves -- or whether it should be ours here and now and
on this earth."
-- Ayn Rand
|
"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist,
not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is
not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the
coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this
picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own
soul."
-- Oscar Wilde
|
"Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself,
yet, in other respects he is free; because, once thrown into the world, he
is responsible for everything he does."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
|
"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have
to catch it yourself."
-- Ben Franklin
|
"When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so
long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for
us."
-- Helen Keller
|
"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."
-- Bertrand Russell
|
"A clock just moves without thought or meaning - worthless without
interpretation."
-- Richard Paul EvanS
|
"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure, and never simple"
-- Oscar Wilde
|
"I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I
am still choosing."
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
|
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars"
-- Oscar Wilde
|
"We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the
human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business,
engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But
poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.
To quote from Whitman, 'O me! O life!... of the questions of these
recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless; of cities filled
with the foolish; what good amid these, O me, O life?'
Answer. That you are here -- that life exists."
-- Tom Schulman, from The Dead Poets Society
|
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of
a profound truth may well be another profound truth."
-- Niels Bohr
|
"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three
parts dead."
-- Bertrand Russell
|
"To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a
weakness still dominating the human mind."
-- Charlotte P. Gillman
|
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the same sense
and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and
his children smart."
-- H. L. Mencken
|
"Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Give him a religion, and
he'll starve to death while praying for a fish."
-- Timothy Jones
|
"Military justice is to justice what military music is to music."
-- Groucho Marx
|
Nietzsche Aphorisms:
Out of life's school of war- What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
One begins to mistrust very clever people when they become embarrassed.
Forbidden generosity.
There is not sufficient love and goodness in the world to permit us to
give some of it away to imaginary beings.
Death-The certain prospect of death could sweeten every life with a
precious and fragrant drop of levity- and now you strange apothecary souls
have turned it into an ill-tasting drop of poison that makes the whole of
life repulsive.
Luxury-The love of luxury is rooted in the depths of a man's heart: it
shows that the superfluous and immoderate is the sea wherein his soul
prefers to float.
Making use of ebb and flow-For the purpose of knowledge we must know how to
make use of the inward current which draws us towards a thing, and also of
the current which after a time draws us away from it.
|
"It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I'm right."
-- Moliere
|
"Even a blind man knows when the sun is shining."
-- Grateful Dead
|
"Facts, or what a man believes to be facts, are delightful...Get your facts
first, and then you can distort them as much as you please."
-- Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)
|
I guess I've been so wrapped up in playing the game that I never took
time enough to figure out where the goal line was -- what it meant to
win -- or even how you won.
-- Cash McCall
|
My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
-- Dorothy Parker, part 3
|
Any member introducing a dog into the Society's premises shall be
liable to a fine of one pound. Any animal leading a blind person shall
be deemed to be a cat.
-- Rule 46, Oxford Union Society, London
|
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction
listen to weather forecasts and economists?
-- Kelvin Throop III
|
If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
The so-called lessons of history are for the most part the rationalizations
of the victors. History is written by the survivors.
-- Max Lerner
|
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
-- Adlai Stevenson
|
Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
-- Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)
|
Nothing is as simple as it seems at first
Or as hopeless as it seems in the middle
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
-- Anonymous
|
There's something the technicians need to learn from the artists.
If it isn't aesthetically pleasing, it's probably wrong.
-- Anonymous
|
Save energy: be apathetic.
-- Your Daily Fortune
|
poverty, n.:
An unfortunate state that persists as long
as anyone lacks anything he would like to have.
-- Anonymous
|
System Administration is a dirty job, but someone said I have to do
it.
-- Your Daily Fortune
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Ignorance is never out of style. It was in fashion yesterday, it is the
rage today, and it will set the pace tomorrow.
-- Franklin K. Dane
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I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom
I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the
narrowness of my experience.
-- Henry David Thoreau, _Walden_
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The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and
not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could
have materialized -- and never knowing.
-- David Viscott
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It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
-- Leonardo da Vinci
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It's easy to forgive... harder to forget.
-- Mental As Anything, "If you leave me, can I come too?"
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Good, to forgive;
Best, to forget!
Living, we fret;
Dying, we live.
-- Robert Silverberg, _Dying Inside_
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Silence is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places.
-- Henry David Thoreau, _A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_
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If anyone disagrees with anything I say,
I am quite prepared to not only retract it,
but also to deny under oath I ever said it.
-- T. Lehrer
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Perhaps that was the whole trouble; what he felt for her was not so
much love as simply satisfaction at the idea of being in love. Or
perhaps not.
-- Robert Silverberg, _Dying Inside_
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I would have you imagine, then, that there exists in the mind of man a block
of wax... and that we remember and know what is imprinted as long as the
image lasts; but when the image is effaced, or cannot be taken, then we
forget or do not know.
-- Plato, Dialogs, Theateus 191 [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when referring to image activation and termination.]
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The default Magic Word, "Abracadabra", actually is a corruption of the
Hebrew phrase "ha-Bracha dab'ra" which means "pronounce the blessing".
-- Your Daily Fortune
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The main problem I have with cats is, they're not dogs.
-- Kevin Cowherd
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Power corrupts. And atomic power corrupts atomically.
-- Your Daily Fortune
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When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him
keep her.
-- Sacha Guitry (1885 - 1957), Russian/French Playwright
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Bigamy is having one spouse too many. Monogamy is the same.
-- Your Daily Fortune
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The best portion of a good man's life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts
of kindness and love.
-- Wordsworth
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A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.
-- Your Daily Fortune
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Each of us bears his own Hell.
-- Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)
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Women can keep a secret just as well as men, but it takes more of them
to do it.
-- Anonymous
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Mohandas K. Gandhi often changed his mind publicly. An aide once asked him
how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week.
The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better.
-- Anonymous
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They don't know how the world is shaped. And so they give it a shape, and
try to make everything fit it. They separate the right from the left, the
man from the woman, the plant from the animal, the sun from the moon. They
only want to count to two.
-- Emma Bull, "Bone Dance"
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Love your enemies: they'll go crazy trying to figure out what you're up to.
-- Your Daily Fortune
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Poverty must have its satisfactions, else there would not be so many poor
people.
-- Don Herold
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A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother
drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
-- George Bernard Shaw, Irish dramatist, literary critic, and socialist (1856 - 1950)
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Brisk talkers are usually slow thinkers. There is, indeed, no wild beast
more to be dreaded than a communicative man having nothing to communicate.
If you are civil to the voluble, they will abuse your patience; if
brusque, your character.
-- Jonathan Swift
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Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents; maturity is
when you learn that everything is the fault of the younger generation.
-- Bertolt Brecht (also attributed to Harold Coffin)
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It is easier to be a "humanitarian" than to render your own country its
proper due; it is easier to be a "patriot" than to make your community a
better place to live in; it is easier to be a "civic leader" than to treat
your own family with loving understanding; for the smaller the focus of
attention, the harder the task.
-- Sydney J. Harris
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Marriage is the sole cause of divorce.
-- Anonymous
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