Brevity is the soul of lingerie
- Dorothy Parker
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
- Dorothy Parker
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force
- Dorothy Parker
They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm.
- Dorothy Parker
When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
- Winnie the Pooh
Always watch where you are going. Otherwise, you may step on a piece of the Forest that was left out by mistake.
- Winnie the Pooh
You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
- Winnie the Pooh
Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.
- Winnie the Pooh
Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.
- Winnie the Pooh
Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.
- Satchell Paige
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
- Popular Mechanics (1949)
If you don't have enough time to accomplish something, consider the work finished once it's begun.
- John Cage
Follow your desire as long as you live; do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit.
- PTAHHOTEP
A paranoid is a man who knows a little of what's going on.
- William S. Burroughs
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
- André Gide
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.
- George Eliot
There are only two ways to live your life : one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is.
- Albert Einstein
The profession of music is lacking in horse sense, not only because the commonplace variety of horse is absent from its operations, but because parts of the horse are noticeably present.
- Harry Partch
Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.
- R. Neibuhr
Big egos are big shields for lots of empty space.
- Diana Black
Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves, for they shall never cease to be amused.
- Anonymous
Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.
- Edward R. Murrow
As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.
- D. Cavett
Don't be so humble, you're not that great.
- Golda Meir
Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing.
- Anonymous
Cheer up, the worst is yet to come.
- Philander Johnson
Children are natural mimics who act like their parents despite every effort to teach them good manners.
- Anonymous
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word for word what you shouldn't have said.
- Anonymous
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
- Albert Einstein
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us that someone might be looking.
- H. L. Mencken
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
- Joe Louis
Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.
- Winston Churchill
Everything is funny as long as it is happening to someone else.
- Will Rogers
Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.
- Lewis Carroll
Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first and the lessons afterwards.
- Anonymous
Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.
- Aldous Huxley
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
- Oscar Wilde
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
- F.P. Jones
Finally, in conclusion, let me say just this.
- Peter Sellers
Go away...I'm alright.
- H. G. Wells's last words
Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.
- Katherine Whitehorn
Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
- Albert Einstein
Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
- Gore Vidal
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
- Will Rogers
Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted.
- Fred Allen
Happiness is just an illusion caused by the temporary absence of reality.
- Anonymous
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
- Anonymous
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
- Chinese proverb
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
- Nietzsche
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
- Winston Churchill
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
- Thomas Edison
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
- Winston Churchill
I'm sorry, but I never apologise.
- K. Blake
I like the word 'indolence'. It makes my laziness seem classy.
- Bern Williams
I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
- Albert Einstein
I still live.
- Daniel Webster's last words
I think, therefore I am - I think.
- Howard Schneider
If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.
- Paul Beatty
If I seem to give a damn, please tell me. I would hate to be giving the wrong impression.
- Haythum R. Khalid
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
- Anonymous
Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.
- Wendell Johnson
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
- Robert A. Heinlein
Dogs come when they're called. Cats take a message and get back to you.
- Missy Dizick
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people He gave it to.
- Dorothy Parker
Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.
- Jane Wagner
Someday we'll look back on this moment and plow into a parked car.
- Evan Davis
My mother buried three husbands, and two of them were just napping.
- Rita Rudner
Have you noticed? Anyone going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a moron.
- George Carlin
Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps.
- Emo Phillips
The stars have not dealt me the worst they could do:
My pleasures are plenty, my troubles are two.
But oh, my two troubles they reave me of rest,
The brains in my head and the heart in my breast.
Oh grant me the ease that is granted so free,
The birthright of multitudes, give it to me,
That relish their victuals and rest on their bed
With flint in the bosom and guts in the head.
- A.E. Housman
Ode To A Baby
A bit of talcum
Is always walcum.
- Ogden Nash
The Shrimp
A shrimp who sought his lady shrimp
Could catch no glimpse
Not even a glimp.
At times, translucence
Is rather a nuisance.
- Ogden Nash
My Dream
This is my dream,
It is my own dream,
I dreamt it.
I dreamt that my hair was kempt.
Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.
- Ogden Nash
Samson Agonistes
I test my bath before I sit,
And I'm always moved to wonderment
That what chills the finger not a bit
Is so frigid upon the fundament.
- Ogden Nash
Reflection on a Wicked World
Purity
Is obscurity.
- Ogden Nash
See the happy moron,
He doesn't give a damn.
I wish I were a moron,
My God! Perhaps I am!
- Dorothy Parker
Resume
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
- Dorothy Parker
Unfortunate Coincidence
By the time you swear you're his
Shivering, sighing
And he swears his love for you is
Infinite, undying
Lady, make a note of this
One of you is lying
- Dorothy Parker
I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.
- Dorothy Parker
Symptom Recital
I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men....
I'm due to fall in love again.
- Dorothy Parker
Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom
Daily dawns another day;
I must up, to make my way.
Though I dress and drink and eat,
Move my fingers and my feet,
Learn a little, here and there,
Weep and laugh and sweat and swear,
Hear a song, or watch a stage,
Leave some words upon a page,
Claim a foe, or hail a friend -
Bed awaits me at the end.
Though I go in pride and strength,
I'll come back to bed at length.
Though I walk in blinded woe,
Back to bed I'm bound to go.
High my heart, or bowed my head,
All my days but lead to bed.
Up, and out, and on; and then
Ever back to bed again,
Summer, Winter, Spring, and Fall -
I'm a fool to rise at all!
- Dorothy Parker
Comment
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
- Dorothy Parker
Inventory
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
- Dorothy Parker
Men
They hail you as their morning star
Because you are the way you are.
If you return the sentiment,
They'll try to make you different;
And once they have you, safe and sound,
They want to change you all around.
Your moods and ways they put a curse on;
They'd make of you another person.
They cannot let you go your gait;
They influence and educate.
They'd alter all that they admired.
They make me sick, they make me tired.
- Dorothy Parker
come-uppance
he trifled with his lover's heart
and when he came to call on her
(in her office on the 23rd floor)
although she was not very large
so cruelly defenestrated was he
- Catherine Jenkins
Pigeon Lake ON
If I were the man you wanted I would not be the man that I am
- Lyle Lovett
I grow laconic even beyond laconicism; for sometimes I return only yes, or no, to questionary or petitionary epistles of half a yard long.
- Pope
Most men who are not married by the age of thirty-five are either homosexual or really smart.
- Becky Rodenbeck
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
- Gustave Flaubert
If A equals success, then the formula is:
A = X + Y + Z
X is work.
Y is play.
Z is keep your mouth shut.
- Albert Einstein
If you believe everything you read, better not read.
- Japanese proverb
The way to love anything is to realize it might be lost.
- G.K. Chesterton
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
- Groucho Marx
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
- Groucho Marx
All my life I wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific.
- Jane Wagner
If something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.
- Calvin
As a math atheist, I should be excused from this.
- Calvin
This one's tricky. You have to use imaginary numbers, like eleventeen ...
- Calvin
You can present the material, but you can't make me care.
- Calvin
I'm learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of my life ... Procrastinating and rationalizing.
- Calvin
You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help.
- Calvin
Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves... Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
- Rainer Maria Rilke
If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.
- Edith Wharton
On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.
- Virginia Woolf
Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.
- Virginia Woolf
We must reconcile ourselves to a season of failures and fragments.
- Virginia Woolf
You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.
- Homer Simpson
Distance
Were you to cross the world, my dear,
To work or love or fight,
I could be calm and wistful here,
And close my eyes at night.
It were a sweet and gallant pain
To be a sea apart;
But, oh, to have you down the lane
Is bitter to my heart.
- Dorothy Parker
The Flaw in Paganism
Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)
- Dorothy Parker
Theory
Into love and out again,
Thus I went, and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen-
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Some one dropped me on my head?
- Dorothy Parker
Two-Volume Novel
The sun's gone dim, and
The moon's turned black;
For I loved him, and
He didn't love back.
- Dorothy Parker
Social Note
Lady, lady, should you meet
One whose ways are all discreet,
One who murmurs that his wife
Is the lodestar of his life,
One who keeps assuring you
That he never was untrue,
Never loved another one . . .
Lady, lady, better run!
- Dorothy Parker
Faute de Mieux
Travel, trouble, music, art,
A kiss, a frock, a rhyme-
I never said they feed my heart,
But still they pass my time.
- Dorothy Parker
It's healthy now and then to hang a question mark on things you've long taken for granted.
- Bertrand Russell
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
- Bertrand Russell
I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
After four I'm under my host!
- Dorothy Parker
Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.
- Dorothy Parker
In a 1933 review of the play 'The Lake' starring Katherine Hepburn
It's a small apartment, I've barely enough room to lay my hat and a few friends.
- Dorothy Parker
I'm a Frisbeetarian. We worship frisbees. We believe when you die your soul goes up on the roof and you can't get it down.
- Jim Stafford
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained.
- Mark Twain
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
- Mark Twain
I am astounded ... at the wonderful power you have developed - and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever.
- Arthur Sullivan
on seeing a demonstration of Edison's new talking machine in 1888
Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.
- Sir Thomas Beecham
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
- W. H. Auden
I have just been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it.
- Sir Thomas Beecham
Try everything once except folk dancing and incest.
- Sir Thomas Beecham
I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.
- Lily Tomlin
Wish I was an English Muffin
'Bout to make the most out of a toaster
- Paul Simon
May you live all the days of your life
- Jonathan Swift
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
- Oscar Wilde
I go from stool to stool in singles bars hoping to get lucky, but there's never any gum under any of them.
- Emo Phillips
I used to be so much more open-minded
And I used to like to fall in love
They tell me I was so much more sweeter and kinder
But once is enough
- Lyle Lovett
Faute de mieux
Travel, Trouble, music, art,
A kiss, a frock, a rhyme -
I never said they feed my heart,
But still they pass my time
- Dorothy Parker
After a Spanish Proverb
Oh, mercifullest one of all,
Oh, generous as dear,
None lived so lowly, none so small,
Thou couldst withhold thy tear
How swift, in pure compassion,
How meek in charity,
To offer friendship to the one
Who begged but love of thee!
Oh, gentle word, and sweetest said!
Oh, tender hand, and first
To hold the warm, delicious bread
To lips burned black of thirst
- Dorothy Parker
It doesn't take me long to get nothing done.
- Marvin the Android
Well I wish you'd just tell me rather than try to engage my enthusiasm.
- Marvin the Android
Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.
- Marvin the Android
Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.
- Marvin the Android
The right to search for truth implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.
- Albert Einstein
What do you get when you kiss a girl?
You get enough germs to catch pneumonia
And after you do, she'll never phone ya
I'll never fall in love again.
- Burt Bacharach
Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe.
- Albert Einstein
I am happy to think that there will be no difficulty in finding plenty of people whose loss will be a distinct gain to society at large.
- Ko-Ko (from the Mikado)
aka William Schwenk Gilbert
There was a time when I had all the answers. My real growth began when I discovered that the questions to which I had the answers were not the important questions.
- Reinhold Neibuhr
Romance is dead. It was acquired in a hostile takeover by Hallmark and Disney, homogenized, and sold off, piece by piece.
- Lisa Simpson
And of course, the one thing we should have all learned as children is that if there's something you want with all of your heart, with every fibre of your being, you're certain not to get it.
- Dr. Joel Fleischmann (Northern Exposure)
See, sometimes, the mind, for reasons we don't necessarily understand, just goes to the store for a quart of milk.
- Dr. Joel Fleischmann (Northern Exposure)
Her singing reminds me of a cart coming downhill with the brake on.
- Sir Thomas Beecham
on an unidentified soprano in Die Walkyrie
The sound of a harpsichord - two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm.
- Sir Thomas Beecham
Harpists spend ninety percent of their lives tuning their harps and ten percent playing out of tune.
- Igor Stravinsky
Mozart died too late rather than too soon.
- Glenn Gould
Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there also a dropped hammer.
- John Ruskin
Art is long and life is short; here is evidently the explanation of a Brahms symphony.
- Edward Lorne
I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.
- Charles Baudelaire
If the reader were so rash as to purchase any of Bela Bartok's compositions, he would find that they each and all consist of unmeaning bunches of notes, apparently representing the composer promenading the keyboard in his boots. Some can be played better with the elbows, others with the flat of the hand. None require fingers to perform or ears to listen too.
- Frederick Corder
In the first movement alone, I took note of six pregnancies and at least four miscarriages.
- Sir Thomas Beecham
on Bruckner's Seventh Symphony
What can you do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about.
- Sir Thomas Beecham
on Beethoven's Seventh Symphony
Sir Thomas Beecham was once asked if he had played any Stockhausen.
'No,' he replied, 'but I have trodden in some.'";
Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on his backside.
- Ludwig van Beethoven
Anton Bruckner wrote the same symphony nine times, trying to get it just right. He failed.
- Edward Abbey
Schoenberg is too melodious for me, too sweet.
- Bertolt Brecht
He'd be better off shoveling snow.
- Richard Strauss
on Arnold Schoenberg
I would like to hear Elliot Carter's Fourth String Quartet, if only to discover what a cranky prostate does to one's polyphony.
- James Sellars
Exit in case of Brahms
- Philip Hale's proposed inscription over the doors of Boston Symphony Hall
Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?
- Igor Stravinsky
If he'd been making shell-cases during the war it might have been better for music.
- Maurice Ravel
on Camille Saint-Saens
He has an enormously wide repertory. He can conduct anything, provided it's by Beethoven, Brahms or Wagner. He tried Debussy's La Mer once. It came out as Das Merde.
- Anonymous Orchestra Member
on George Szell
Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands and all you can do is scratch it.
- Sir Thomas Beecham
to a cellist
After I die, I shall return to earth as a gatekeeper of a bordello and I won't let any of you enter.
- Arturo Toscanini
to the NBC Orchestra
We cannot expect you to be with us all the time, but perhaps you could be good enough to keep in touch now and again.
- Sir Thomas Beecham
to a musician during a rehearsal
Jack Benny played Mendelssohn last night. Mendelssohn lost.
- Anonymous
Parsifal - the kind of opera that starts at six o'clock and after it has been going three hours, you look at your watch and it says 6:20.
- David Randolph
One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend hearing it a second time.
- Gioacchino Rossini
I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music.
- Benjamin Britten
on Stravinsky's The Rakes's Progress
I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.
- W.C. Fields
I can resist everything except temptation.
- Oscar Wilde
I didn't think; I experimented.
- Wilhelm Roentgen
I do not seek, I find.
- Pablo Picasso
I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know why I'll do it again.
- Bart Simpson
I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
- Will Rogers
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
- Woody Allen
I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
I had always loved beautiful and artistic things, though before leaving America I had had a very little chance of seeing any.
- Emma Albani
zeal : A certain nervous disorder afficting the young and inexperienced.
- Ambrose Bierce
It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
- Alfred Adler
It takes a long time to understand nothing.
- Edward Dahlberg
It takes great cleverness to be able to conceal one's cleverness.
- Duc De La Rochefoucauld
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
- George Carlin
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
- Winston Churchill
The price of greatness is responsibility.
- Winston Churchill
Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
An amateur thinks it's really funny if you dress a man up as an old lady, put him in a wheelchair, and give the wheelchair a push that sends it spinning down a slope towards a stone wall. For a pro, it's got to be a real old lady.
- Groucho Marx
If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end - I shouldn't be at all surprised.
- Dorothy Parker
If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it.
- Emerson Pugh
If you are going to do something wrong at least enjoy it.
- Leo Rosten
If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
- J. Paul Getty
If you can't convince them, confuse them.
- Harry S. Truman
If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
- Lin Yutang
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
- Ashleigh Brilliant
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
- Albert Einstein
In my end is my beginning.
- T.S. Eliot
It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
- Jerome K. Jerome
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
- Harry S. Truman
It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
- Mark Twain
It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four, besides being very amusing.
- Samuel Butler
Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands... but English women only hope to find in their butlers.
- W. Somerset Maugham
One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: -give little, give seldom, and above all, give grudgingly - Otherwise, what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.
- Ruth Smythers
Marriage advice for women, 1894
Before man reaches the moon, your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or to Australia by guided missiles... We stand on the threshold of rocket mail.
- General Arthur E. Summerfield
U.S. Postmaster General, 1959
Nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners will probably be a reality within 10 years.
- Alex Lewyt
Vacuum cleaner manufacturer, 1955
It is probable that television drama of high caliber and produced by first-rate artists will materially raise the level of dramatic taste of the nation
- David Sarnoff, 1939
New music is old music played twice as fast and half as well
- James Douglass Morrison
We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
- Decca Recording Company, on rejecting the Beatles in 1962
Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.'
- Paul McCartney
Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them.
- Robert Strauss on conducting
And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the Bible were used to beat plowshares into swords
- Alan Wilson Watts
Confession without repentance is just bragging.
- Rev. Eugene Bolton
When you speak of heaven, let your face light up; let it be irradiated by a heavenly gleam; let your eyes shine with reflected glory. But when you speak of hell, your ordinary expression will do.
- Charles Spurgeon
These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity the sound achieved by the pig.
- Alfred Hitchcock
The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.
- Albert Einstein
The only good thing to come out of religion was the music.
- George Carlin
An Academic speculated whether a bather is beautiful if there is no one in the forest to admire her. He hid in the bushes to find out, which vitiated his premise but made him happy.
Moral: Empiricism is more fun than speculation.
- Sam Weber
Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods.
- Socrates
Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.
- Niels Bohr
Well, I'm disenchanted too. We're all disenchanted.
- James Thurber
I don't even butter my bread. I consider that cooking.
- Katherine Cebrian
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
- Mahatma Gandhi
There are two ways of disliking art. One is to dislike it. The other is to like it rationally.
- Oscar Wilde
Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.
- John A. Wheeler
Familiarity breeds contempt, but without a little familiarity, it's impossible to breed anything.
- Noel Coward
Cynic n.
A blackguard whose faulty vision causes him to see things as they are, not as they ought to be
- Ambrose Bierce
Delusion, n.
The father of a most respectable family, comprising Enthusiasm, Affection, Self-denial, Faith, Hope, Charity and many other goodly sons and daughters.
- Ambrose Bierce
A cube of cheese no larger than a die
May bait the trap to catch a nibbling mie.
- Senator Depew
Discussion, n.
A method of confirming others in their errors.
- Ambrose Bierce
Disobedience, n.
The silver lining to the cloud of servitude.
- Ambrose Bierce
Faith, n.
Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.
- Ambrose Bierce
Friendless, adj.
Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterance of truth and common sense.
- Ambrose Bierce
Christian, n.
One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
- Ambrose Bierce
Day, n.
A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. This period is divided into two parts, the day proper and the night, or day improper - the former devoted to sins of business, the latter consecrated to the other sort. These two kinds of social activity overlap.
- Ambrose Bierce
Year, n.
A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
- Ambrose Bierce
Man, n.
An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
- Ambrose Bierce
Lawyer, n.
One skilled in circumvention of the law.
- Ambrose Bierce
Longevity, n.
Uncommon extension of the fear of death.
- Ambrose Bierce
Love, n.
A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.
- Ambrose Bierce
Pantheism, n.
The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.
- Ambrose Bierce
Philosophy, n.
A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
- Ambrose Bierce
Phoenix, n.
The classical prototype of the modern 'small hot bird.'
- Ambrose Bierce
Phonograph, n.
An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises.
- Ambrose Bierce
Politeness, n.
The most acceptable hypocrisy.
- Ambrose Bierce
Positive, adj.
Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
- Ambrose Bierce
Pray, v.
To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
- Ambrose Bierce
Price, n.
Value, plus a reasonable sum for the wear and tear of conscience in demanding it.
- Ambrose Bierce
Telephone, n.
An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.
- Ambrose Bierce
Bride, n.
A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
- Ambrose Bierce
Beside a lonely grave I stood -
With brambles 'twas encumbered;
The winds were moaning in the wood,
Unheard by him who slumbered,
A rustic standing near, I said:
'He cannot hear it blowing!'
' 'Course not,' said he: 'the feller's dead -
He can't hear nowt that's going.'
'Too true,' I said; 'alas, too true -
No sound his sense can quicken!'
'Well, mister, wot is that to you? -
The deadster ain't a-kickin'.'
I knelt and prayed: 'O Father, smile
On him, and mercy show him!'
That countryman looked on the while,
And said: 'Ye didn't know him.'
- Pobeter Dunko
(Ambrose Bierce)
Homeopathy, n.
A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and Christian Science. To the last both the others are distinctly inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they can not.
- Ambrose Bierce
Music today is nothing more than the art of performing difficult pieces, and what is merely difficult gives no lasting pleasure.
- Voltaire - Candide (1758) chapter XXV
Trans. John Butt
If Ford is to Chevrolet what Dodge is to Chrysler what Corn Flakes are to Post Toasties what the clear blue sky is to the deep blue sea what Hank Williams is to Neil Armstrong, can you doubt we were made for each other?
- Lyle Lovett
A pessimist is one who, when he has a choice of two evils, chooses both.
- Oscar Wilde
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
- Oscar Wilde
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
- Oscar Wilde
One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.
- Oscar Wilde
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
- Oscar Wilde
Few parents nowadays pay any regard to what their children say to them. The old-fashioned respect for the young is fast dying out.
- Oscar Wilde
I am not young enough to know everything.
- Oscar Wilde
I love acting. It is so much more real than life.
- Oscar Wilde
I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
- Oscar Wilde
In America, the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever.
- Oscar Wilde
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But it is better to be good than to be ugly.
- Oscar Wilde
Men always want to be a woman's first love. Women like to be a man's last romance.
- Oscar Wilde
Moderation is a fatal thing. . . . Nothing succeeds like excess.
- Oscar Wilde
One should never trust a woman who tells her real age. If she tells that, she'll tell anything.
- Oscar Wilde
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
- Oscar Wilde
The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.
- Oscar Wilde
The difference between journalism and literature is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
- Oscar Wilde
The English country gentleman galloping after a fox - the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.
- Oscar Wilde
The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
- Oscar Wilde
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
- Oscar Wilde
The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.
- Oscar Wilde
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
- Oscar Wilde
The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
- Oscar Wilde
The well-bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
- Oscar Wilde
To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune... to lose both seems like carelessness.
- Oscar Wilde
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.
- Oscar Wilde
True friends stab you in the front.
- Oscar Wilde
Sound is not what one should desire to understand. One should know the hearer.
- from the Kaushitaki Upanishad
Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.
- Giaocchino Antonio Rossini
Wagner has beautiful moments, but awful quarter hours.
- Giaocchino Antonio Rossini
Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.
- George Bernard Shaw
I am highly susceptible to the force of all truly religious music, especially to the music of my own church, the church of Shelley, Michelangelo, and Beethoven.
- George Bernard Shaw
here are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem.
- George Bernard Shaw
Never mind if a bullet goes through a trombone or even a trombonist now and then.
- General Philip Henry Sheridan
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
- Igor Feodorovich Stravinsky
I have played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms - what a giftless bastard. It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius. Brahms is chaotic and absolutely empty dried-up stuff.
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
I like Wagner's music better than anybody's; it is so loud, one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what you say.
- Oscar Wilde
Music makes one feel so romantic - at least it always gets on one's nerves - which is the same thing nowadays.
- Oscar Wilde
Musical people always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be perfectly deaf.
- Oscar Wilde
Most rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.
- Frank Zappa
There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.
- Frank Zappa
I occasionally play works by contemporary composers, and for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more, and secondly to remind myself how much appreciate Beethoven.
- Jascha Heifitz
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind.
- Giaocchino Antonio Rossini
Handel is only fourth rate. He's not even interesting.
- Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky
After Rossini dies, who will be there to promote his music?
- Ludwig Van Beethoven
I think he must have been drunk when he wrote that.
-Benjamin Britten
on Sibelius's Symphony No. 6
Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughn Williams is like staring at a cow for forty-five minutes.
- Aaron Copland
The youths who frequent picture palaces
Have no use for psychoanalysis.
And though Dr. Freud
Is distinctly annoyed
They cling to their long-standing fallacies.
- Unknown
Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, medication, depression, neurosis, and suicide. With failure comes failure.
- Joseph Heller
We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself...
- Carl Gustav Jung
If there is anything we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.
- Carl Gustav Jung
Science is the tool of the Western mind and with it more doors can be opened than with bare hands. It is part and parcel of our knowledge and obscures our insight only when it holds that the understanding given by it is the only kind there is.
- Carl Gustav Jung
A man's hatred is always concentrated upon that which makes him conscious of his bad qualities.
- Carl Gustav Jung
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.
- Carl Gustav Jung
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.
- Carl Gustav Jung
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
- Carl Gustav Jung
One looks with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
- Carl Gustav Jung
Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.
- Carl Gustav Jung
It was most essential for me to have a normal life in the real world as a counterpoise to that strange inner world. My family and my profession remained the base to which I could return...
- Carl Gustav Jung
But India did not pass me by without a trace: it left tracks which lead me from one infinity to another infinity.
- Carl Gustav Jung
If people can be educated to see the lowly side of their own natures, it may be hoped that they will also learn to understand and to love their fellow men better. A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures.
- Carl Gustav Jung
Nothing worse could happen to one than to be completely understood.
- Carl Gustav Jung
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.
- Carl Gustav Jung
Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.
- Marcus Aurelius
I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?
- Jean Cocteau
Trying is the first step towards failure.
- Homer Simpson
Room service? Send up a larger room.
- Groucho Marx
Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?
- Groucho Marx
Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.
- Groucho Marx
He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot.
- Groucho Marx
I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.
- Groucho Marx
A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five.
- Groucho Marx
From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.
- Groucho Marx
Ice Water? Get some Onions - that'll make your eyes water!
- Groucho Marx
You know I could rent you out as a decoy for duck hunters?
- Groucho Marx
You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I'll bet he was glad to get rid of it.
- Groucho Marx
A man's only as old as the woman he feels.
- Groucho Marx
Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me?
- Groucho Marx
Why, I'd horse-whip you if I had a horse.
- Groucho Marx
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
- Groucho Marx
I must say that I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.
- Groucho Marx
I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.
- Groucho Marx
If I held you any closer I would be on the other side of you.
- Groucho Marx
I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
- Groucho Marx
It is better to have loft and lost than to never have loft at all.
- Groucho Marx
I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.
- Groucho Marx
Either he's dead or my watch has stopped.
- Groucho Marx
Time wounds all heels.
- Groucho Marx
Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.
- Groucho Marx
I love you and you love me. This is a closed loop. It's boring. I love you and you love someone else. Now that's interesting.
- Sting (This quote may not be precise. My apologies.)
I have great faith in fools; self-confidence, my friends call it.
- Edgar Allen Poe
The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.
Sir Thomas Beecham
Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.
Sir Thomas Beecham
Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands - and all you can do is scratch it.
Sir Thomas Beecham
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
Charlie Brown (Charles M. Schulz)
Love is not enough. It must be the foundation, the cornerstone - but not the complete structure. It is much too pliable, too yielding.
Bette Davis
There's a lot to be said for self-delusionment when it comes to matters of the heart.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider (Northern Exposure)
I've been thinking about that old Zen conundrum: what's the sound of one hand clapping? My personal opinion - nothing. You don't have two hands, you don't have any clapping. It's as simple as that. Stars, galaxies, clapping hands, what's the point? The point is that we all need somebody, whether you're a supercluster or a little proton, a yin or a yang. Everybody is hooked into everybody else.
Geoffrey Neighor (Northern Exposure)
Is love supposed to last throughout all time, or is it like trains changing at random stops. If I loved her, how could I leave her? If I felt that way then, how come I don't feel anything now?
- Jeff Melvoin (Northern Exposure)
Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.
- Lynda Barry
Most of you have been where I am tonight. The crash site of unrequited love. You ask yourself, How did I get here? What was it about? Was it her smile? Was it the way she crossed her legs, the turn of her ankle, the poignant vulnerability of her slender wrists? What are these elusive and ephemeral things that ignite passion in the human heart? That's an age-old question. It's perfect food for thought on a bright midsummer's night.
- Martin Sage and Sybil Adelman (Northern Exposure)
Obsessions and fixations are not really my field. All I know, when the mind really grabs hold of something, look out.
- Martin Sage and Sybil Adelman (Northern Exposure)
Think about a woman. Doesn't know you're thinking about her. Doesn't care you're thinking about her. Makes you think about her even more.
- Martin Sage and Sybil Adelman (Northern Exposure)
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
- Woody Allen
Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.
- Woody Allen
My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.
- Woody Allen
Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
- Steven Wright
Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.
- Steven Wright
I bought some batteries, but they weren't included, so I had to buy them again.
- Steven Wright
I have an existential map. It has 'You are here' written all over it.
- Steven Wright
I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place.
- Steven Wright
I was walking down the street wearing glasses when the prescription ran out.
- Steven Wright
If you shoot at mimes, should you use a silencer?
- Steven Wright
It doesn't make a difference what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature.
- Steven Wright
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
- Steven Wright
Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.
- Steven Wright
Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish.
- Steven Wright
My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.
- Steven Wright
There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.
- Steven Wright
What's another word for Thesaurus?
- Steven Wright
When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, 'Did you sleep good?' I said 'No, I made a few mistakes.'
- Steven Wright
You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
- Steven Wright
I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.
- James Thurber
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers
- James Thurber
Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation
- James Thurber
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead
- James Thurber
I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can understand it.
- Queen Juliana of the Netherlands
Rogues are preferable to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
- Alexandre Dumas
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
- Oscar Wilde
Actions lie louder than words.
- Carolyn Wells
Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.
- Christopher Morley
The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.
- Jean Giraudoux
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.
- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.
- Henry Stimson
The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.
- Sophocles
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
- Niels Bohr
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
- Oscar Wilde
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.
- Rita Mae Brown
Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
- H. L. Mencken
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
- Douglas Adams
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
- Douglas Adams
Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
- Russell Baker
First love is a kind of vaccination which saves a man from catching the complaint a second time.
- Honore de Balzac
2 is not equal to 3, not even for large values of 2.
- Grabel's Law
This isn't right. This isn't even wrong.
- Wolfgang Pauli
I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.
- Noel Coward
Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
- Clive Barnes
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
- H. G. Wells
Education is a state-controlled manufactory of echoes.
- Norman Douglas
The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other people.
- Lucille S. Harper
If at first you don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.
- Bill Lyon
I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
- Stephen Leacock
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
- Arnold Toynbee
I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.
- Shirley Temple
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
- W. Somerset Maugham
I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time.
- Charlie Brown
Most people would like to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch.
- Robert Orben
I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.
- Margaret Thatcher
I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
- Niels Bohr
A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.
- Segal's Law
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
- Bertrand Russell
When we are unable to find tranquility within ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining?
- George Wallace
In all large corporations, there is a pervasive fear that someone, somewhere is having fun with a computer on company time. Networks help alleviate that fear.
- John C. Dvorak
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
- Philip K. Dick
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.
- Edward Abbey
I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
- Richard Feynman
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.
- Samuel Butler
Television enables you to be entertained in your home by people you wouldn't have in your home.
- David Frost
You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light.
- Vicomte de Chateaubriand
In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.
- Sam Brown
Doing a thing well is often a waste of time.
- Robert Byrne
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
- Bertrand Russell
The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
- Charles de Gaulle
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
- Benjamin Disraeli
He's simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.
- Saki
If people never did silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein