Favorite Quotes

Quotes of a Humorous Nature

• To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion. -- Snarfvs Maximvs (slashdot user)
• ... If you were normal. But then no one ever accused you of that. -Tom
• Was that one by me or about me? - Tom (it was said about me)
• I feel your pain. -William Jefferson Clinton
• Show me a man who is a good loser and I'll show you a man who is playing golf with his boss. - Nebraska Smoke-Eater
• If dandelions were hard to grow, they would be most welcome on any lawn. - Andrew V. Mason
• This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. - Dorothy Parker
• Never put off until tomorrow what can be put off until the day after. - Mark Twain
• Reader, suppose you are an idiot. Now, suppose that you are in congress... but I repeat myself. - Mark Twain
• Some people want to achieve immortality through their achievements or their descendants. I want to achieve immortality by not dying. - Woody Allen
• So far it has been one week that 40% of U.S. government employees have not been working. Has anyone noticed? - Jackie Mason
• Withdrawal in disgust is not the same as apathy. - Richard Linklater
• Whoever said that today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact obviously never read much science fiction. - Me
• In seeking the unattainable, simplicity only gets in the way. -Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982
• So, what's with this guy Gideon, anyway? And why can't he ever remember his Bible? -Fortunes (a unix program)
• Well, I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since. - G.K. Chesterton
• The God who created the universe came down to the earth as a human being? Well, stranger things have happened. What you ask? Well, there was a planet called earth for God to come down to, to say nothing of the human beings who were there to call it the earth. - Me
• If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you streal from many it's research. - Wilson Mizner
• Plagiarize, plagiarize,
  Let no man's work evade your eyes,
  Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
  Don't Shade your eyes,
  But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize.
  Only be sure to call it research. - Tom Lehrer
• Clay's Conclusion: Creativity is great, but plagiarism is faster.
• A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we have enlightened him with ours. - Anonymous
• This will be my undoing, if I am undone, not Meletus or Anytus but the slanders and envy of many people. This has destroyed many other good men and will, I think, continue to do so. There is no danger that it will stop at me. - Socrates, the Apology.

Assorted favorite quotes:

• "Cheshire-Puss," she began, "would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
  "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
  "I don't care much where--" said Alice.
  "Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

  -- Lewis Caroll
• The further the mind analyseth and pursueth these fugitive ideas the more it is lost and bewildered; the objects, at first fleeting and minute, soon vanishing out of sight. Certainly, in any sense, a second or third [derivative] seems an obscure Mystery. The incipient celerity of an incipient celerity, the nascent augment of a nascent augment, i.e., of a thing which hath no magnitude -- take it in what light you please, the clear conception of it will, if I mistake not, be found impossible; whether it be so or no I appeal to the trial of every thinking reader. And if the second [derivative] be inconceibable, what are we to think of third, fourth, fifth [derivatives], and so on without end?... - Bishop Berkeley, The Analyst
• And what are these [derivatives]? The velocities of evanescent increments. And what are these same evanescent increments? They are neither finite quantities, nor quanitities infinitely small, nor yet nothing. May we not call them the ghosts of departed quantities...? - Bishop Berkeley, The Analyst
• Thoroughly worldly people never understand the world, they altogether rely on a few cynical maxims which aren't true. - G.K. Chesterton
• For your legal cause or civil
  you fight well and get your fee.
  For your God or dream or devil
  you will answer not to me.
  -G.K. Chesterton, and Ode to F.E. Smith
• ... or once more with rallied arms to try what may be yet regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell?" - Satan, Pradise Lost, John Milton
• Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. -E.B. White
• The best way to pay for a lovely moment is by enjoying it. -Richard Bach
• Everwhere is withing walking distance if you have the time. -Steven Wright
• The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it. -Doug Larson
• A leading authority is anyone who has guessed right more than once. -Frank A. Clark
• Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain - and most do. -Dale Carnegie
• Happiness is a concious choice, not an automatic response. -Mildred Barthel
• If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles. -Doug Larson
• The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him. -Henry L. Stimson
• The worst Prison would be a closed heart. -Pope John Paul II
• Everything is changing. People are taking comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke. -Will Rogers
• Spring is when you feel like wistling even with a shoe full of slush. -Doug Larson
• A skeptic is a person who, upon seeing the handwriting on the wall, claims its a forgery. -Morris Bender
• Nothing in fine print is ever good news. - Andy Rooney, 60 minutes
• If you don't have any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble. - Bob Hope
• Anyone can hold the helm while the sea is calm. -Publilius Syrus
• An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man. - Ralph Waldo Emmerson
• To be great is to be misunderstood. -Ralph Waldo Emmerson
• Sometimes the fool who rushes in gets the job done. - Al Bernstein
• Children are likely to live up to what you beleive of them. - Lady Bird Johnson
• A friend is someone who is there for you when he'd rather be anywhere else. - Len Wein
• Time has a wonderful way of weading out the trivial. - Richard Ben Sapir
• A politician is a person who can make waves and then make you think that he is the only one who can save the ship. - Ivern Ball
• May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's Resolutions. - Joey Adams
• Nothing makes a person more productive then the last minute. - Unknown
• Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't. - Erica Jong

Proverbs

• Money is a good servant but a poor master. [French]
• A stumble may prevent a fall. [English]
• Trust in God - But tie your camel tight. [Persian]
• Speak the truth, but leave immediately after. [Slovenian]
• Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore. [Russian]

Quotes of a more philisophical nature:

• "In the end, we will only conserve what we love, we will only love what we know, and we will only know what we are taught." -- Baba Dioum
• If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhapse it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, how ever measured or far away. -Henry David Thoreau
• What a peice of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so. -Shakespeare (Hamlet)
• No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a peice of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. -John Donne (meditation XVII)
• Gifted with high perception I lack the low enjoying powers -Herman Melville (Moby Dick, chapter 37)
• Am I my brother's keeper? -Cain
• Democracy without morality is impossible. -[I don't know]
• I am a man, therefore nothing human is alien to me. - Terence (Roman)
• I do not claim that the universe had to be created. I claim that it was. - Me
• Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle. - Michaelangelo
• Well, I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since. - G.K. Chesterton
• Thought the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all. - Friedrich Von Logau

Quotes sent in by readers

• Early to Bed, early to rise, makes a man weak, and blind in the eyes. - Orson Scott Card
• Often does hatered hurt itself! -JRR Tolkien
• Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. - Robert Frost
• To deny others the right to express their opinions is to assume one's own infallibility. -John Stuart Mill
• War seldom enters but where wealth allures. - John Dryden
• The only ones in this life that are truly blind are those who only see with thier eyes. - Steven Buck
• A journey of a thousand miles must begin with one step. - Lao-tzu
• If the facts don't fit the theorie, then change the facts. - Albert Einstein
• To run away from danger is to run away from glory. - straat
• Women should be obsene and not heard. - John Lennon
• Imagination is more important than knowledge - Albert Einstein
• He who cannot love, cannot cook  - Damian Inwood (1999)

The Quote Repository

Quotes from A Man for All Seasons

• TM: Do you have a position for him?
  N: Do you recommend him?
  TM: [pause] no.
• TM: Be a teacher. You might be a good one. Perhapse even a great one.
  RR: If I was, who would know it?
  TM: You. Your pupils. Your friends. God. Not a bad public lad.
• W: If I had served God not half so well as I had served my king, God would not have left me here, to die in this place.
  N: Thank God you're dying here, the king would have you to die in the tower.
• TM: Whatever may be done by smiling, you may rely on me to do.
• TM: Yes. I'd give the devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake.
• RR: I was lamenting. I've lost my innocence.
  C: some time ago. Have you only just noticed?
• TM: I trust I make myself obscure?
  N: Perfectly.
• N: You lay traps for me.
  TM: I show you the times.
• N: Your life lies in your own hands, Thomas, as it always has been.
  TM: Is that so my Lord? Then I'll keep a good grip on it.
• TM: The world must construe according to its wits. This court must construe according to the law.
• TM: There is one question I would like to ask the whitness. That is a chain of office you're wearing. May I see it? [examines it] The red dragon. What's this?
  C: Sir Richard is appointed Attourney General for Whales.
  TM: For Whales? Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for whales?

Quotes from Star Trek

• Stop it? I'm counting on it. - Kirk, A Taste of Armageddon

Quotes from G.K. Chesterton

• Somebody complained, I think, to Matthew Arnold that he was getting as dogmatic as Carlyle. He replied, "That may be true; but you overlook an obvious difference. I am dogmatic and right, and Carlyle is dogmatic and wrong." - Heretics Chapter 20
• We may call budhism a faith; though to us it seems more like a doubt. - The Everlasting Man
• Christianity satisfies suddenly and perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the right way up; satisfies it supremely in this; that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic and sadness something special and small. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear. -Orthodoxy, Chatper: Authority & The Adventurer
• I have dealt at length with such typical triads of doubt in order to convey the main contention--that my own case for Christianity is rational; but it is not simple. It is an accumulation of varied facts, like the attitude of the ordinary agnostic. But the ordinary agnostic has got his facts all wrong. He is a non-believer for a multitude of reasons; but they are untrue reasons. He doubts because the Middle Ages were barbaric, but they weren't; because Darwinism is demonstrated, but it isn't; because miracles do not happen, but they do; because monks were lazy, but they were very industrious; because nuns are unhappy, but they are particularly cheerful; because Christian art was sad and pale, but it was picked out in peculiarly bright colours and gay with gold; because modern science is moving away from the supernatural, but it isn't, it is moving towards the supernatural with the rapidity of a railway train. -Orthodoxy, Chatper: Authority & The Adventurer
• Well, I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since. - Orthodoxy, Chapter: The logic of Elfland

Quotes from C.S. Lewis

The Problem of Pain

• The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their suffereing might be like his. - George Macdonald, quoted after dedication page.
• I must add, too, that the only purpose of the book is to solve the intellectual problem raised by suffering; for the far higher task of teaching fortitude and patience I was never fool enough to suppose myself qualified, nor have I anything to offer my readers except my conviction that when pain is to be bourne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all. - preface.
• Love can forbear... and Love can forgive... but Love can never be reconciled to an unlovely object... He can never, therefore, be reconciled to your sin, because sin itself is incapable of being altered; but He may be reconciled to your person, because that may be restored. - Traherne, quoted in Chapter 3.
• You can have no greater sign of a confirmed pride than when you think you are humble enough. - Law, quoted in Chapter 4.

Quotes from William Shakespeare

The History of Henry V

• Alas, your too much love and care of me are heavy orisons 'gainst this poor wretch! If little faults, proceeding on distemper, shall not be wink'd at, how shall we stretch our eye when capital crimes, chew'd, shallow'd, and digested, appear before us? We'll yet enlarge that man, though Cambrige, Scroop, and Grey, in their dear care and tender preservation of our person, would have him punish'd. - King Henry

The Tragedy of King Lear

• This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune - often the surfeits of our own behavior - we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail, and my nativity was under ursa major; so that it follows I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. - Edmund
• The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us: The dark and vicious place where thee he got cost him his eyes. -Edgar
• May not an ass know when the cart draws the horse? - The Fool

Much Ado About Nothing

• I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his grace; and it better fits my blood to be disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied but I am a plain dealing villain. -Don John

Othello

• O villainous! I have looked upon the world for four times seven years, and, since I could distinguish betwixt a benefit and an injury, I never found a man that knew how to love himself. Ere I would say I would drown myself for the love of a guinea hen, I would change my humanity with a baboon. - Iago, Act I scene 3
• Virtue? A fig! 'Tis our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry-why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the beam of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of out natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions. But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our un bitted lusts, whereof I take this that you call love to be a sect or scion. - Iago, Act I scene 3
• If thou wilt needs damn thyself, do it in a more delicate way than drowning. Make all the money thou canst. - Iago, Act I scene 3
• O gentle lady, do not put me to 't, for I am nothing if not critical. - Iago, Act II scene 1
• Make the Moor thank me, love me, and reward me for making him egregiously an ass and practicing upon his peace and quiet even to madness. 'Tis here, but yet confused. Knavery's plain face is never seen till used. - Iago, Act II scene 1
• As I am an honest man, I thought you had received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition, oft got without merit and lost without deserving. You have lost no reputation at all, unless you repute yourself such a loser. - Iago, Act II scene 3
• While devils will the blackest sins put on, they do suggest at first with heavenly shows, as I do now. - Iago, Act II scene 3
• How poor are they that have not patience! What wound did ever heal but by degrees? Thou know'st we work by wit, and not by witchcraft, and wit depends on dilatory time. - Iago, Act II scene 3
• Men should be what they seem; or those that not be, would they might seem none! - Iago, Act III scene 3
• Good my lord pardon me. Though I am bound to every act of duty, I am not bound to that all slaves are free to. Utter my thoughts? Why, say they are vile and false, as where's that palace whereinto foul things sometimes intrude not? Who has that breast so pure but some uncleanly apprehensionskeep leets and law days, and in sessions sit with meditations lawful? - Iago, Act III scene 3
• I do beseech you, though I confess it is my nature's plague to spy into abuses, and oft my jealousy shapes faults that are not-that your wisdom then, from one that so imperfectly conceits, would take no notive, nor build yourself a trouble out of his scattering and unsure observance. It were not for your quiest nor your good, nor for my manhood, honesty, and wisdom, to let you know my thoughts. - Iago, Act III scene 3
• Good name in man and woman, my dear lord, is the immediate jewel of their souls. Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed. - Iago, Act III scene 3
• Othello: By heaven, I'll know thy thoughts.
  Iago: You cannot, if my heart were in your hand, nor shall not, whilst 'tis in my custody. - Act III scene 3
• O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on. - Iago, Act III scene 3
• Poor and content is rich, and rich enough, but riches finless is as poor as winter to him that ever fears he shall be poor. - Iago, Act III scene 3
• Do you see, gentlemen? Nay, guiltiness will speak, though tongues were out of use. - Iago, Act V scene 1

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

• Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison. -Hamlet, Act II scene 2

The Tragedy of Macbeth

• She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, Out, brief candle! life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. -Act V scene v

The History of Richard II

• You may my glories and my state dispose,
  But not my griefs; still am I king of those. -I don't know yet.

The Usual Suspects

• The Greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world that he never existed. - Said by the Kaiser, I think that this is actually a quote from somehwere else.

If you have any quotes, please Email them to me.
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