I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Five bicycles make a volkswagen, seven make a truck.

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Let me assure you that to us here at First National, you're not just a number. Youre two numbers, a dash, three more numbers, another dash and another number.

Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer. [If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.]

Remember that there is an outside world to see and enjoy.

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once.

The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.

In the begining, God created the Earth and he said, "Let there be mud." And there was mud. And God said, "Let Us make living creatures out of mud, so the mud can see what we have done." And God created every living creature that now moveth, and

"I'll carry your books, I'll carry a tune, I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash & carry, Carry Me Back To Old Virginia, I'll even Hara Kari if you show me how, but I will *not* carry a gun."

The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.

Prisons are built with stones of Law, brothels with bricks of Religion.

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

Men will fuck mud.

Concerning the war in Vietnam, Senator George Aiken of Vermount noted in January, 1966, "I'm not very keen for doves or hawks. I think we need more owls."

They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.

Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars. Now he is a tinpot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards."

Work is the crab grass in the lawn of life.

The only "ism" Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.

Or you or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you. I should have no hesitation in sacrificing my own life to spare yours, but we take stock next week, and it would not be fair on the company.

When you are at Rome live in the Roman style; when you are elsewhere live as they live elsewhere.

With all the talent around, it's sort of amazing that a woman could be up here with us.

When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.

The seven deadly sins ... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven milestones from man's neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the milestones are lifted.

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.

"... all the modern inconveniences ..."

It has been said [by Anatole France], "it is not by amusing oneself that one learns," and, in reply: "it is *____only* by amusing oneself that one can learn."

Go ahead... make my day.

The optimum committee has no members.

The introduction of a new kind of music must be shunned as imperiling the whole state, for styles of music are never disturbed without affecting the most important political institutions. ... The new style, gradually gaining a lodgement, quitely ins

The smallest worm will turn being trodden on.

Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is relative for something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.

What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon, to win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a continent? In independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded that it takes a coinci

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money it values more, it will lose that, too.

It's always darkest just before the lights go out.

As failures go, attempting to recall the past is like trying to grasp the meaning of existence. Both make one feel like a baby clutching at a basketball: one's palms keep sliding off.

It is not the critic who counts, or how the strong man stumbled, or whether the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives vali

My dear People. My dear Bagginses and Boffins, and my dear Tooks and Brandybucks, and Grubbs, and Chubbs, and Burrowses, and Hornblowers, and Bolgers, Bracegirdles, Goodbodies, Brockhouses and Proudfoots. Also my good Sackville Bagginses that I w

Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.

The Law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich, as well as the poor, to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

A critic is a bundle of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste.

The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.

Haste makes waste.

The error of youth is to believe that intelligence is a substitute for experience, while the error of age is to believe experience is a substitute for intelligence.

A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of.

The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.

I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.

If I were a grave-digger or even a hangman, there are some people I could work for with a great deal of enjoyment.

A good reputation is more valuable than money.

It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances.

"I'm dying," he croaked. "My experiment was a success," the chemist retorted . "You can't really train a beagle," he dogmatized. "That's no beagle, it's a mongrel," she muttered. "The fire is going out," he bellowed. "Bad marksmanship," the h

What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.

There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion.

'Scuse me, while I kiss the sky!

There are two kinds of pedestrians... the quick and the dead.

I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.

A hundred years from now it is very likely that [of Twain's works] "The Jumping Frog" alone will be remembered.

If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door.

A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either.

I was in this prematurely air conditioned supermarket and there were all these aisles and there were these bathing caps you could buy that had these kind of Fourth of July plumes on them that were red and yellow and blue and I wasn't tempted to buy

It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

I think we're in trouble.

Every why hath a wherefore.

Would it help if I got out and pushed?

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.

It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case.

Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations Sign on a cabin door of a Soviet Black Sea cruise liner: Helpsavering apparata in emergings behold many whistles! Associate the stringing apparata about the bosums and meet behind, flee then t

"I understand this is your first dead client," Sabian was saying. The absurdity of the statement made me want to laugh but they don't call me Deadpan Allie and lie.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

There is an old time toast which is golden for its beauty. "When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend."

"Hi, I'm Preston A. Mantis, president of Consumers Retail Law Outlet. As you can see by my suit and the fact that I have all these books of equal height on the shelves behind me, I am a trained legal attorney. Do you have a car or a job? Do you ever

Mental power tended to corrupt, and absolute intelligence tended to corrupt absolutely, until the victim eschewed violence entirely in favor of smart solutions to stupid problems.

A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

If you live long enough, you'll see that every victory turns into a defeat.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

Nitwit ideas are for emergencies. You use them when you've got nothing else to try. If they work, they go in the Book. Otherwise you follow the Book, which is largely a collection of nitwit ideas that worked.

I have never understood this liking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

If Karl, instead of writing a lot about Capital, had made a lot of Capital, it would have been much better.

My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to stop writing.

Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours."

Never laugh at live dragons.

Serfs up!

"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."

The Least Successful Police Dogs America has a very strong candidate in "La Dur", a fearsome looking schnauzer hound, who was retired from the Orlando police force in Florida in 1978. He consistently refused to do anything which might ruffle or of

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had

I try not to break the rules but merely to test their elasticity.

If you give Congress a chance to vote on both sides of an issue, it will always do it.

All this wheeling and dealing around, why, it isn't for money, it's for fun. Money's just the way we keep score.

Whatever doesn't succeed in two months and a half in California will never succeed.

I am not a politician and my other habits are also good.

Time goes, you say? Ah no! Time stays, *we* go.

The Soviet pre-eminence in chess can be traced to the average Russian's readiness to brood obsessively over anything, even the arrangement of some pieces of wood. Indeed, the Russians' predisposition for quiet reflection followed by sudden preventi

Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Getting into trouble is easy.

You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred.

When I came back to Dublin I was courtmartialed in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

God help those who do not help themselves.

When in doubt, use brute force.

It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash.

Don't guess

In the long run we are all dead.

The only alliance I would make with the Women's Liberation Movement is in bed.

My tears stuck in their little ducts, refusing to be jerked.