On and off for many years now, I’ve been collecting
quotations that I like, like this one from Eleanor Roosevelt I saw recently in
a magazine: “You wouldn’t worry so much
about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.” Nice.
It put me in mind of one by Susan Sontag: “I envy paranoids. They actually think people are paying
attention to them.”
In no special order, here are others, some serious,
some humorous, that I like very much.
“I am glad of a day when I know what I want to do in
it.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never
appealed to me.” Albert Einstein
“Truth is the offspring of silence and
meditation.” Isaac Newton
"If there is no wind, row." Latin proverb
"If there is no wind, row." Latin proverb
“I am still learning.” Michelangelo
"To live long, it is necessary to live slowly." Cicero
"To live long, it is necessary to live slowly." Cicero
“Consummate politeness is not the right tonic for an
emotional collapse.” Joseph Conrad, Victory
"Nothing
contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose."
Mary Shelley
“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” Horace Mann
“Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.” Horace Mann
“Everything
that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the
slow cycles of nature, is a help.
Gardening is an instrument of grace.”
May Sarton
“Don’t
be afraid of missing opportunities.
Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had
missed.” Lily Tomlin
“Anyone
can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one
day.” Robert Louis Stevenson
“A satisfactory life cannot repeat itself too
often.” Mark Van Doren
“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to
overlook.” William James
“The
average man, who does not know what to do with this life, wants another one
which shall last forever.” Anatole
France
“Do
what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Theodore Roosevelt
“The most radical revolutionary will become a
conservative the day after the revolution.”
Hannah Arendt
“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: with the help of it one has got through many
a bad night.” Friedrich Nietzsche
“'Be yourself' is about the worst advice you can give
to some people. Anonymous
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." Albert Einstein
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." Albert Einstein
Three from Mark Twain. . .
“If you don't read the newspaper you are
uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.”
“No man's life, liberty, or property is safe
while the legislature is in session.”
“The only difference between a tax man and a
taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.”
One from Bishop Desmond Tutu. . .
“When
the white missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the
land. They said, ‘Let us pray.’ We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and
they had the land.”
Seven from Thomas Edison. . .
“The chief function of the body is to carry the
brain around.”
“I
have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000
ways that won’t work.”
“You
will have many opportunities in life to keep your mouth shut. You should take advantage of every one of
them.”
“Everything
comes to him who hustles while he waits.”
“Show
me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.”
“To
invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”
“I
pity the man without a purpose in life.”
Three from Henry Ford. . .
“One of the greatest discoveries a man makes is to
find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.”
“Anyone
who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”
“It has been my observation that most people get
ahead during the time that others waste.”
The Genius of Oscar Wilde. . .
“I
have always been of the opinion that consistency is the last refuge of the
unimaginative.”
“The
only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is
history.”
“Prayer
must never be answered: if it is, it
ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.”
“Missionaries,
my dear! Don’t you realize that
missionaries are the divinely provided food for destitute and underfed
cannibals? Whenever they are on the
brink of starvation, Heaven in its infinite mercy sends them a nice plump
missionary.”
“Mr.
_______ is determined to show that, if he has not got genius, he can at least
be dull.”
“As
a writer, he has mastered everything except language.”
“You forget that a thing is not necessarily true
because a man dies for it.”
“Education
is an admirable thing. But it is well to
remember that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”
“Anybody
can make history. Only a great man can
write it.”
“Man
is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the
truth.”
“There
is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book.
Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
“Work
is the curse of the drinking classes of this country.”
“To
recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to
eat less.”
“Nowadays
most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover, when it is
too late, that the only thing one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”
“The
things one feels absolutely certain about are never true. That is the fatality of Faith.”
“One
can live for years sometimes without living at all, and then all life comes
crowding into one single hour.”
“I
hate vulgar realism in literature. The
man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one.”
“One
should always be in love. That is the
reason one should never marry.”
“Men always want to be a woman’s first love; women
want to be a man’s last romance.”
“One
needs misfortune to live happily.”
“I can resist anything but temptation.”
“I can resist anything but temptation.”
“Moderation is fatal. Nothing succeeds like excess.”
The Quotable Robert Heinlein. . .
“There
is no conclusive evidence of life after death—but there is no evidence of any
sort against it. Soon enough you will
know, so why fret over it?”
“If
you don’t like yourself, you can’t like other people.”
“A
motion to adjourn is always in order.”
“Money
is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers
work almost as well. “
“One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.”
“Men
rarely (if ever) manage to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a
spoiled child.”
“A
poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.”
“Democracy
is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something.”
“Everything in excess! To enjoy the flavor of life, take big
bites. Moderation is for monks.”
“The
most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up is that the Lord
God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universe, wants the saccharine
adoration of his creatures, can be swayed by their prayers, and becomes
petulant if He does not receive this flattery.
Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays
all the expenses of the oldest, largest, and least productive industry in all
history, organized religion.”
“The
second most preposterous notion is that copulation in inherently sinful.”
“A
woman is not property and husbands who think otherwise are living in a dream
world.”
“If
you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never
force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do.
Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.”
“Never
underestimate the power of human stupidity. “
“Always yield to temptation; it may not pass your
way again.”
“A
skunk is better company than a person who prides himself on being frank.”
“Formal
courtesy between husband and wife is even more important than it is between
strangers.”
From the World According to Edward. . .
“The
only middle-class virtue more highly over-rated than good table manners is
punctuality.”
“A man’s biological
imperative is to produce sperm. It’s
what he does, 24/7, all his life. A
woman’s biological imperative is to coax it out of him.”
Miscellaneous Funny Quotations. . .
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this
wasn’t it.” Groucho Marx
“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” Billy Wilder
“Some
people see things that are and ask, ‘Why?’
Some people dream of things that never were and ask, ‘Why Not?’ Some people have to go to work and don’t have
time for all that shit.” George Carlin
“It would be easier to grow sentimental about
motherhood were the prerequisites higher.” John Ciardi
“Nobody
in football should be called a genius. A
genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”
Joe Theismann
“Marilyn
Monroe was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way a midget is good
at being short.” Critic Clive James
Review
of a two-line poem: “Very nice, but
there are dull stretches.” Comte de
Rivarol
“I’m often wrong, but never in doubt.” Ivy Baker Priest
“I love mankind—it’s people I
can’t stand.” Charles M. Schulz
Review
of a bad novel: “This is not a novel to
be tossed aside lightly. It should be
thrown with great force.” Dorothy Parker
“‘Whom
are you?’ said he, for he had been to night school.” George Ade
“I’ve
posed nude for a photographer in the manner of Rodin’s Thinker, but I merely looked
constipated.” George Bernard Shaw
“Mr.
Atlee is a very modest man. But then he
has much to be modest about.” Winston
Churchill
“It
was wonderful meeting you. Usually a man
would have to go to a bowling alley to meet a woman of your stature.” Woody Allen
“Golf
is a game invented by the same people who think music comes out of
bagpipes.” Lee Trevino
“If
you can’t say something good about someone. . .sit right here by me.” Alice Roosevelt Longworth
“If
other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.” James McNeill Whistler.
“No one really listens to anyone else, and if you
try it for a while, you’ll see why.”
Mignon McLaughlin.
“You must not suppose, because I am a man of
letters, that I never tried to earn an honest living.” George Bernard Shaw.
“I
took a speed reading course and read War
and Peace in twenty minutes. It
involves Russia.” Woody Allen.
Egotist: “A person of low taste, more interested in himself
than in me.” Ambrose Bierce.
“It
is inconceivable that the whole Universe was merely created for us who live in
this third-rate planet of a third rate sun.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson.
“I prefer the wicked to the foolish. The wicked sometimes rest.” Alexander Dumas.
“To
err is human, to forgive is an impertinence.”
Anonymous.
Abstract
Art: “a product of the untalented sold
by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.”
Al Capp.
“You
can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word
alone.” Al Capone.
“I
have given up reading books. I find it
takes my mind off myself.” Oscar Levant.
Christian: “one who follows the teachings of Christ
insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.” Ambrose Bierce.
“The
classes that wash most are those that work least.” G. K. Chesterton
.
“A
democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and
vulgar employments.” Aristotle.
Television: “an invention that permits you to be
entertained in your living room by people you wouldn’t have in your
house.” David Frost.
“A liberal is a man too broadminded to take
his own side in a quarrel.” Robert
Frost.
“England
has forty-two religions and only two sauces.”
Voltaire.
“Be
careful of reading health books. You
might die of a misprint.” Mark Twain
“The
French aren’t much at fighting wars anymore.
Despite their reputation for fashion, their women have spindly
legs. Their music is sappy. But they do know how to whip up a plate of
grub.” Mike Royko.
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they
had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo,
Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.
In Switzerland they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of
democracy and peace, and what did they produce?
The cuckoo clock.” Orson Welles
“I’m
not a snob. Ask anybody. Well, anybody who matters.” Simon Lebon
“I am deeply superficial.” Ava Gardner.
“Humility
is something I’ve always prided myself on.”
Bernie Kosar, NFL QB
“Health
is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.” Anon.
“I
used to be a heavy gambler. Now I just
make mental bets. That’s how I lost my
mind.” Steve Allen.
“Religion has actually convinced people that there
is an invisible man living in the sky, who sees everything you do and wants you
to follow a special list of ten things or he’ll send you to a place with fire,
smoke, death, and misery forever and ever.
But he loves you.” George Carlin.
“If
only God would give me a clear sign.
Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.” Woody Allen.
“Give
me my golf clubs, fresh air, and a beautiful partner, and you can keep my golf
clubs and the fresh air.” Jack Benny.
“The
Dodge-Plymouth dealers have just had their annual raffle, and they’ve given
away a Catholic Church.” Lenny Bruce.
“TV
evangelists are the pro wrestlers of religion.”
Rick Overton.
“If you live to be a hundred, you’ve got it
made. Very few people die past that
age.” George Burns.
“Having
sex is like playing bridge. If you don’t
have a good partner, you better have a good hand.” Woody Allen.
“Can’t
we silence those Christian athletes who thank Jesus whenever they win, and
never mention His name when they lose?
You never hear them say, ‘Jesus made me drop the ball.’” George Carlin.
“Confidence is what you have before you understand
the problem.” Woody Allen
“A
computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kickboxing.” Emo Philips.
“Lawyers
believe a man is innocent until proven broke.”
Robin Hall.
“Kill
one man and you’re a murderer, kill a million and you’re a conqueror.” Jean Rostand.
“Having
money doesn’t make you happier. I have
fifty million dollars, but I’m just as happy as when I had forty-eight.” Arnold Schwarzenegger.
“We
are here on earth to do good unto others.
What the others are here for, I have no idea.” W. H. Auden.
