"Einstein's Three Rules of Work:
1) Out of clutter find simplicity;
2) From discord find harmony;
3) In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity."
Albert Einstein
"Wit is like caviar - it should be served in small portions and not spread about like marmalade."
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"I love criticism --- just so long as it's unqualified praise."
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"Although when shadows fall
I think if only
Somebody splendid really needed me
Someone affectionate and dear
Cares would be ended if I knew that he
Wanted to have me near.
But I believe that since my life began
The most I've had is just a talent to amuse.
Hey ho, if love were all.
Hey ho, if love were all...."
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"My importance to the world is relatively small. On the other hand, my importance to myself is tremendous."
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"I am all I have to work with, to play with, to suffer and to enjoy. It is not the eyes of others that I am wary of, but of my own. I do not intend to let myself down more than I can possibly help, and I find that the fewer illusions I have about myself or the world around me, the better company I am for myself."
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"Extraordinary how potent cheap music is."
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"There isn't a particle of you that I don't know, remember, and want."
Noel Coward
"It's noble to be good. It's nobler to teach others to be good, and less trouble."
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"There are three things which I consider excellent advice. First, don't smoke to excess. Second, don't drink to excess. Third, don't marry to excess."
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"You ought never to sass old people- unless they sass you first."
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"Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
Mark Twain
"There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self."
Benjamin Franklin
"I had this blissful feeling after stepping out of my final final. The sky is terribly blue, getting long-faced in the afternoon slanting of clear sunlight for the first time in ages; the Diehl mini-plaza before the library is windswept and thinly traversed by leaves; the clouds are happy in the cool breeze, and happily far to the south of Memphis. My baby sister has been sleeping in my bed for 12 hours; my mother has been quietly smiling as she clicks away uncountable games of solitaire. Meanwhile, I'm very happy with the way the semester has turned out; I feel lucky in having the friendships I have, in having preserved some which were thought lost to the abyss of lapses in email--or of judgement--and in realizing that I would always have someone to hang out with on this campus, even if I have been neglecting them lately. I'm usually sad to leave Rhodes at the end of a semester, or even for the occasional break, especially when I am not looking forward to being at home for various sundry reasons; however, this time I am content to go, recuperate from the damage, meditate on the blessings (deity-given or self-created, whichever), and enjoy uncertain tomorrows with the right amount of expectation for the happiness of returning to a fresh slate at the beginning of next semester."
Eve's pre-winter break plan file
Mom: Is that French bread?
Bread: (in the voice of Eve) Oui! Ha ha hah, je suis le pain francais!
Mom: (laughing) That reminds me of that guy from "3 Men and a Baby," the guy from "Cheers," what's his name...
Bread: (nonchalantly) Il s'appelle Ted Danson.
Mom: (laughs)
"But to fall in love is not the same as to love. One may fall in love and still hate."
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"The horror of it is that beauty is not only a terrifying thing--it is also a mysterious one. In it the Devil struggles with God, and the field of battle is the hearts of men."
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"Wait!" Fyodor Pavlovich shrilled in an apothesis of ecstasy. "So you still suppose there are two men who [through faith] are able to move mountains, you suppose their existence? Ivan, put that little detail in your pipe and smoke it, write it down: there you have the whole of the Russian character!"
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"...God hasn't given us enough time, having allotted a mere twenty-four hours to each day, making it impossible for us even to get enough sleep, never mind repent."
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"The essential of verses, miss, is that they're rubbish, miss."
Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
"Oh no! The abominable snowman has diaper rash!"
Pamper's commercial
Cathie: You won't get Paul [our brother] to play that crap [half brother
Chris' country music CD's] in his car... Just tell him it's a new band.
Eve: Say, "Hey, Paul, this is the... Pixie Chicks.... and this is... George...
Strait-From-The-Ghetto."
"Liza is afraid to love.
Or could this be just her fashion?
What if Dian's not above
Keeping dark her taste for passion?
Downcast lids, might they at all
Hide sly glances, holding wily
Muster of us, searching slyly
Which of us might help her fall?"
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"O Muse of satire, breathing fire!
Oh, come and heed my urgent call!
I do not need the thundering lyre,
Hand me the scourge of Juvenal!
Not the pedestrian imitators,
Not the penurious translators,
Nor rhymesters echoless, poor lambs,
Shall fester from my epigrams!
Peace to the poet wan with hunger,
Peace to the journals' gossipmonger.
Peace unto every harmless fool!
But as for you, my scoundrels cool,
Come forward! I shall surely hook one,
Hook all you scum with piercing pen,
And if by chance I overlook one,
Please do remind me, gentlemen!
Ah, mugs with sallow slander horrid,
Ah, forehead after brazen forehead,
All due from my avenging hand
The ineradicable brand!"
Aleksandr Pushkin
"You know what they say about Congress, sir: it's just like high school, with missiles."
Spin City
"I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot."
J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye
"It may have been Sir Issac Newton what discovered gravity... but it was Sir Evel Kenieval what DEFIED it."
Earl Pitts, the redneck's Paul Harvey
Kithy: How do you feel about hitting concrete blocks really really hard?
Eve: Well, it depends on whether you use a jackhammer or a baby seal.
"Scientists in Oregon have announced that they have been able to use jellyfish sperm to impregnate monkeys. Scientists have now officially run out of things to do."
Jay Leno
"There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and yearning."
Christopher Morley
Susan: Nowhere in the bible does it say anything against opium.
Eve: "Thou shalt not smoketh of the earth." I know this Jesus Freak who lives down the street from me who has read the Bible in four languages, including Greek, and knows the book cover to cover, and he's not only only a daily smoker but also a well-known dealer.
"She thinks my tractor's sexy,
It really turns her on."
Kenny Chesney
Mom: Eve, do you know where the floor lamp for the downstairs hall is?
Eve: Yes. (pause; maniacal laughter)
"In time she too failed to clear the bar [of receiving tenure at Yale], but she ended up on her feet at Harvard as the local Shakespearean, as well as an expert on cross-dressing and on the love of dogs."
Alvin Kernan, In Plato's Cave
Anyway, my sign on my door tells people not to bother me unless
a) they've sliced off a limb and are in danger of bleeding to death...
b) Bellingrath [dorm] is about to burn down
c) their boyfriend has left them for another man. :-)
Jessica
I dread going to philosophy classes tomorrow. My professors seem angry with me. The feeling of extreme slack hit me yesterday (with a big dead wet fish no less) as I finished a paper at the last possible second--after sleeping through all my classes (seemingly the last ditch effort of Thanksgiving germs to ruin my December, and Jaunary, and February...) However, I won't learn my lesson from this. I'm going to procrastinate and be late forever and ever, until I die, and then I'll be late for my funeral--and don't even ask when I'll show up in hell.
Eve's finals procrastination plan
"Darwin himself was utterly baffled by how life first arose; in the last words of the last edition of The Origin of Species, he repairs to "The Creator" as the ultimate source of the first breath of life. Descartes before him had understood that if the human mind is thoroughly determined by physical causes there can be no such thing as scientific truth; he therefore was compelled to invoke God as the source of man's rational powers. And when we finally allow ourselves to come face to face with the mystery that there is anything at all rather than nothing, can we evolutionists confidently reject the first claim of the Bible--"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth"?"
Leon R. Kass
"Gypsies are picturesque and inspire bad poets."
Jorge Luis Borges, Ficciones
"When they spoke they used the formal second person plural, but with what a cargo of tenderness this second person plural was laden as it sailed along the horizon of their barely audible conversation..."
Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading
"Cuz if u don't i'll rip your nose off and glue it back on upside down, so when it rain's you'll drown."
Kater, persuader
The last night before Christmas break...
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Brad: Know what i'd do with "millenium bear?"
Susan: What?
Brad: I'd take it and shove it up somebody's orifice.
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Brad: Oh, no!!! I've been doily raped!!!
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Susan: See, this is my bear I've had for a very long time.
Brad: You're poking the bear in a very unusual place..
Susan: It has a hole there.
Brad: (takes bear, notes location of hole) Well, at least you know it's a she.
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Susan: (to Brad, leaving) Bon chance!
Brad: (to Susan) Go to hell!
Fish: Whatcha up to?
Eve: I'm going to Blount. [I meant the dorm.]
Fish: ... Is that a noun or a verb? Cause if it was a verb I was gonna do it with you.
"Jesus doesn't play KICKBALL!"
Trout, who cannot win an argument with me
Jessica: I used to want to bear Billy Joel's children. Yeah, I used to say I wouldn't mind him inseminateing me.
Girl: That sounds like a bad come-on line!
Jessica: Yeah! "Baby, you can come inseminate me anytime!" "Okay, lemme just run get my inseminationg gear on first!"
"There are three ways to get something done - do it yourself, hire someone to do it, or ask your kids not to do it."
Malcolm L. Kushner
"You mentioned knowing all about unrequited love... Why don't you tell me what you know, & then maybe the two of us can compare notes & see if we've learned anything."
Ryan
"My whole life is this bad porno movie without the sex."
Shannon
"Strain?... I hope it doesn't strain you to be in Payne. [Class groans.] I'm sorry, I'll never do that again."
Professor Mosby calling roll