Latest/Unsorted
Grandma was a kind of
first-aid station, or a Red Cross nurse, who took up where the battle ended,
accepting us and our little sobbing sins, gathering the whole of us into her
lap, restoring us to health and confidence by her amazing faith in life and in
a mortal's strength to meet it.
- Lillian Smith
The biggest disease today
is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
- Mother Teresa, 1910 - 1997
I
am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.
Mahatma Gandhi
Life
is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have
been, but what we yearn to be.
Jose Ortega y Gasset
The
meek may inherit the earth - but not its mineral rights.
J. Paul Getty (1892-1976)
Yesterday
is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream.
Kahlil Gibran
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them
they translate into their own language, and forthwith it is something entirely
different.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The surest way to hit a woman's heart is to take aim
kneeling.
Douglas Jerrold
You
can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.
Stanislaw Lec
A
lie told often enough becomes the truth.
V.I. Lenin
We're
all given some sort of skill in life. Mine just happens to be beating up on
people.
Sugar Ray Leonard
When
you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil.
Max Lerner
He
has the right to criticize who has the heart to help.
Abraham Lincoln
Ignorance is a voluntary misfortune.
Nicholas Ling
To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.
George MacDonald
Never
write an advertisement which you wouldn't want your family to read. You
wouldn't tell lies to your own wife. Don't tell them to mine.
David Ogilvy
If
you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,
reporter, editor, US First Lady
There
are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in
physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.
J(ulius)
Robert Oppenheimer, (1904-1967) physicist, a-bomb developer
We
knew the world could not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried.
Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: "I am became
Death, the destroyers of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way
or another.
J Robert Oppenheimer, (1904-1967) American physicist,
Recalling the explosion of the first atomic bomb near
Who
controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the
past.
George Orwell, author
There are no exceptions to the rule that everybody likes to
be an exception to the rule.
Charles Osgood, journalist
We
do not remember days, we remember moments.
Cesare Pavese
The
ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands.
Alexander Penney
The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for
our wits to grow sharper.
It
is base to filch a purse, daring to embezzle a million, but it is great beyond
measure to steal a crown. The sin lessens as the guilt increases.
Johann von Schiller
We're
not into science fiction because it's good literature,
we're into it because it's weird. Follow your weird, ladies and
gentlemen. Forget trying to pass for normal. Follow your geekdom.
Embrace your nerditude. In the immortal words of Lafcadio Hearn, a geek of incredible obscurity whose work
is still in print after a hundred years, ``woo the muse of the odd.''
Bruce Sterling
I
would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one
to put in its place.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Now I've laid me down to die
I pray my neighbors not to pry
Too deeply into sins that I
Not only cannot here deny
But much enjoyed as life flew by.
Before
I married, I had three theories about raising children and no children. Now, I
have three children and no theories.
John Wilmot, Earl of
First things first, but not necessarily in that order.
Doctor Who, fictional english
SF character
Logic
merely enables one to be wrong with authority.
Doctor Who, fictional english
SF character
I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far
from being gruntled.
P.G. Wodehouse
When
you're as great as I am, it's hard to be humble.
--Muhammad Ali
Business
conventions are important because they demonstrate how many people a company
can operate without.
-- Anonymous
No
opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not sing.
--W H Auden
If
thine enemy offend thee,
give his child a drum.
--Chinese Curse
An
epitaph is a belated advertisement for a line of goods that have been
permanently discontinued.
-- Irvin S. Cobb
Be
the first to say what is self-evident, and you are immortal.
--M. Ebner-Eschenbach, Austrian
storyteller
A
conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.
--Martin H. Fischer
To
die for an idea is to place a pretty high price on conjectures.
--Anatole France, from The Revolt of the Angels
Pro
football is like nuclear warfare. There are no winners, only survivors.
--Frank Gifford
I
never said all actors are cattle; what I said was all actors should be treated
like cattle.
-- Alfred Hitchcock
No
woman ever falls in love with a man unless she has a better opinion of him than
he deserves.
--Ed Howe
Everything
comes to him who waits, except a loaned book.
--Kin Hubbard
Of
course there's a lot of knowledge in universities: the freshmen bring a little
in; the seniors don't take much away, so knowledge sort of accumulates....
--Dr. A. Lawrence Lowell
To
be in love is merely to be in a state of perpetual anesthesia - to mistake an
ordinary young woman for a goddess.
-- H.L. Mencken
Democracy
is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
-- H.L. Mencken
A
conservative is a man who wants the rules changed so no one can make a pile the
way he did.
-- Gregory Nunn
I
love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is
that they never try to talk English.
-- Saki (H. H. Munro)
I
never thought much of the courage of a lion-tamer. Inside the cage he is at
least safe from people.
-- George Bernard Shaw
What
is the use of straining after an amiable view of things, when a cynical view is
most likely to be the true one?
-- George Bernard Shaw
Do
you know what a pessimist is? A man who thinks everybody as
nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Moral indignation is, in most cases, 2% moral, 48% indignation, and 50% envy.
--Vittorio de Sica
By
trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
-- Mark Twain
I
have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner
created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was
quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away
physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result
has been the next thing to suicide.
--Mark Twain, 1891
Conscience
and cowardice are really the same things.
-- Oscar Wilde
Either
the wallpaper goes or I do.
-- Oscar Wilde, last words
I'm
not interested in age. People who tell me their age are silly. You're as old as
you feel.
Elizabeth Arden
Women have got to make the world safe for men since men have
made it so darned unsafe for women.
Lady Nancy Astor
I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it, and while
our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them.
Clara Barton
To
have a good enemy, choose a friend; he knows where to strike.
Diane de Pointers
Most
women set out to change a man, and when they have changed him they do not like
him.
Marlene Dietrich
A great civilization is not conquered from without until it
has destroyed itself from within.
Ariel Durant
People
change and forget to tell each other.
Lillian Hellman
Plain women know more about men than beautiful women do.
Katharine Hepburn
Our
strength is often composed of the weakness we're damned if we're going to show.
Mignon McLaughlin
Even
cowards can endure hardship; only the brave can endure suspense.
Mignon McLaughlin
You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things
happen to you.
Mary Tyler Moore
Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't
time, and to see takes time -- like to have a friend takes time.
Georgia O'Keefe
I
wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't
rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is
about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of
it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious
Ambiguity.
Gilda Radner
I
will feel equality has arrived when we can elect to office women who are as
incompetent as some of the men who are already there.
Maureen Reagan
I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the
fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiousity
must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
Eleanor Roosevelt
I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most
people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of goldfish.
Dame Edith Sitwell
If
you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything
at any time, and you would achieve nothing.
Margaret Thatcher
I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better.
Sophie Tucker
The
arts are the rain forests of society. They produce the oxygen of freedom, and
they are the early warning system when freedom is in danger.
June Wayne
What
you teach your own children is what you really believe in.
Cathy Warner Weatherford
Remember,
Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but
she did it backwards and in high heels.
Faith Whittlesey
Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book
known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title.
Virginia Woolf
You wake up in the morning, and your purse is magically
filled with twenty-four hours of unmanufactured
tissue of the universe of your life! It is yours. It is the most precious of
possessions. No one can take it from you. And no one receives either more or
less than you receive.
Dr. Thomas Arnold Bennett
Science
has to be understood in its broadest sense, as a method for comprehending all
observable reality, and not merely as an instrument for acquiring specialized
knowledge.
Alexis Carrel
We
are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow-worm.
Winston Churchill
There are no atheists in foxholes.
William T. Cummings
Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.
Benjamin Disraeli
I don't know what will be used in the next world war, but
the 4th will be fought with stones.
A. Einstein
There
is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.
Buckminster Fuller
Dare to be naive.
Buckminster Fuller
I
never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose opinions I have no
respect.
Edward Gibbon
To
understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already
achieved, but at what he aspires to.
Kahlil Gibran
Daring
ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a
winning game.
Goethe
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens
and lets the future in.
Grahm Greene, from The
Power and the Glory
Four
things come not back: the spoken word, the spent arrow, the past, the neglected
opportunity.
Omar Idn Al-Halif
The
greatest truths are the simplest.
A.W. Hare
If
you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What
isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
Hermann Hesse ['Demian', 1919]
One
machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of
one extraordinary man.
Elbert Hubbard
Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The
only completely consistent people are the dead.
Aldous Huxley ['Do What You
Will', 1929]
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect
us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our
actions run as courses, and they come back to us as effects.
Herman Melville
War may
sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an
evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing
each other's children.
Jimmy
Carter (1924 - )
A Native American grandfather was talking to his grandson about how he felt. He said, "I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one. The grandson asked him, Which wolf will win the fight in your heart? The grandfather answered, The one I feed.
Anonymous, As told in Women Who Run With the Wolves by
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
I've been
making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach
you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't
teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk
away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know
what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to
someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.
Neil Gaiman, Sandman
I know you
have come to kill me. Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man.
Che Guevara, His
last words, spoken to his assassin.
The crime
of suicide lies in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave
behind.
E. M.
Forster (1879 - 1970), Howards End
You can win
a million battles but you can only lose one.
R. A.
Salvatore, Homeland
All
governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological
personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the
corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a
condition to which they are quickly addicted.
Frank
Herbert (1920 - 1986), Chapterhouse Dune, Missionaria
Protectiva
In
Scott Adams, Dilbert's manager from The
Dilbert Principle, 1996
The Lord
had the wonderful advantage of being able to work alone.
Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, answering why he had not
implemented organizational reforms after five months when 'God created the
universe in seven days',1997
The Dixie
Chicks do not advocate premeditated murder, but love getting even.
Dixie Chicks, country music group, 'legal' disclaimer
on music CD liner notes, 1999
At least
she's the president of something, which is more than I can say.
Bob Dole, US Senate Majority Leader, on his wife Elizabeth,
president of the American Red Cross, 1995
Satisfaction
Guaranteed or Double Your Garbage Back.
Garbage Truck,
They wanted me
to tell the truth,
so I said I'd lived among them
for years, a spy,
but all that I wanted was love.
They said they couldn't love a spy.
Couldn't I tell them other truths?
I said I was emotionally bankrupt,
would turn any of them in for a kiss.
I told them how a kiss feels
when it's especially undeserved;
I thought they'd understand.
They wanted me to say I was sorry,
so I told them I was sorry.
They didn't like it that I laughed.
They asked what I'd seen them do,
and what I do with what I know.
I told them: find out who you are
before you die.
Tell us, they insisted, what you saw.
I saw the hawk kill a smaller bird.
I said life is one long leave-taking.
They wanted me to speak
like a journalist. I'll try, I said.
I told them I could depict the end
of the world, and my hand wouldn't tremble.
I said nothing's serious except destruction.
They wanted to help me then.
They wanted me to share with them,
that was the word they used, share.
I said it's bad taste
to want to agree with many people.
I told them I've tried to give
as often as I've betrayed.
They wanted to know my superiors,
to whom did I report?
I told them I accounted to no one,
that each of us is his own punishment.
If I love you, one of them cried out,
what would you give up?
There were others before you,
I wanted to say, and you'd be the one
before someone else. Everything, I said.
When I was
still quite young my father said to me, My beloved
daughter, you are an amoral little wretch. I know this, because you take after
me; your mind works just the way mine does. If you are not to be destroyed by
your lack, you must work out a practical code of your own and live by it.
I thought
about his words and felt warm and good inside. Amoral little wretch- Father
knew me so well.
What code
should I follow, Father?
You have to
pick your own.
Maureen
Long quoting her father Lazarus Long in To
Sail Beyond the Sunset, Chapter2
"That's the problem with
nature, something's always stinging you
or oozing mucous all over you. Let's go and watch TV."
---
Calvin
As a math atheist, I think I should
be excused from this.
--- Calvin, to Hobbes
Heroes are not giant statues framed against a red sky. They
are people who say: This is my community, and its my
responsibility to make it better.
--- Tom Lawson McCall
"I plead alignment to the flake of the untitled snakes
of a merry cow
and to the republicans for which they scam, one nacho underpants,
invisible with licorice and jugs of wine for owls."
--- Bongo – Life in Hell (Matt Groening)
After receiving a Minute issued by a priggish
civil servant, objecting to the ending of a sentence with a preposition and the
use of a dangling participle in official documents, Churchill red-penciled in
the margin: "This is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not
put."
What do I bring to the Democratic National
Convention that other reporters don't? Hair."
--- Dave Mustaine, MTV News
Dennis Thatcher, husband of Margaret Thatcher, when asked
who wore the pants in his house, said "I do, and I also wash and iron
them."
From: William December Starr
The trouble about fighting for human freedom is that you have to spend so much
of your life defending sons of bitches; for oppressive laws are always aimed at
them originally, and oppression must be stopped in the beginning if it is to be
stopped at all.
--- H.L. Menken
Don't wear rollerskates to a tug-of-war.
Larry Wall (contemp) inventor of Perl (programming language)
Never tangle with a geek when source code is on the line.
Frank Sorenson (contemp) systems manager, computer scientist
"Be very, very careful what you put into that head,
because you will never, ever get it out."
--- Cardinal Wolsey
Past the wounds of childhood, past the fallen dreams and the
broken
families, through the hurt and the loss and the agony only the night
ever hears, is a waiting soul. Patient, permanent, abundant, it
opens its infinite heart and asks only one thing of you ...
'Remember who it is you really are.'"
--- "Losing Your Mind", Karen Alexander and Rick Boyes
The opinions above are not mine. I stole them all from the person sitting next to me. If you don't like them, I can get you his address and you can kill him.
.sig file (“Crunchy Frog”)
I have looked into the abyss, and the abyss has looked into
me.
Neither liked what we saw.
--- Brother Theodore
It's a control freak thing. I wouldn't let you understand.
.sig file quote
Support your local medical examiner - die strangely.
--- Blake Bowers
Remember, if we screw up, it's still a lot better than you
could do.
--- Rick Rubenstein (contemp) professional juggler
If marriage was outlawed only outlaws would have inlaws.
Sig quote
I read the newspaper today and was amazed that, in 24 hours, five billion people could accomplish so little.
Sig quote
Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two
golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for
they are gone forever.
--- Horace Mann
To
believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.
-- Ghandi
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't fight with honor . . . I fought to win.
-- Orson Scott Card from Ender's Game
When
a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his ownself in
his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers
then- he needn't hope to find himself again.
-- Robert Bolt from A Man For All Seasons
Good-bye.
I am leaving because I am bored.
-- George Saunders - last words
Now
comes the mystery.
-- Henry Ward Beecher - last words
Die?
I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional
thing to happen to him.
-- John Barrymore - last words
Your
children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's
longing for itself...
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
-- Kahlil Gilbran, from The Prophet
Come,
let us go. Let us leave this festering hellhole. Let us think the unthinkable,
let us do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff
it after all.
-- Dirk Gently in "Dirk Gently's Holistic
Detective Agency" by Douglas Adams
Touch
is the most fundamental sense. A baby experiences it, all over, before he is
born and long before he learns to use sight, hearing, or taste, and no human
ever ceases to need it. Keep your children short on pocket money--but long on
hugs.
-- Lazarus Long by Robert A Heinlein
The
glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the
joy of companionship; it's the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he
discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with
his friendship.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Time
is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few.
-- Lazarus Long by Robert A Heinlein
To
be "matter of fact" about the world is to blunder into fantasy--and
dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful.
-- Lazarus Long by Robert A Heinlein
There
is no sadder sight than a young pessimist.
-- Mark Twain
Courage
is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is
also a fool.)
-- Lazarus Long by Robert A Heinlein
Unix *is* user friendly. It's just picky about its friends.
God
may be subtle, but He isn't mean.
-- Albert Einstein
I
am made from the dust of the stars and the oceans flow in my veins.
-- Rush
Bumper sticker idea for the stealth bomber: "IF YOU CAN READ THIS, THEN WE WASTED 50 BILLION BUCKS."
Klein bottle for rent--inquire within.
The
greatest gift for an individual or a nation ...was abhaya,
fearlessness, not merely bodily courage but absence of fear from the
mind....Fearlessness may be a gift, but perhaps more precious is the courage
acquired through endeavour, courage that comes from
cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one's actions, courage
that could be described as "grace under pressure" -- grace which is
renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremmiting
pressure.
-- Aung San Suu Kyi
I
refuse to consign the whole male sex to the nursery. I insist on believing that
some men are my equals.
-- Brigid Brophy
No
author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.
-- J. Russel Lynes
(1910-1991)
What
kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization
is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm;
capitalism is that kind of a system.
-- Milton Friedman
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds-and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of-wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
Where never the lark, nor even eagle flew-
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
John Gillespie Magee (1922-1941) High Flight
Every
now and then we discover in the seething mass of humanity round us a person who
does not seem to need anybody else, and the contrast with ourselves is
stinging.
-- Ernest Dimnet
Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. -Simone Signoret
From a distance, one’s adversaries seemed fiends, but with a closer view, one saw the sincerity and it was as great as one’s own.
-Walter M. Miller, Jr. A Canticle for Leibowitz
The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of
all.
Jawaharlal Nehru
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
Howard W. Newton
When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take
the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two
things will happen. There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will
be taught to fly.
Patrick Overton
Perhaps a child who is fussed over gets a feeling of
destiny, he thinks he is in the world for something important and it gives him
drive and confidence.
Dr. Benjamin Spock
We are all travellers in the
wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest
friend.
Robert Louis Stevenson
There is so much good in the worst of us, an
so much bad in the best of us, that it behooves all of us not to talk about the
rest of us.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Beware the fury of a patient man.
Publius Syrus
Twenty years fron now you will be
more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So
throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds
in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
It is discouraging to try and penetrate a mind like yours.
You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity
out of it.
Mark Twain
Human history becomes more and more a race between education
and catastrophe.
H.G. Wells
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
We grow a little every time we do not take advantage of
somebody's weakness.
There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which
would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.
George Eliot
Hunger is not debatable.
Harry Hopkins
Shredded cabbage goes great with shredded carrots and
mayonnaise.
Cole's Law
Axiom 2. Famous quotes need famous mouths.