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| outstanding in his field |
Wealth - any income that is at least one hundred dollars more a year than the income of
one's wife's sister's husband.
-- H.L. Mencken
Women can keep a secret just as well as men, but it takes more of them to do it.
They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist...
-- General John Sedgwick's last words
Have you ever dated someone because you were too lazy to commit suicide?", -- Judy
Tenuta
"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
"External reality is sort of an affectation of the nervous system."
-- Jaron Lanier
Not only are you anal, but you are anal about things most people have never even heard of.
-- Nigel
"How long does getting thin take?" Pooh asked anxiously.
-- A. A. Milne
People are more violently opposed to fur than leather because it's safer to harass rich
women than motorcycle gangs.
In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use
through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a
brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
-- Mark Twain
Baby orang-otans look like surprised coconuts.
-- Terry Pratchett
If you don't find it in the index, look very carefully through the entire catalogue.
-- Sears, Roebuck, and Co., Consumer's Guide, 1897
I'm not one of those who says Bill Gates is the Devil, but I do believe that if he
happened to meet the Devil, they wouldn't need an interpreter.
It takes about ten years to get used to how old you are.
George goes to sleep at the bank from ten to four each day, except Saturdays, when they
wake him up and put him outside at two.
-- Three Men in a Boat - JK Jerome
Ever notice that what the hell is always the right decision?
-- Marilyn Monroe
I should think my self a very bad woman, if I had done what I do, for a farthing less.
-- Addison 'The Drummer' (1716) act 1
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my
faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things
that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
-- Mark Twain
"When you go in for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever
press charges."
-- Jack Handy
"Withdrawing in disgust is not the same as apathy."
-- Richard Linklater
"We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't
like?"
-- Jean Cocteau
"The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any
reward."
-- John Maynard Keynes
"I'm a Leo. Leos don't believe in this astrology stuff."
-- Tom Neff
"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another
city."
-- George Burns
"Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve the pain of being a
damned fool."
-- Bellamy Brooks
"Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant."
-- Cary Grant
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
-- Mark Twain
The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the
idea must be feasible. -A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's
paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal
Express Corp.)
"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a
book."
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
William Safire
Recipe (in its entirety) for boiled owl:
Take feathers off. Clean owl and put in cooking pot with lots of water. Add salt to taste.
-- The Eskimo Cookbook (1952)
Do not make loon soup.
-- "Valuable advice" from the Eskimo Cookbook
If you can remember the 1960s, you weren't really there.
-- Timothy Leary
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
"It's impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune."
-- Woody Allen
"It's a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ
every year."
-- Truman Capote
"Advertising reaches out to touch the fantasy part of people's lives. And you know,
most people's fantasies are pretty sad."
-- Frederik Pohl
"Women. Can't live with 'em, pass the beer nuts."
-- Norm Peterson
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid
for my carpet.
-- Woody Allen
Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put up with constructive
praise.
-- Mignon McLaughlin
Court transcript:
Q: What is your brother-in-law's name?
A: Borofkin.
Q: What is his first name?
A: I can't remember.
Q: He's been your brother-in-law for 45
years, and you can't remember his first
name?
A: No. I tell you I'm too excited.
(Rising from the witness chair and
pointing to Mr. Borofkin). Nathan,
for God's sake, tell them your first
name!
J'ai failli attendre! - I very nearly had to wait!
-- Louis XIV
Finagle's third Law: In any collection of data, the figure most obviously correct, beyond
all need of checking, is the mistake. Corollaries: 1. Nobody whom you ask for help will
see it. 2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really don't want to hear, will
see it immediately.
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 Letters between Samuel Butler and Miss E. M. A. Savage 1871-1885
(1935) 21 Nov. 1884
Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the
situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem. -- Alan McKay
I have learned only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her
think she is having her own way. Second, let her have it.
-- Antony Armstrong-Jones
Rejoice! Rejoice! And call your mother once in a while.
-- Woody Allen
There's nothing like the sight of an old enemy down on his luck.
-- Euripides (B.C. 480-406)
Losing one glove is certainly painful, but nothing compared to the pain Of losing one,
throwing away the other, and finding the first one again.
-- Piet Hein
They exchanged the quick, brilliant smile of women who dislike each other on sight.
-- Marshall Pugh
"You, my boy, if you want to be a good pickpocket, you need to learn how to tell a
wallet from a maxipad."
-- Jessica
I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.
-- H.L. Mencken
What do you get when you cross a Rotweiller with Lassie? - a dog that will bite your leg
off and then go get help.
-- C. S. Lewis
I guess we were all guilty, in a way. We all shot him, we all skinned him, and we all got
a complimentary bumper sticker that said, "I helped skin Bob."
--Jack Handy
She's the sort of woman who lives for others--you can always tell the others by their
hunted expression.
-- Screwtape Letters (1942) no. 26
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.
-- George Bernard Shaw
"And if you give us any more trouble, I shall visit you in the small hours and put a
bat up your nightdress."
-- Basil Fawlty
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is
for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more
bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already
happened.
-- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
After a heated argument on some trivial matter Nancy...shouted, "If I were your wife
I would put poison in your coffee!" Whereupon Winston [Churchill] with equal heat and
sincerity answered, "And if I were your husband I would drink it."
We live in far too permissive a society. Never before has pornography been this rampant.
And those films are lit so badly!
-- Woody Allen
Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on the weekends.
-- Woody Allen
Dylan himself once defined an alcoholic as a man you don't like who drinks as much as you
do.
-- Constantine Fitzgibbon Life of Dylan Thomas (1965) ch.
Judge: I have read your case, Mr. Smith, and I am no wiser now than I was when I started.
Smith: Possibly not, My Lord, but far better informed.
-- F. E. Smith Earl of Birkenhead
As for the British churchman, he goes to church as he goes to the bathroom, with the
minimum of fuss and with no explanation if he can help it.
-- Ronald Blythe
An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one.
-- George Mikes
We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the
rules.
-- Alan Bennett 1934-'Getting On' (1972) act 1
We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon
had me cheesed off.
-- Alan Bennett 'The Old Country' (1978) act 2
You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and
folk-dancing.
-- Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953)
"They're just jealous because they don't have three wise men and a virgin in the
whole organization."
-- Mayor Vincent J. `Buddy' Cianci on the ACLU's suit to have a city nativity scene
removed: