Famous Quotes
Bringing Quotations into Your Life and Life into Your Quotations
“A book is like a man—clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel.” John Steinbeck “I like a thin book because it will steady a table, a leather volume because it will strop a razor, and a heavy book because it can be thrown at a cat.” Mark Twain “Books admitted me to their world open-handedly, as people for their most part, did not. The life I lived in books was one of ease and freedom, worldly wisdom, glitter, dash, and style.” Jonathon Raban “Books are the carriers of civilization . . . They are companions, teachers, magicians, bankers of the treasures of the mind. Books are humanity in print.” Barbara Tuchman “Good books are the warehouses of ideas.” H.G. Wells “The good of a book lies in its being read.” Umberto Eco “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some are to be chewed and digested.” Francis Bacon “Novel, n. A short story padded.” Ambrose Bierce from The Devil’s Dictionary “Books are the true levelers.” William Channing “Books, the children of the brain.” Jonathon Swift
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“Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.” Sir William Temple “All books are divisible into two classes: the books of the hour, and the books of all time.” John Ruskin “I devoured books like a person taking vitamins, afraid that otherwise I would remain this gelatinous narcissist, with no possibility of ever becoming thoughtful, of ever being taken seriously.” Ann LaMott “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours.” J.D. Salinger “Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age 3, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.” Oprah Winfrey “I cannot live without books.” Thomas Jefferson “A writer needs 3 things: experience, observation, and imagination. Any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.” William Faulkner “All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard no horse sing a song.” Louis Armstrong “Once you’ve put one of his books down, you simply can’t pick it up again.” Mark Twain on Henry James “Critics are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts.” Jeffrey Robinson “Writing to a magazine that had published his obituary: ‘I’ve just read that I am dead. Don’t forget to delete me from your list of subscribers.’“ Rudyard Kipling “The covers of this book are too far apart.” Ambrose Bierce
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“From a book review: ‘This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.’” Dorothy Pierce “My favorite poem is the one that starts ‘Thirty days hath September’ because it actually teaches you something.” Groucho Marx “I grew up with six brothers. That’s how I learned to dance—waiting for the bathroom.” Bob Hope “Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.” Charlotte Whitton “A woman who strives to be like a man lacks ambition.” Anon. “Rich widows: The only secondhand goods that sell at first-class prices.” Ben Franklin “An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have: The old she gets, the more interested he is in her.” Agatha Christie “The first half of our life is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.” Clarence Darrow “Love: A temporary insanity curable by marriage.” Ambrose Bierce “Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.” Oscar Wilde “Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing they marry later; for another thing they die earlier.” H.L. Mencken “Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your children.” Sam Levenson “Papa loved Mamma Mamma loved men Mamma’s in the graveyard Papa’s in the pen.” Carl Sandburg
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“I haven’t spoken to my wife in years—I didn’t want to interrupt her.” Rodney Dangerfield “I like children—if they’re properly cooked.” W.C. Fields “I wasn’t kissing her, I was just whispering in her mouth.” Chico Marx “We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like.” Jean Cocteau “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.” Mark Twain “I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent invitation.” Oscar Wilde “The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline baggage.” Mark Russell “It is difficult to see why lace should be so expensive; it is mostly holes.” Mary Wilson Little “The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines.” Frank Lloyd Wright “A chrysanthemum by any other name would be easier to spell.” William J. Johnston “A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.” Robert Frost “It is better to keep your mouth shut and to appear stupid than to open it and to remove all doubt.” Mark Twain “A celebrity is a person who works hard all his/her life to become wellknown, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized. Fred Allen “The fellow who laughs last may laugh best, but he gets the reputation of being slow-witted.” Leo Rosten
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“Psychiatry enables us to correct our faults by confessing our parents’ shortcomings.” Laurence Peter “Jogging is for people who aren’t intelligent enough to watch T.V.” Victoria Wood “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.” Katharine Hepburn “When a man wants to murder a tiger, he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him, he calls it ferocity.” Anon. “Friends are God’s apology for relations.” Hugh Kingsmill “A house unkempt cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.” Rose Macaulay “Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you’ll be happy to hear that the phone is for you.” Fran Lebowitz “What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.” Anon. “Whoever said money can’t buy happiness didn’t know where to shop.” Gittel Hudnick “Where there’s a will, there are relations.” Michael Gill “It’s not that I’m afraid to die; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Woody Allen “Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.” Mark Twain “I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.” Mark Twain “Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.” Bertrand Russell
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“I’m prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.” Winston Churchill “If you take epitaphs seriously, we ought to bury the living and resurrect the dead.” Mark Twain “My doctor is wonderful. Once, when I couldn’t afford an operation, he touched up the X-rays.” Joey Bishop “I don’t need you to remind me of my age; I have a bladder to do that for me.” Stephen Fry “Politics: The art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich by promising to protect each from the other.” Oscar Ameringer “Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?” Stanislaw J. Lee “Intuition is reason in a hurry.” Holbrook Jackson “To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” Abraham Lincoln “A speaker who does not strike oil in ten minutes should stop boring.” Funny pun! “Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.” Graham Greene “Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.” Francis Bacon “The man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much; the man who is an optimist after forty-eight knows too little.” Mark Twain “Autobiography: An obituary in serial form with the last installment missing.” Quentin Crisp “Insider trading: Stealing too fast.” Calvin Trillin “Gossip: Hearing something you like about someone you don’t.” Earl Wilson
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“Baby: A loud noise at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.” Ronald Knox “Censor: A man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.” Anon. “Peace: Co-existence or no existence.” Bertrand Russell “Cynic: A man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.” H.L. Mencken “A bore is one who has the power of speech but no the capacity for conversation.” Benjamin Disraeli “Preposition: An enormously versatile part of grammar, as in ‘What made you pick this book I didn’t want to be read to out of up for?’” Winston Churchill “Conscience: The thing that feels bad when everything else is feeling good.” Anon. “A sadist is someone who refuses to be mean to a masochist.” Anon. “An Irishman is the only man in the world who will step over the bodies of a dozen naked women to get to a bottle of stout.” Anon. “The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” Anon. “’Have your eyes ever been checked?’ ‘No, doctor, they’ve always been blue.’” Anon. “An after-dinner speech should be just like a lady’s dress: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to be interesting.” Anon. “I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.” Winston Churchill
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“My wife is a light eater; as soon as it’s light, she starts eating.” Henny Youngman “I’ve been on a constant diet for the last two decades. I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. By all accounts I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.” Erma Bombeck “I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes—and six months later you have to start all over again.” Joan Rivers “I can resist everything except temptation.” Oscar Wilde “When I’m good, I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.” Mae West “The rush-hour traffic I’d just as soon miss when caraftercarismovinglike this.” Robert Lauher “If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?” Mark Twain “I’ve just heard about his illness; let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” Irvin Cobb “Winston Churchill to Labour MP Bessie Braddock: B: ‘Winston, you’re drunk.’ C: ‘Bessie, you’re ugly. But tomorrow I shall be sober.’” “German is the most extravagantly ugly language. It sounds like someone using a sick-bag on a 747.” William Rushton “Adolescent: Someone who acts like a baby when you don’t treat him/her like an adult.” Anon. “Teenagers: People who express a burning desire to be different by dressing alike.” Anon. “The only end of writing is to enable readers to better enjoy life or to better endure it.” Samuel Johnson
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“What is now proved was once only imagined.” William Blake “Brain: An organ that is as strong as its weakest think.” Anon. “The worst thing about being a good sport is that you have to lose to prove it.” Anon. “Free speech: What teenagers get from their parents when they get into trouble.” Anon. “Never hyphenate the word headache, unless it is a splitting one.” “Tomorrow: One of the greatest labor-saving inventions of today.” “What a pity human beings can’t exchange problems. Everyone knows exactly how to solve the other person’s.” Olin Miller “Music: What feelings sound like.” Anon. “Laziness travels so slowly that poverty soon overtakes him.” Ben Franklin “It’s a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water.” Franklin P. Jones “Our language is funny; a fat chance and a slim chance mean the same thing.” J. Gustov White “I wish there were a knob on the T.V. so you could turn up the intelligence. They have one marked brightness, but it doesn’t work.” Gallagher “The reason there’s so much ignorance is that those who have it are so eager to share it.” Frank A. Clark “Wit: What you would have said had you thought of it.” Anon. “When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.” Erma Bombeck
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“Yawn: A silent shout.” Anon. “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” Anon. “Every man is entitled to be valued by his best moment.” R.W. Emerson “I walk the world in wonder.” Oscar Wilde “Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.” Chesterton “Don’t worry about getting older; when you stop getting older, you’re dead.” “Man has to go to the dentist to keep his teeth in good condition so that he won’t have to go to the dentist.” Ogden Nash “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” Robert Frost “Dairy slogan: Drinka pinta milka day.” Anon. “I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colours. I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.” Winston Churchill “I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated His ability.” Oscar Wilde “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.” Mark Twain “We make a living by what we get; we make a life by what we give.” Winston Churchill “Why was I born with such contemporaries?” Oscar Wilde “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” Mark Twain
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“He is a very modest man. But then he has much to be modest about.” Winston Churchill “It is better to be alone than in bad company.” George Washington “My alma mater was books, a good library.” Malcolm X “When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to be alive and talking to me.” Jonathan Swift “Excuse me for not answering your letter sooner. I have been so busy not answering letters that I could not get around to not answering yours in time.” Groucho Marx “Bees are . . . Buccaneers of Buzz.” Emily Dickinson “Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.” Ambrose Bierce “Learn to see, hear, and think for yourself.” Malcolm X “My only advice is to stay awake, listen carefully, and yell for help if you need it.” Judy Blume “I never forget a face, but I’ll make an exception in your case.” Groucho Marx “We must live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “A man who has no imagination has no wings.” Muhammad Ali “You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.” Medgar Evers “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probably reason why so few engage in it.” Henry Ford “What God wants, God gets. God help us all.” Roger Waters
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“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.” Abigail Adams “The fate of empires depends on the education of youth.” Aristotle “It ain’t what a man don’t know that makes him a fool, but what he does know that ain’t so.” Josh Billings “A little learning, indeed may be a dangerous thing, but the want of learning is a calamity to any people.” Frederick Douglass “Not to know is bad. Not to wish to know is worse.” Wolof West African Proverb “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” Jacques Barzun “If there is no struggle there is no progress.” Frederick Douglass “Experience is a hard school, but a fool will learn in no other.” Irish Proverb “A proverb is no proverb to you till life has illustrated it.” John Keats “It’s a funny thing about mothers and fathers. Even when their own child is the most disgusting blister you could ever imagine, they still think that he or she is wonderful.” Roald Dahl “Cold rice and cold tea are bearable, but cold looks and cold words are not.” Japanese Proverb “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant, if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” Anne Bradstreet “When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at
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war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.” Herbert Hoover “Happiness comes when your work and your words are of benefit to yourself and to others.” Buddha “Shall we make a new rule of life . . . always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?” J.M. Barrie “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of others.” Charles Dickens “Words can do wonderful things. They can urge; they can wheedle, whip or whine. They can forge a fiery army out of a hundred languid men.” Gwendolyn Brooks “A word is dead/When it is said,/Some say./I say it just/Begins to live/That day.” Emily Dickinson “Loneliness is the most terrible poverty.” Mother Teresa “Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.” Robert Benchley “Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” Victor Hugo “Yams fill the belly, but music fills the heart.” West African Proverb “Nature is the art of God.” Dante “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” Ralph Waldo Emerson “Though you drive Nature out with a pitchfork, she will always find her way back.” Horace
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“I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.” Groucho Marx “Prejudices . . . are the most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education.” Charlotte Bronte “We hate some persons because we do not know them and will not know them because we hate them.” Charles Caleb Colton “Prejudice is the child of ignorance.” William Hazlitt “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Eleanor Roosevelt “I complained that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet.” Persian Proverb “Genius has many limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.” Elbert Hubbard “Wisdom in not acquired without investigation.” Sankara Archarga “Labor disgraces no man. Unfortunately, you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.” Ulysses S. Grant “The wastebasket is a writer’s best friend.” Isaac Bashevis Singer “American youth attributes much more significance to arriving at driver’slicense age than at voting age.” Marshall McLuhan “I desire that there be as many different persons in this world as possible, and that each one be careful to preserve his/her own way.” Henry David Thoreau “Poetry is the best words in the best order.” Samuel Coleridge “Cowards die many times before their deaths.” William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar
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“Preach! Write! Act! Do anything save to lie down and die!” Nathaniel Hawthorne “Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars.” Serbian Proverb “A graceful taunt is worth a thousand insults.” Louis Nizer “I feel so miserable without you, it’s almost like having you here.” Stephen Bishop “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.” Clarence Darrow “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” William Faulkner about Ernest Hemingway “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?” Ernest Hemingway “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” Moses Hadas “His ears made him look like a taxicab with both doors open.” Howard Hughes about Clark Gable “He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.” Samuel Johnson “He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up.” Paul Keating “He had delusions of adequacy.” Walter Kerr “There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.” Jack E. Leonard “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.” Groucho Marx
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“He has the attention span of a lightning bolt.” Robert Redford “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” Thomas Brackett Reed “Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” Mark Twain “He has no enemies, but he is intensely disliked by his friends.” Oscar Wilde “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” Billy Wilder “He used statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts . . . for support rather than illumination.” Andrew Long “The Earth has enough for every man’s need but not for every man’s greed.” Gandhi “It is better to wear out than to rust out.” Richard Cumberland “Not all those who wander are lost.” J.R.R. Tolkien “A room without books in it is like a body without a soul.” Cicero “People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid.” Soren A. Kierkegaard “His ignorance is encyclopedic.” Abba Eban “In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” MLK, Jr. “Do, or do not. There is no ‘try’.” Yoda “The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don’t have it.” G.B. Shaw
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“Blessed is the man, who having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence to the fact.” George Eliot “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” Samuel Johnson “There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” Frank Zappa “Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” Jimi Hendrix “Nice writing isn’t enough. Writing without voice is as bland as oatmeal.” “All the fun’s in how you say a thing.” Robert Frost “Perhaps the worst sin in life is knowing right and not doing it.” MLK, Jr. “The most important thing is not to stop questioning.” Einstein “Oh, God, to reach the point of death only to realize you have never lived at all.” Thoreau “Don’t allow your epitaph to read, ‘Dead but not used up.’” Thoreau “Don’t volunteer for a life-sentence of misery.” “Fear of falling and loud noised are the only fears we’re born with.” “Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Consensus asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But conscience asks, ‘Is it right?’” MLK, Jr. “Without art, the crudeness of the world would be unbearable.” George Bernard Shaw “Books are the best friends you can have. They inform, enlighten, entertain, and they don’t talk back.” John Steinbeck “Dealing with bureaucracy is like trying to nail jelly to a wall.” JFK
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“People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.” “Youngsters are unpredictable. You never know how far they will drive you up the wall.” “How do you explain ‘clockwise’ to a kid who grew up using a digital clock?” “Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.” “In the old days, the board of education was a shingle in the woodshed.” “Old grammarians never die, they just slip into a comma.” “Every time history repeats itself, the price doubles.” “It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts.” Bill Vaughn “If ignorance were a muffler, the world would be as silent as a tomb.” Stephen Greenleaf “Lawyers are the only people in the world who can write a 10,000 word document and call it a brief.” “Laziness is no more than the habit of resting before you get tired.” “I play it cool/And dig all jive,/That’s the reason/I stay alive./My motto/As I live and learn,/Is dig and be dug in return.” Langston Hughes “Adam was the only man who, when he had a brilliant idea, knew that nobody had done it before him.” Mark Twain “What a pity human beings can’t exchange problems. Everyone knows exactly how to sole the other person’s.” Olin Miller
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“A bright eye indicates curiosity; a black eye too much.” “Even if your parents tell you about the birds and the bees, they never seem to mention the mortgages on those aviaries and hives.” “I do not object to people looking at their watches when I am speaking—but I strongly object when they start shaking them to make certain they are still working.” Lord Birkett “If sports are supposed to be good for you, how come athletes are over the hill at thirty-one?” “Whenever I’m asked what kind of writing is most lucrative, I have to say ransom notes.” “Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh, but then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me. Then it wouldn’t seem quite so funny.” Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts “You know the hardest thing about having cerebral palsy and being a woman? It’s plucking your eyebrows. That’s how I originally got pierced ears.” Geri Jewell “Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees then names the streets after them.” Bill Vaughan “What do you call people who are afraid of Santa Claus? Claustrophobic.” “Support bacteria. They’re the only culture some people have.” “My mother buried three husbands, and two were just napping.” Rita Rudner “I love deadlines. I especially love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” Douglas Adams “Honolulu—it’s got everything. Sand for the children, sun for the wife, and sharks for the wife’s mother.” Ken Dodd
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What herb cures all ailments? By the raven’s crime and by this rhyme, the answer would be . . . (thyme) Young I am tall, old I am short, during my life I glow, but your breath is my foe. (a candle) “Sometimes I feel like running around naked. Then I drink a bottle of Windex, and it keeps me from streaking.” Austin Janes “One word cannot strike sparks from itself; it takes at least two for that. It takes words lying side by side to breed wonders.” Robert Francis “I reject your reality and substitute my own.” Adam on Myth Busters “Most people want to lose enough weight so they look good in a bathing suit. Me, I just want to lose enough weight so when I brush my teeth, my belly doesn’t jiggle. After that it’s just maintenance.” Kevin James “Expecting life to treat you well because you are a good person is like expecting an angry bull not to charge you because you are a vegetarian.” Shari R. Barr “Never eat more than you can lift.” Miss Piggy “Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only good for wallowing in.” Katherine Mansfield “You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.” Indira Gandhi “Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.” Phyllis Diller “The only reason I would take up jogging again is so I could hear heavy breathing.” Erma Bombeck “It’s the good girls who keep the diaries; the bad girls never have the time.” Tallulah Bankhead
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“They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.” Tallulah Bankhead “Don’t be humble. You’re not that great.” Golda Meir “A woman is like a teabag—only in hot water do you realize how strong she is.” Nancy Reagan “Moses dragged us for forty years through the desert to bring us to the one place in the Middle East where there is no oil.” Golda Meir “The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put makeup on two faces.” Maureen Murphy “If the world were a logical place, men would ride side-saddle.” Rita Mae Brown “The cure for anything is salt water—sweat, tears, or the sea.” Isak Dinesen “Reality is a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.” Lily Tomlin “Whenever you see food beautifully arranged on a plate, you know someone’s fingers have been all over it.” Julia Child “Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.” Jean Kerr “You must grow like a tree, not like a mushroom.” Janet Erskine Stuart “If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t there more happy people?” Anonymous “Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.” Don Marquis “The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn.” Earl Warren “People are stupid; they will believe anything, either because they want it to be true, or they are afraid it might be true.” Jerry Goodkind (Wizard’s
First Rule)
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“If you want a rainbow, you have to put up with the rain.” Anonymous “Giving money and power to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” Anonymous “Never judge a book by its movie.” Anonymous “We spend the first twelve months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.” Anonymous “A conclusion is simply the place where you got tired of thinking.” Anonymous “Some people are going to leave a mark on this world; while, others will leave a stain.” Anonymous “If you can smile when things go wrong, you have someone in mind to blame.” “There is no eraser for life, but there is a pencil.” Mike Kirkman grade 8 2007-08 “Charlie put his arm around his sister’s shoulder and started walking her toward the front door so she could go outside and smoke. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ he said. ‘You’re doing the same thing, trying to reconcile all the moms that Mom ever was—the one you wanted, the one she was when you needed her and she was there, the one she was when she didn’t understand. Most of us don’t live our lives with one, integrated self that meets the world, we’re a whole bunch of selves. When someone dies, they all integrate into the soul—the essence of who we are, beyond the different faces we wear throughout our lives. You’re just hating the selves you’ve always hated and loving the ones you’ve always loved. It’s bound to mess you up’” (210 A Dirty Job by Moore).
“I would endure any amount of pain to have the right to speak my mind.” Bonnie Winings (student in 2008)
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“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of god. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, out presence liberates others.” Nelson Mandela (Thank you Nick Miller—8th grade student 2008) “The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.” Elizabeth Hardwick “Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.” Carl Zwanzig “If I only had a little humility, I'd be perfect.” Ted Turner Nobody in the game of football should be called a genius. A genius is somebody like Norman Einstein.” Joe Theismann (On Sylvester Stallone) “He is to acting what Liberace was to pumping iron.” Rex Reed “An adult is someone who has stopped growing at both ends and started growing in the middle.” Anon. “You know you’ve reached adulthood when sleeping on the couch makes your back hurt.” Anon. “Always use tasteful words. You may have to eat them.” Anon. “Believe nothing until it has been officially denied.” Anon. “Careful grooming may take twenty years off a woman’s age, but you can’t fool a flight of stairs.” Marlene Dietrich
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“Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age—as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.” Phyllis Diller “Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.” Anon. “Alcohol is good for you. My grandfather proved it irrevocably. He drank two quarts of booze every mature day of his life and lived to the age of 103. I was at the cremation—that fire would not go out.” Dave Astor “Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.” Fran Lebowitz “If all the world’s a stage, I want to operate the trap door.” Paul Beatty “Adults are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up because they’re looking for ideas.” Paula Poundstone “What’s my loftiest ambition? I’ve always wanted to throw an egg into an electric fan.” Oliver Herford “You have to wonder about a country where the bombs are smarter than the high school graduates. At least the bombs can find Iraq on the map.” A. Whitney Brown “America is the land of wide lawns and narrow minds.” Ernest Hemingway “What’s an Amish guy with his hand up a horse’s rear end? A mechanic.” Robin Williams “Great fury, like great whisky, requires long fermentation.” Truman Capote “Experts say you should never hit your children in anger. When is a good time? When you’re feeling festive?” Roseanne Barr
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“I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls, and they say, ‘Because it’s such a beautiful animal.’ I think my mother’s attractive, but I have photographs of her.” Ellen DeGeneres “She was a large woman who seemed not so much dressed as upholstered.” J.M. Barrie “An archaeologist is someone whose life is in ruins.” Anon. “The last time I was in Spain, I got through six Jeffrey Archer novels. I must remember to take enough toilet paper the next time.” Bob Monkhouse “It’s no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party.” Nick Hornby High Fidelity “When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. That’s relativity.” Albert Einstein “If there really is a God who created the entire universe with all of its glories, and He decides to deliver a message to humanity, He will not use as His messenger a person on cable TV with a bad hairstyle and an ugly suit.” Dave Barry “The one story from Sunday school that sticks in my head is the story of the baby Jesus having no crib for a bed. How said is that? Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Joseph a carpenter?” Bruce Clark “I’m the girl who lost her reputation but never missed it.” Mae West “I’d like a petite filet mignon, very lean, not so lean that it lacks flavor, but not so fat that it leaves drippings on the plate, and I don’t want it cooked, just lightly seared on either side, pink in the middle, not a true pink but not a mauve either, something in between, bearing in mind the slightest error either way and it’s ruined.” Niles Crane Frasier
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“Retirement is twice as much husband and half as much money.” Bette Midler (Review of Clash of the Titans) “There’s a real possibility some audiences will be turned to stone before Medusa even appears.” Anon. (Review of the play Halfway to Hell) “When Mr. Wilbur calls his play Halfway to Hell, he underestimates the distance.” Brooks Atkinson (Perfectly Scandalous) “One of those plays in which all the actors unfortunately enunciated very clearly.” Robert Benchley (revival of Godspell) “For those who missed it the first time, this is your golden opportunity; you can miss it again.” Michael Billington “I don’t like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions—the curtain was up.” George S. Kaufman (Break a Leg) “I have seen stronger plots in a cemetery.” Stewart Klein “The scenery was beautiful, but the actors got in front of it.” Alexander Woollcott “Sacred cows make the best hamburger.” Abbie Hoffman “I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me it would defeat the purpose.” George Carlin “I used to impale the heads of door-to-door salespeople on pikes in the garden as a warning to others—until I learned that it’s bad Feng Shui.” Greg Glynn “I won’t say ours was a tough school, but we had our own coroner.” Lenny Bruce “Apparently, Arnold was inspired by President Bush, who proved you can be a successful politician in this country even if English is your second language.” Conan O’Brien
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“If it squirms, it’s biology; if it stinks, it’s chemistry; if it doesn’t work, it’s physics; and if you can’t understand it, it’s mathematics.” Magnus Pyke “I always get the feeling that when lesbians are looking at me, they’re thinking, ‘That’s why I’m not a heterosexual.’” George Costanza Seinfeld “The 1960s were when hallucinogenic drugs were really big. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we had shows then like The Flying Nun.” Ellen DeGeneres “Celine Dion’s in a 4,000-seat auditorium built specially to handle her voice. But it doesn’t work. I could still hear her.” Lewis Black “If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest have to die too?” Anon. “Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.” Aaron Levenstein “Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” H.L. Mencken “Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.” Al Capp “In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.” Grouch Marx “Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It’s not fair that some men should be happier than others.” Oscar Wilde “After you’ve heard two eye-witness accounts of an auto accident, you begin to worry about history.” Anon. “Advertising helps raise the standard of living by raising the standard of longing.” Anon. “When a woman tells you her age, it’s all right to look surprised, but don’t scowl.” Wilson Mizner
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“The individual activity of one man with a backbone will do more than a thousand men with a mere wishbone.” J.H Boetcher “When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a manner that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.” Anon. “The one good thing about apathy is you don’t have to exert yourself to show you’re sincere about it.” Anon. “Architecture is frozen music.” Johann Goethe “If my husband would ever meet a woman on the street who looked like the women in his paintings, he would fall over in a dead faint.” Mrs. Pablo Picasso “They now have a pill that’s half aspirin and half glue. It’s for people who get splitting headaches.” Anon. “An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.” Anon. “Last night I read a book that brought tears to my eyes—It was my bankbook.” Anon. “The most frightening horror tales are told by bathroom scales.” Anon. “Beauty always comes from within—within jars, tubes, and compacts.” Anon. “The ultimate price for bigamy is two mothers-in-law.” Anon. “After looking at the bill for my operation, I understand why doctors wear masks in the operating room.” Anon. “Show me a twin birth, and I’ll show you infant replay.” Anon. “A yawn is nature’s way of giving the person listening to a bore an opportunity to open his mouth.” Anon. “A budget is a system of reminding yourself you can’t afford the kind of living you’ve grown accustomed to.” Anon.
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“Say what you will about burglars, they still make house calls.” Anon. “People are strange: They want the front of the bus, the back of the church, and the center of attention.” Anon. “You can’t say civilization isn’t advancing. In every war they kill you in a new way.” Will Rogers “A comic is a person, who, when he dies, is at his wit’s end.” Anon. “You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think.” Anon. “Congress is where a man gets up to speak, says nothing, nobody listens—and then everybody disagrees.” Anon. “Conscience is the inner voice that tells you the IRS might check your return.” Anon. “Men go on cruises for the fishing; women go on cruises for the hunting.” Anon. “Two things are bad for the heart—running up stairs and running down people.” Anon. “Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.” Samuel Johnson “All I desire for my own burial is not to be buried alive.” Lord Chesterfield “I wish I had a dental appointment to cancel; it always brightens my day.” Anon.
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