... "fire" does not matter, "earth" and "air" and "water" do not matter. "I" do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great

Every man thinks God is on his side. The rich and powerful know that he is.

When in doubt, mumble; when in trouble, delegate; when in charge, ponder.

A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Any road followed to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little to test it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.

Our policy is, when in doubt, do the right thing.

Your wig steers the gig.

I hate dying.

"Hey, Sam, how about a loan?" "Whattaya need?" "Oh, about $500." "Whattaya got for collateral?" "Whattaya need?" "How about an eye?"

An idea is an eye given by God for the seeing of God. Some of these eyes we cannot bear to look out of, we blind them as quickly as possible.

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

It is wise to keep in mind that neither success nor failure is ever final.

I will make you shorter by the head.

At ebb tide I wrote a line upon the sand, and gave it all my heart and all my soul. At flood tide I returned to read what I had inscribed and found my ignorance upon the shore.

Chance is perhaps the work of God when He did not want to sign.

A society in which women are taught anything but the management of a family, the care of men, and the creation of the future generation is a society which is on its way out.

Every person, all the events in your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

'Naomi, sex at noon taxes.' I moan. Never odd or even. A man, a plan, a canal, Panama. Madam, I'm Adam. Sit on a potato pan, Otis. Sit on Otis.

Some women should be beaten regularly, like gongs.

Nice guys finish last.

All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.

XLI: The more one produces, the less one gets. XLII: Simple systems are not feasible because they require infinite testing. XLIII: Hardware works best when it matters the least. XLIV: Aircraft flight in the 21st century will always be in a we

If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive!

Man is the measure of all things.

The early bird who catches the worm works for someone who comes in late and owns the worm farm.

"What's the use of a good quotation if you can't change it?"

Let's remind ourselves that last year's fresh idea is today's cliche.

It is annoying to be honest to no purpose.

"Life is too important to take seriously."

Littering is dumb.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

What you don't know won't help you much either.

A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do I. I believe everything positively stinks.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

He that bringeth a present, findeth the door open.

Somehow I reached excess without ever noticing when I was passing through satisfaction.

Innovation is hard to schedule.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

A committee is a group that keeps the minutes and loses hours.

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.

Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.

The optimist thinks that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it.

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back the when it begins to rain.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Don't tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.

Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.

In charity there is no excess.

The world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. It is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. You are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or to tear the pages.

One picture is worth more than ten thousand words.

The price of success in philosophy is triviality.

There's no such thing as an original sin.

If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.

Small is beautiful.

May you live in uninteresting times.

Love may laugh at locksmiths, but he has a profound respect for money bags.

Remembering is for those who have forgotten.

Never promise more than you can perform.

Set the cart before the horse.

A businessman is a hybrid of a dancer and a calculator.

Luck, that's when preparation and opportunity meet.

Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable.

The most delightful day after the one on which you buy a cottage in the country is the one on which you resell it.

If you are shooting under 80 you are neglecting your business; over 80 you are neglecting your golf.

The individual choice of garnishment of a burger can be an important point to the consumer in this day when individualism is an increasingly important thing to people.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.

Do not use that foreign word "ideals". We have that excellent native word "lies".

She applies her lipstick in spite of its contents: "greasy rouge, containing crushed and dried insect corpses for coloring, beeswax for stiffness, and olive oil to help it flow - the latter having the unfortunate tendency to go rancid several hours a

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves.

Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness; and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?

Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities, requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by tur

Fill what's empty, empty what's full, scratch where it itches.

God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.

For thee the wonder-working earth puts forth sweet flowers.

The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusions.

The whole earth is in jail and we're plotting this incredible jailbreak.

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

You can always pick up your needle and move to another groove.

You k'n hide de fier, but w'at you gwine do wid de smoke?

Fortune and love befriend the bold.

Mum's the word.

All I kin say is when you finds yo'self wanderin' in a peach orchard, ya don't go lookin' for rutabagas.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.

For every bloke who makes his mark, there's half a dozen waiting to rub it out.

If what they've been doing hasn't solved the problem, tell them to do something else.

My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them WHAT to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.

There are no accidents whatsoever in the universe.

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day.

"Well," Brahma said, "even after ten thousand explanations, a fool is no wiser, but an intelligent man requires only two thousand five hundred."

Well, we'll really have a party, but we've gotta post a guard outside.

Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.

I'm going to raise an issue and stick it in your ear.

It is your concern when your neighbor's wall is on fire.

A good reputation is more valuable than money.

What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.

In case of fire, stand in the hall and shout "Fire!"

Honesty's the best policy.

I'm glad I was not born before tea.

Well, he thought, since neither Aristotelian Logic nor the disciplines of Science seemed to offer much hope, it's time to go beyond them... Drawing a few deep even breaths, he entered a mental state practiced only by Masters of the Universal Way of

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.

The more the merrier.

Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.

Perhaps the remembrance of these things will prove a source of future pleasure.

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.

He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book.

What one fool can do, another can.

The future not being born, my friend, we will abstain from baptizing it.

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

We're living in a golden age. All you need is gold.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.

"We maintain that the very foundation of our way of life is what we call free enterprise," said Cash McCall, "but when one of our citizens show enough free enterprise to pile up a little of that profit, we do our best to make him feel that he ought t

The tree in which the sap is stagnant remains fruitless.

Women are nothing but machines for producing children.

What fools these mortals be.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

Don't get mad, get even.

It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.

It is only the man whose intellect is clouded by his sexual impulse that could give the name of the fair sex to that undersized, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped, and short-legged race.

You climb to reach the summit, but once there, discover that all roads lead down.

If I cannot bend Heaven, I shall move Hell.

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.