Quotes, October 2003
01. Some, for renown, on scraps of learning dote,
And think they grow immortal as they quote.
- Edward Young
02. A rumor without a leg to stand on will get around some other way.
- John Tudor
03. They copied all they could follow
but they couldn’t copy my mind
so I left them sweating and stealing
a year and a half behind.
- Rudyard Kipling
04. That woman speaks eighteen languages and she can’t say "no" in any one of them.
- Dorothy Parker
05. I give money for church organs in the hope the organ music will distract the congregation’s attention from the rest of the service.
- Andrew Carnegie
06. It is one thing, to show a man that he is in an error, and another, to put him in possession of the truth.
- John Locke
07. The fellow who thinks he knows it all is especially annoying to those of us who do.
- Harold Coffin
08. Gutta cavat lapidem, non vi, sed saepe cadendo
[The drop hollows the stone, not by force, but by continuously dropping]
- Ovid, Roman poet 43 BC - AD 17
09. The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
- Charles de Gaulle
10. I can live for two months on a good compliment.
- Mark Twain
11. The autumn always gets me badly, as it breaks into colors. I want to go south, where there is no autumn, where the cold doesn’t crouch over one like a snow leopard waiting to pounce. The heart of the North is dead, and the fingers are corpse fingers.
- D. H. Lawrence
12. Theists have good reasons for not believing in every god but their own. Atheists make no exception for the last one.
- Brett Lemoine
13. To observe people in conflict is a necessary part of a child’s education. It helps him to understand and accept his own occasional hostilities and to realize that differing opinions need not imply an absence of love.
- Milton R. Sapirstein
14. Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.
- Alexander Pope
15. Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.
- W.H. Auden
16. One should examine oneself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.
- Molière
17. Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.
- W. D. Howells
18. There are two things to aim at in life: First to get what you want and after you have it, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
- Logan Pearsall Smith
19. I am not afraid of priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering. I have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the West and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance on whom their interested duperies were to be played off.
- Thomas Jefferson
20. Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.
- Leon Trotsky
21. I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.
- Abraham Lincoln
22. The dullard’s envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.
- Max Beerbohm
23. Non omnia possumus omnes.
[We are not all capable of everything.]
- Virgil
24. Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease.
- Bill Maher
25. I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.
- Frank Sinatra
26. It is a curious thing that God learned Greek when he wished to turn author - and that he did not learn it better.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
27. "They do say, Mrs Miggins, that verbal insults hurt more than physical pain. They are of course wrong, as you will soon discover when I stick this toasting fork in your head."
- Rowan Atkinson in "Black Adder"
28. Clark Griswold: Eddie, don’t you know you’re bad luck?
Cousin Eddie: Those were my mother’s dying words. But I guess if your body’s covered in third degree burns, and your foot’s caught in a bear trap, you tend to start talkin’ crazy.
- Chevy Chase and Randy Quaid in "Vegas Vacation"
29. "I once stole a pornographic book that was printed in braille. I used to rub the dirty parts."
- Woody Allen in "Bananas"
30: Father: The mill’s closed. There’s no more work. We’re destitute.
Children: Ohhhhh.
Father: I’m afraid I have no choice but to sell you all for medical experiments.
- Monty Python, "The Meaning of Life"
31. Nothing wrong with shooting as long as the right people get shot.
- Clint Eastwood in "Magnum Force"
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