By the middle 1880's, practically all the roads except those in the South, were of the present standard gauge. The southern roads were still five feet between rails. It was decided to change the gauge of all southern roads to standard, in one day

Life is one long struggle in the dark.

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

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.

Wisdom is knowing what to do with what you know.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future.

One good turn asketh another.

God is Dead.

Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

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.

Hotels are tired of getting ripped off. I checked into a hotel and they had towels from my house.

What we do not understand we do not possess.

In dwelling, be close to the land. In meditation, delve deep into the heart. In dealing with others, be gentle and kind. In speech, be true. In work, be competent. In action, be careful of your timing.

Of all men's miseries, the bitterest is this: to know so much and have control over nothing.

The world has many unintentionally cruel mechanisms that are not designed for people who walk on their hands.

Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

If there were a school for, say, sheet metal workers, that after three years left its graduates as unprepared for their careers as does law school, it would be closed down in a minute, and no doubt by lawyers.

The lawgiver, of all beings, most owes the law allegiance. He of all men should behave as though the law compelled him. But it is the universal weakness of mankind that what we are given to administer we presently imagine we own.

What one fool can do, another can.

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

I have ways of making money that you know nothing of.

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.

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

A man is known by the company he organizes.

According to my best recollection, I don't remember.

It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our offense consists in doubting it.

Recently deceased blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan "comes to" after his death. He sees Jimi Hendrix sitting next to him, tuning his guitar. "Holy cow," he thinks to himself, "this guy is my idol." Over at the microphone, about to sing, are Jim Mo

To do two things at once is to do neither.

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

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.

We can embody the truth, but we cannot know it.

For fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine.

It'll be just like Beggars' Canyon back home.

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.

Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. [Confound those who have said our remarks before us.] or [May they perish who have expressed our bright ideas before us.]

The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.

Roumanian-Yiddish cooking has killed more Jews than Hitler.

Inglish Spocken Hier: some mangled translations Sign on a cathedral in Spain: It is forbidden to enter a woman, even a foreigner if dressed as a man. Above the enterance to a Cairo bar: Unaccompanied ladies not admitted unless with husb

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

I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole.

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

The term "fire" brings up visions of violence and mayhem and the ugly scene of shooting employees who make mistakes. We will now refer to this process as "deleting" an employee (much as a file is deleted from a disk). The employee is simply there o

What kind of sordid business are you on now? I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?

There are ten or twenty basic truths, and life is the process of discovering them over and over and over.

Use an accordion. Go to jail.

The streets were dark with something more than night.

An older student came to Otis and said, "I have been to see a great number of teachers and I have given up a great number of pleasures. I have fasted, been celibate and stayed awake nights seeking enlightenment. I have given up everything I was aske

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

A woman takes off her claim to respect along with her garments.

You don't move to Edina, you achieve Edina.

We have art that we do not die of the truth.

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat.

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never

Do not despair of life. You have no doubt force enough to overcome your obstacles. Think of the fox prowling through wood and field in a winter night for something to satisfy his hunger. Notwithstanding cold and hounds and traps, his race survives

... Our second completely true news item was sent to me by Mr. H. Boyce Connell Jr. of Atlanta, Ga., where he is involved in a law firm. One thing I like about the South is, folks there care about tradition. If somebody gets handed a name like "H.

"You've got to have a gimmick if your band sucks."

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

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.

Time as he grows old teaches all things.

"You would do well not to imagine profundity," he said. "Anything that seems of momentous occasion should be dwelt upon as though it were of slight note. Conversely, trivialities must be attended to with the greatest of care. Because death is moment

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

... before I could come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it matter what anyone knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One gets sometimes s

Mum's the word.

Monterey... is decidedly the pleasantest and most civilized-looking place in California ... [it] is also a great place for cock-fighting, gambling of all sorts, fandangos, and various kinds of amusements and knavery.

Some men are heterosexual, and some are bisexual, and some men don't think about sex at all... they become lawyers.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

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

Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made.

I will make you shorter by the head.

The cable TV sex channels don't expand our horizons, don't make us better people, and don't come in clearly enough.

You can't expect a boy to be vicious till he's been to a good school.

To generalize is to be an idiot.

Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.

A sinking ship gathers no moss.

Absolutum obsoletum. (If it works, it's out of date.)

Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.

It has long been noticed that juries are pitiless for robbery and full of indulgence for infanticide. A question of interest, my dear Sir! The jury is afraid of being robbed and has passed the age when it could be a victim of infanticide.

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.

When I have one foot in the grave I will tell the truth about women. I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me, and say, "Do what you like now."

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

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

You may my glories and my state dispose, But not my griefs; still am I king of those.

Woman is generally so bad that the difference between a good and a bad woman scarcely exists.

God gave man two ears and one tongue so that we listen twice as much as we speak.

An old Jewish man reads about Einstein's theory of relativity in the newspaper and asks his scientist grandson to explain it to him. "Well, zayda, it's sort of like this. Einstein says that if you're having your teeth drilled without Novocain, a mi

It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our offense consists in doubting it.

"Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what *___can* you believe?!"

The Hollywood tradition I like best is called "sucking up to the stars."

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

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

Go away, I'm all right.

New Jersey is not the armpit of the nation; it's the asshole of the universe.

It's not so hard to lift yourself by your bootstraps once you're off the ground.

Whom the mad would destroy, first they make Gods.

One hundred women are not worth a single testicle.

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

I knew her before she was a virgin.

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

People in general do not willingly read if they have anything else to amuse them.

If we see the light at the end of the tunnel, it's the light of an oncoming train.

I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.

He that bringeth a present, findeth the door open.

We should realize that a city is better off with bad laws, so long as they remain fixed, then with good laws that are constantly being altered, that the lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than the kind of cleverness th

There seems no plan because it is all plan.

A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.

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

To restore a sense of reality, I think Walt Disney should have a Hardluckland.

I am just a nice, clean-cut Mongolian boy.

Things are more like they are today than they ever were before.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

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."

I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.

"Given the choice between accomplishing something and just lying around, I'd rather lie around. No contest."

If a guru falls in the forest with no one to hear him, was he really a guru at all?

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

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

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

Whatever occurs from love is always beyond good and evil.

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

Another day, another dollar.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

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

Events are not affected, they develop.

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

Doctors and lawyers must go to school for years and years, often with little sleep and with great sacrifice to their first wives.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.

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

"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

Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything has changed.

The Bible says that woman was the last thing God made. Evidently He made her on Saturday night. She reveals his fatigue.

We're constantly being bombarded by insulting and humiliating music, which people are making for you the way they make those Wonder Bread products. Just as food can be bad for your system, music can be bad for your spirtual and emotional feelings. I

Bond reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas.

If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we would all be millionaires.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

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

If there were a school for, say, sheet metal workers, that after three years left its graduates as unprepared for their careers as does law school, it would be closed down in a minute, and no doubt by lawyers.

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased.

To have died once is enough.

If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments.

I heard a definition of an intellectual, that I thought was very interesting: a man who takes more words than are necessary to tell more than he knows.

Maybe ain't ain't so correct, but I notice that lots of folks who ain't using ain't ain't eatin' well.

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.

Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.

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

My father, a good man, told me, "Never lose your ignorance; you cannot replace it."

The superfluous is very necessary.

So little time, so little to do.

Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral.

It is Mr. Mellon's credo that $200,000,000 can do no wrong. Our offense consists in doubting it.

For certain people, after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex.

The intelligence of any discussion diminishes with the square of the number of participants.

The life which is unexamined is not worth living.

Save a little money each month and at the end of the year you'll be surprised at how little you have.

Do not seek death; death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.

What an artist dies with me!

Judges, as a class, display, in the matter of arranging alimony, that reckless generosity which is found only in men who are giving away someone else's cash.

A dead man cannot bite.