If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it.

I: The best way to make a silk purse from a sow's ear is to begin with a silk sow. The same is true of money. II: If today were half as good as tomorrow is supposed to be, it would probably be twice as good as yesterday was. III: There are

Truth never comes into the world but like a bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her birth.

She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.

What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.

What I tell you three times is true.

Take your work seriously but never take yourself seriously; and do not take what happens either to yourself or your work seriously.

The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven; The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change. These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.

Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.

It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.

We'll be recording at the Paradise Friday night. Live, on the Death label.

Your wig steers the gig.

I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway.

Believe everything you hear about the world; nothing is too impossibly bad.

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"You mean, if you allow the master to be uncivil, to treat you any old way he likes, and to insult your dignity, then he may deem you fit to hear his view of things?" "Quite the contrary. You must defend your integrity, assuming you have integrit

In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel.

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

"I gained nothing at all from Supreme Enlightenment, and for that very reason it is called Supreme Enlightenment."

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.

I just need enough to tide me over until I need more.

Mike: "The Fourth Dimension is a shambles?" Bernie: "Nobody ever empties the ashtrays. People are SO inconsiderate."

America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.

Two heads are better than one.

A kind of Batman of contemporary letters.

If I could reach, I'd never leave the house.

There has been a little distress selling on the stock exchange.

Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.

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."

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

Don't everyone thank me at once!

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.

Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin.

Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by.

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe; it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge.

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

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.

Knowledge is power.

The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.

A wise person makes his own decisions, a weak one obeys public opinion.

If you would know the value of money, go try to borrow some.

HR 3128. Omnibus Budget Reconciliation, Fiscal 1986. Martin, R-Ill., motion that the House recede from its disagreement to the Senate amendment making changes in the bill to reduce fiscal 1986 deficits. The Senate amendment was an amendment to the

As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong.

Man is the measure of all things.

Nonsense and beauty have close connections.

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

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

Facts are the enemy of truth.

The plot was designed in a light vein that somehow became varicose.

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.

I went into the business for the money, and the art grew out of it. If people are disillusioned by that remark, I can't help it. It's the truth.

With Congress, every time they make a joke it's a law; and every time they make a law it's a joke.

Well begun is half done.

If a man has a strong faith he can indulge in the luxury of skepticism.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth.

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.

The greatest productive force is human selfishness.

Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time. So long as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks into, there is room for lateral movement. Once this begins, its rate is a matter of discretion.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his

An actor's a guy who if you ain't talkin' about him, ain't listening.

Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity.

"Benson, you are so free of the ravages of intelligence"

A copy of the universe is not what is required of art; one of the damned things is ample.

Why attack God? He may be as miserable as we are.

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

Ninety percent of the time things turn out worse than you thought they would. The other ten percent of the time you had no right to expect that much.

In the highest society, as well as in the lowest, woman is merely an instrument of pleasure.

What you want, what you're hanging around in the world waiting for, is for something to occur to you.

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

Philosophy will clip an angel's wings.

Things are not always what they seem.

If happiness is in your destiny, you need not be in a hurry.

The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobb

Wishing without work is like fishing without bait.

"To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition."

So so is good, very good, very excellent good: and yet it is not; it is but so so.

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

A good name lost is seldom regained. When character is gone, all is gone, and one of the richest jewels of life is lost forever.

Well, the handwriting is on the floor.

XI: If the Earth could be made to rotate twice as fast, managers would get twice as much done. If the Earth could be made to rotate twenty times as fast, everyone else would get twice as much done since all the managers would fly off. XII: I

Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.

It is the quality rather than the quantity that matters.

The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.

History is nothing but a collection of fables and useless trifles, cluttered up with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names.

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

The only thing that experience teaches us is that experience teaches us nothing.

Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.

Someday, Weederman, we'll look back on all this and laugh... It will probably be one of those deep, eerie ones that slowly builds to a blood-curdling maniacal scream... but still it will be a laugh.

Not to laugh, not to lament, not to curse, but to understand.

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

The Poems, all three hundred of them, may be summed up in one of their phrases: "Let our thoughts be correct".

Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words since I first called my brother's father dad.

October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August, and February.

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.

A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.

Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets.

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

Where do I find the time for not reading so many books?

Suffering alone exists, none who suffer; The deed there is, but no doer thereof; Nirvana is, but no one is seeking it; The Path there is, but none who travel it.

Whom the mad would destroy, first they make Gods.

Three minutes' thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

Sometimes a man who deserves to be looked down upon because he is a fool is despised only because he is a lawyer.

A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction.

Dying is easy. Comedy is difficult.

God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things.

Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.

When in doubt, tell the truth.

Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post how it feels about dogs.

The trouble with opportunity is that it always comes disguised as hard work.

Tempt not a desperate man.

He jests at scars who never felt a wound.

I dote on his very absence.

Words have a longer life than deeds.

The superfluous is very necessary.

This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

Let sleeping dogs lie.

I played lead guitar in a band called The Federal Duck, which is the kind of name that was popular in the '60s as a result of controlled substances being in widespread use. Back then, there were no restrictions, in terms of talent, on who could make

The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the expense of it.

Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years.

I stick my neck out for nobody.

What excuses stand in your way? How can you eliminate them?

When you die, you lose a very important part of your life.

Maternity pay? Now every Tom, Dick and Harry will get pregnant.

A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)

AWAKE! FEAR! FIRE! FOES! AWAKE! FEAR! FIRE! FOES! AWAKE! AWAKE!

No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.

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

If reporters don't know that truth is plural, they ought to be lawyers.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.

"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.

There are no accidents whatsoever in the universe.

Plots are like girdles. Hidden, they hold your interest; revealed, they're of no interest except to fetishists. Like girdles, they attempt to contain an uncontainable experience.

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

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.

When properly administered, vacations do not diminish productivity: for every week you're away and get nothing done, there's another when your boss is away and you get twice as much done.

I've got a very bad feeling about this.

Whenever anyone says, "theoretically," they really mean, "not really."

I always wake up at the crack of ice.

If it doesn't smell yet, it's pretty fresh.

Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow!

He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace.

There is always one thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.

"What's this? Trix? Aunt! Trix? You? You're after the prize! What is it?" He picked up the box and studied the back. "A glow-in-the-dark squid! Have you got it out of there yet?" He tilted the box, angling the little colored balls of cereal

The Worst Jury A murder trial at Manitoba in February 1978 was well advanced, when one juror revealed that he was completely deaf and did not have the remotest clue what was happening. The judge, Mr. Justice Solomon, asked him if he had heard any

If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

What a bonanza! An unknown beginner to be directed by Lubitsch, in a script by Wilder and Brackett, and to play with Paramount's two superstars, Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert, and to be beaten up by both of them!

Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait. [If youth but knew, if old age but could.]

'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.

Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

The primary cause of failure in electrical appliances is an expired warranty. Often, you can get an appliance running again simply by changing the warranty expiration date with a 15/64-inch felt-tipped marker.

Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers and cheating on your income tax.

By perseverance the snail reached the Ark.

I know on which side my bread is buttered.

Please try to limit the amount of "this room doesn't have any bazingas" until you are told that those rooms are "punched out." Once punched out, we have a right to complain about atrocities, missing bazingas, and such.

Fear is the greatest salesman.

The human brain is a wonderful thing. It starts working the moment you are born, and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.

If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.

One of my favorite jokes, a telling commentary on Jewish mothers' capacity to lay on guilt, involves the mother who gave her son two neckties on Chanuka. The boy hurried into his bedroom, ripped off the tie he was wearing, put on one of the ties his

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Public use of any portable music system is a virtually guaranteed indicator of sociopathic tendencies.

The best you get is an even break.

You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to

If a man stay away from his wife for seven years, the law presumes the separation to have killed him; yet according to our daily experience, it might well prolong his life.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

The whole world is a scab. The point is to pick it constructively.

If God is One, what is bad?

You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to a dog.

Before he became a hermit, Zarathud was a young Priest, and took great delight in making fools of his opponents in front of his followers. One day Zarathud took his students to a pleasant pasture and there he confronted The Sacred Chao while She

To know Edina is to reject it.

"Cogito ergo I'm right and you're wrong."

Nothing endures but change.

Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.

Rembrandt is not to be compared in the painting of character with our extraordinarily gifted English artist, Mr. Rippingille.

The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture, finished, and put inside boxes.

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

Kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday.

Let him choose out of my files, his projects to accomplish.

Some performers on television appear to be horrible people, but when you finally get to know them in person, they turn out to be even worse.

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

Let's say your wedding ring falls into your toaster, and when you stick your hand in to retrieve it, you suffer Pain and Suffering as well as Mental Anguish. You would sue: * The toaster manufacturer, for failure to include, in the instructions

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

In breeding cattle you need one bull for every twenty-five cows, unless the cows are known sluts.

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve.

Man must shape his tools lest they shape him.

When I first arrived in this country I had only fifteen cents in my pocket and a willingness to compromise.

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

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

Eeny, Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak!

Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential death in which its

If a man stay away from his wife for seven years, the law presumes the separation to have killed him; yet according to our daily experience, it might well prolong his life.

I respect faith, but doubt is what gives you an education.

There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

"No job too big; no fee too big!"

The ratio of literacy to illiteracy is a constant, but nowadays the illiterates can read.

It is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best judge of one.

Naked children have never played in _o_u_r fountains, and I.M. Pei will never be happy on Route 66.

Now, you might ask, "How do I get one of those complete home tool sets for under $4?" An excellent question. Go to one of those really cheap discount stores where they sell plastic furniture in colors visible from the planet Neptune and where they

The average Ph.D thesis is nothing but the transference of bones from one graveyard to another.