home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Night Owl 6
/
Night Owl's Shareware - PDSI-006 - Night Owl Corp (1990).iso
/
025a
/
sage32.zip
/
SAMPLE.DIG
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1992-01-03
|
262KB
|
7,618 lines
SAGE_DIGEST
This is a portion of SAGE (tm) 3.2 "The Quote Management Utility"
For more information about the format of this file, see the
accompanying documentation.
%%
Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of
the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded
yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight
million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green
planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive
that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea...
-- Douglas Adams
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy"
%%
Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A
to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to
point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point
directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great
about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to
get there and what's so great about point B that so many people
from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that
people would just once and for all work out where the hell they
wanted to be.
-- Douglas Adams
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy"
%%
There is a theory that states: "If anyone finds out what the
universe is for it will disappear and be replaced by something
more bizarrely inexplicable."
There is another theory that states: "This has already
happened...."
-- Douglas Adams
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy"
%%
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-
bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way
down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to
space.
-- Douglas Adams
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy"
%%
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers
exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will
instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more
bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states
that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy"
%%
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President
should on no account be allowed to do the job.
-- Douglas Adams
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy"
%%
With a rubber duck, one's never alone.
-- Douglas Adams
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy"
%%
Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind
of order that sets me free to fly.
-- Julie Andrews
%%
Its all right to hold a conversation, but you should let go of
it now and then.
-- Richard Armour
%%
Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well.
-- G. Bell
%%
Noncombatant: A dead Quaker.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
You can get more things done with a kind word and a gun than
with a kind word alone.
-- Al Capone
%%
... the darkness was encumbering only because I relied upon my
sight for everything I did, not knowing that another way was to
let power be the guide.
-- Carlos Castaneda
%%
Children do not know how their parents love them, and they never
will till the grave that closes over those parents, or till they
have children of their own.
-- Edmund Vance Cooke
%%
When the weight of the paperwork equals the weight of the
airplane, the plane will fly.
-- Donald Douglas
%%
To every Phd. there is an equal and opposite Phd.
-- B. Duggan
%%
If one studies too zealously, one easily loses his pants.
-- Albert Einstein
%%
Vodka is the best way to cook potatoes. You get all the flavor
of the potato and don't even have to put in your false teeth.
-- A. Engstrom
%%
It is a matter of first beginning - and then following through.
-- Richard L. Evans
%%
I came to understand that it was all right to do things for
people as long as I did it for the sake of doing it... the value
being more in the act than in the result.
-- Joanna Field
%%
Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes rise to the stars.
Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait,
the grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy
to execute your ideas.
-- Henry Ford
%%
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.
-- Anatole France
%%
The grand leap of the whale up the Fall of Niagra is esteemed,
by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in
nature.
-- Benjamin Franklin
%%
Be Yourself. Who else is better qualified?
-- Frank Giblin, II
%%
Let everyone sweep in front of his or her own door, and the
whole world will be clean.
-- Goethe
%%
"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated
ambiguity that would be clearly understood."
-- Alexander Haig
%%
When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot
manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and
intelligence cannot be applied.
-- Herophilus
%%
Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in
two small jumps.
-- David Lloyd George
%%
A little virtue will never hurt you.
-- Piet Hein
%%
"All flesh is grass"
-- Isiah
Smoke a friend today.
%%
The first thing I had to conquer was fear. I realized what a
debilitating thing fear is. It can render you absolutely
helpless. I know now that fear breeds fear.
-- Byron Janis
%%
Later. I'm still young. I'll think of spiritual things when I'm
older. On my deathbed.
-- Garrison Keillor
%%
I am bigger than anything that can happen to me. All these
things, sorrow, misfortune, and suffering are outside my door.
I am in the house and I have the key.
-- Charles Fletcher Lummis
%%
Art is anything you can get away with.
-- Marshall McLuhan
%%
... what was completely forbidden for me to do would be to kill
myself... If I were to commit suicide, I would be throwing
God's gift back in his face.
-- Dr. Raymond A. Moody
%%
Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
It is as important to relax our minds as it is to concentrate
them.
-- Charles B. Newcomb
%%
Woman was God's second mistake.
-- Nietzsche
%%
Age before beauty; and pearls before swine.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
Strange feelings ... Just a sort of unexplained sadness that
comes each afternoon when the new day is gone forever and
there's nothing ahead but increasing darkness.
-- Robert M. Pirsig
%%
Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be
disappointed.
-- Poor Richard
%%
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
And scarce in that.
-- Poor Richard
%%
He that falls in love with himself, will have no rivals.
-- Poor Richard
%%
Hunger never saw bad bread.
-- Poor Richard
%%
Fish and visitors stink in three days.
-- Poor Richard
%%
In rivers and bad governments, the lightest things swim at top.
-- Poor Richard
%%
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
-- Poor Richard
%%
Learn of the skillful: he that teaches himself hath a fool for
a master.
-- Poor Richard
%%
Love, cough, and a smoke, can't be well hid.
-- Poor Richard
%%
Pride dines upon Vanity, sups on Contempt.
-- Poor Richard
%%
She that paints her face thinks of her tail.
-- Poor Richard
%%
Fools make feasts and wise men eat them.
-- Poor Richard
%%
God heals and the doctor takes the fee.
-- Poor Richard
%%
The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise.
-- Poor Richard
%%
There are no ugly loves, nor handsome prisons.
-- Poor Richard
%%
Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.
-- Poor Richard
%%
When there's marriage without love, there will be love without
marriage.
-- Poor Richard
%%
Who knows a fool, must know his brother; for one will recommend
another.
-- Poor Richard
%%
You may give a man an office, but you cannot give him
discretion.
-- Poor Richard
%%
The first riddle I ever heard, one familiar to almost every Jewish
child, was propounded to me by my father:
"What is it that hangs on the wall, is green, wet... and
whistles?"
I knit my brow and thought and thought, and in final
perplexity gave up.
"A herring," said my father.
"A herring," I echoed. "A herring doesn't hang on the
wall!"
"So hang it there."
"But a herring isn't green!" I protested.
"Paint it."
"But a herring isn't wet."
"If its just painted its still wet."
"But..." I sputtered, summoning all my outrage, "... a
herring doesn't whistle!!"
"Right, " smiled my father. "I just put that in to make it
hard."
-- Leo Rosten
%%
Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the
only thing.
-- Albert Schweitzer
%%
Build something that even a fool can use, and only a fool will
want to use it.
-- C. Shaw
%%
And if not now, when?
-- The Talmud
%%
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
-- Thoreau
%%
Go not to the elves for advice, for they will say both yes and
no.
-- Tolkien
%%
The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something
that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or
doubtful.
-- Mark Twain
%%
God made an idiot for practice, and then He made a school board.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Iron rusts from disuse, water loses its purity from stagnation
... even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.
-- Leonardo da Vinci
%%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
-- Voltaire
%%
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
-- Mae West
%%
But where was I to start? The world is so vast, I shall start
with the country I knew best, my own. But my country is so
very large. I had better start with my town. But my town, too,
is large. I had best start with my street. No, my home. No,
my family. Never mind, I shall start with myself.
-- Elie Wiesel
%%
The doors we open and close each day, decide the lives we live.
-- Flora Whittemore
%%
Happiness is not a pleasure. Happiness is a victory.
-- Zig Ziglar
%%
To do is to be -- Nietzsche
To be is to do -- Sarte
Do be do be do -- Sinatra
%%
gy-ro-scope: A wheel or disk mounted to spin rapidly about an
axis and also free to rotate about one or both of two axes
perpendicular to each other and the axis of spin so that a
rotation of one of the two mutually perpendicular axes results
from application of torque to the other when the wheel is
spinning and so that the entire apparatus offers considerable
opposition depending on the angular momentum to any torque that
would change the direction of the axis of spin.
-- Webster's Seventh New
Collegiate Dictionary
%%
MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed)
Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers
2 cups water 2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons cream of tartar 2 tablespoons lemon juice
Grated rind of one lemon Butter or margarine
Cinnamon
Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate.
Break RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate. Combine
water, sugar and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15
minutes. Add lemon juice and rind. Cool. Pour this syrup over
Crackers, dot generously with butter or margarine and sprinkle
with cinnamon. Cover with top crust. Trim and flute edges
together. Cut slits in top crust to let steam escape. Bake in
a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust is crisp and
golden. Serve warm. Cut into 6 to 8 slices.
-- Found lurking on a Ritz
Crackers box
%%
You will forget your misery; you will remember it as waters that
have passed away.
-- Job 11:16
%%
Prayer should be the key of the day and the lock of the night.
-- Old Proverb
%%
Great Spirit, help me never to judge another until I have walked
in his moccasins for two weeks.
-- Sioux Indian Prayer
%%
Either you reach a higher point today, or you exercise your
strength in order to be able to climb higher tomorrow.
-- Nietzsche
%%
Whatever men attempt, they seem driven to overdo.
-- Bernard Baruch
%%
So long as we believe we are only human, we are going to
experience pain suffering, tears, disease, and death.
-- Donald Curtis
%%
Hitch your wagon to a star.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
The Bookshop has a thousand books, All colors, hues, and tinges,
And every cover is a door That turns on magic hinges.
-- Nancy Byrd Turner
%%
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... but also, she will never sit down on a cold
one any more.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Be strong and of good courage; be not frightened, neither be
dismayed...
-- Joshua 1:9
%%
You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out
of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content,
respect, and the evolution of your mortal soul. Its right use,
its most effective use, is a matter of highest urgency.
-- Arnold Bennett
%%
Do not consider anything for your interest which makes you break
your word, quit your modesty, or inclines you to any practice
which will not bear the light, or look the world in the face.
-- Marcus Antonius
%%
All miseries derive from not being able to sit quietly in a room
alone.
-- Blaise Pascal
%%
Life is like a library owned by an author. In it are a few
books which he wrote himself, but most are written for him.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick
%%
When folks have allotted themselves task and work together in
unison, they escape unhappiness.
-- Emile Zola
%%
If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.
-- Emily Dickinson
%%
Be ware of yourself and validate your experience. Pay attention
to your world, to what's happening, and why....Feel your
strength. Value it, and use it.
-- Alexandra G. Kaplan
%%
Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were
tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned
great lessons from those who braced themselves against you, and
disputed the passage with you?
-- Walt Whitman
%%
I will love you no matter what. I will love you if you are
stupid, if you slip and fall on your face, if you do the wrong
thing, if you make mistakes, if you behave like a human being -
I will love you no matter what.
-- Leo Buscaglia
%%
People are lonely because they built walls instead of bridges.
-- Joseph Fort Newton
%%
'Tis the human touch of this world that counts, the touch of
your hand and mine.
-- Spencer Michael Free
%%
We must constantly build dikes of courage to hold back the flood
of fear.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
%%
Be glad you can suffer, be glad you can feel.... How can you
tell if you're feeling good unless you've felt bad, so you have
something to compare it with?
-- Thomas Tryon
%%
Reputation is what you have when you come to a new community;
character is what you have when you go away.
-- William Hersey Davis
%%
The strength you've insisted on assigning to others is actually
within yourself.
-- Lisa Alther
%%
The twilight, in fact, had several stages, and several times
after it had grown dusky, acquired a new transparency, and the
trees on the hillsides were lit up again.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%%
More important that learning how to recall things is finding
ways to forget things that are cluttering the mind. Before
going to sleep at night, empty your consciousness of unwanted
things, even as you empty your pockets.
-- Eric Butterworth
%%
Be patient with the faults of others; they have to be patient
with yours.
-- Our Daily Bread
%%
Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made,
like bread, remade all the time, made new.
-- Ursula K. Leguin
%%
People often say that this or that person has not yet found
himself. But the self is not something that one finds. It is
something that one creates.
-- Thomas Szasz
%%
We fear to trust our wings. We plume and feather them, but we
dare not throw our weight upon them. We cling too often to the
perch.
-- Charles B. Newcomb
%%
The preservation of health is duty. Few seem conscious that
there is such a thing as physical mortality.
-- Herbert Spencer
%%
There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds.
-- Gilbert Keith Chesterton
%%
For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, "You shall love your
neighbor as yourself."
-- Galatians 5:14
%%
Here is a mental treatment guaranteed to cure every ill that
flesh is heir to: sit for half an hour every night and mentally
forgive everyone against whom you have any ill or antipathy.
-- Charles Fillmore
%%
Walk with the wise and be wise; mix with the stupid and be
misled.
-- Proverbs
%%
I used to be that, if I had a good working day, I thought I was
a wonderful person, but otherwise I thought I was a terrible
person.
-- Byron Janis
%%
That's the risk you take if you change; that people you've been
involved with won't like the new you. But other people who do
will come along.
-- Lisa Alther
%%
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
-- Marie Curie
%%
If one only wished to be happy, this could easily be
accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and
this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier
than they are.
-- Charles de Secondat Montesquieu
%%
Little do [we] perceive what solitude is, and how far it
extendeth, for a crowd is not company, and faces are but a
gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal where there
is no love.
-- Sire John Lubbock
%%
For it is not physical solitude that actually separates one from
other men, not physical isolation, but spiritual isolation.
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
%%
Most of us spend 59 minutes in an hour living in the past with
regret for lost joys, or shame for things badly done... or in a
future which we either long for or dread.
-- Storm Jameson
%%
The secret to not being hurt like this again, I decided, was
never depending on everyone, never needing, never loving. It is
the last dream of children to be forever untouched.
-- Audre Lorde
%%
Joy enters the room. It settles tentatively on the windowsill,
waiting to see whether it will be welcome here.
-- Kim Chernin
%%
Few begin with anything like a clear view of what they want to
do, and the fortune they seek may come in a very different form
from that which they have kept in view.
-- The Independent, August 1898
%%
The great rhythms of nature, today so dully disregarded, wounded
even, have here their spacious and primeval liberty...
Journeying birds alight here and fly away again all unseen,
schools of fish move beneath the waves, the surf flings its
spray against the sun.
-- Henry Beston
%%
I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you
the formula for failure ... try to please everybody.
-- Herbert Bayard Swope
%%
Like the body that is made up of different limbs and organs, all
mortal creatures exist depending upon one another.
-- Hindu Proverb
%%
Do not lose your inward peace for anything whatsoever, even if
your whole world seems upset.
-- Saint Francis de Sales
%%
Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one
has reached in life, as by the obstacles which [were] overcome
while trying to succeed.
-- Booker T. Washington
%%
There are parts of a ship which, taken by themselves, would
sink... But when the parts of a ship are built together, they
float. So with the events in my life. Some have been tragic.
Some have been happy. But when they are built together, they
form a craft that floats and is going someplace. And I am
comforted.
-- Ralph W. Sockman
%%
We cannot swing up a rope that is attached only to our own
belt.
-- William Ernest Hocking
%%
Do not look to small advantages. Desire to have things done
quickly prevents their being done thoroughly. Looking at small
advantages prevents great thing being accomplished.
-- Confucius
%%
One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that
all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some
magical rose garden over the horizon ... instead of enjoying the
roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
-- Dale Carnegie
%%
When, against one's will, one is high-pressured into making a
hurried decision the best answer is always no because no is more
easily changed to yes than yes is changed to no.
-- Charles E. Nielson
%%
My world is composed of takes and givers. The takers may eat
butter but the givers sleep better.
-- Byron Frederick
%%
I must slowing learn to lose control, to lot go the petals when
it is time... learn step by softly-treading-step, that what I
am, what we are, is this Power to move and be moved, to change
and be changed.
-- Linda Roach
%%
Here the people seem to possess the secret of tranquility...
Perhaps it is only by going up the old back roads leading to the
lost little hamlets of the mountains or the seagirt islands and
peninsulas of the world that you can still find it. Perhaps
even in such places it has not long to last.
-- Louise Dickinson Rich
%%
Why hoard your troubles? They have no market value, so just
throw them away.
-- Ann Schade
%%
There's sometimes a good hearty tree growin' right out of the
bare rock, out o' some crack that just holds the roots; right on
the pitch o' them bare stony hills where you can't seem to see a
wheel-barrowful o' good earth in a place, but that tree'll keep
a green top in the driest summer.
-- Sarah Orne Jewett
%%
A well-timed silence is more eloquent than words.
-- Our Daily Bread
%%
Sometimes you have to look hard at a person and remember that he
is doing the best he can. He's just trying to find his way.
That's all.
-- Ernest Thompson
%%
Sometimes the readiness to be sorry can appear in a flash of
insight; other times it may cost a sleepless night or a long
sulk. Either way, you've got to go through the process.
-- Laurence Shames
%%
For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.
-- Larry Eisenberg
%%
Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.
-- Vittorio Alfieri
%%
I have to laugh at the times I've knocked myself out over a
tough spot only to find out afterwards there was an easier way
through.
-- Robert Franklin Leslie
%%
We struggle after ideas. We read this book and that, and go
from place to place... instead of pausing to make our own the
few great but profoundly simple laws and truths of the spirit.
-- Dr. Horatio Dresser
%%
"And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How
chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of
affliction! "And this, too, shall pass away."
-- Abraham Lincoln
%%
We need the courage to start and continue what we should do, and
courage to stop what we shouldn't do.
-- Richard L. Evans
%%
I have wept in the night For the shortness of sight That to
somebody's need made me blind; But I have never yet Felt a tinge
of regret For being a little too kind.
-- Anonymous
%%
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they
are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings
are like that.
-- Gertrude Stein
%%
Let us move on, and step out boldly, though it be into the
night, and we can scarcely see the way. A higher intelligence
than the mortal sees the road before us. We do not have to
strive for good, but only to go forward and posses it. Good
awaits us at every step.
-- Charles B. Newcomb
%%
I am more involved in unlearning than learning. I'm having to
unlearn all the garbage that people have laid on me.
-- Loe Buscaglia
%%
Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you
could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget
them as soon as you can.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.
-- Swedish Proverb
%%
I know that I am here in a world where nothing is permanent but
change... I can change the form of things and influence a few
people and that I am influenced by these and other people.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
The ladder of life is full of splinters, but they always prick
the hardest when we're sliding down.
-- William L. Brownell
%%
Man is born broken. He lives by mending.
-- Eugene O'Neill
%%
Being sorry for myself is a luxury I can't afford.
-- Stephen King and Peter Straub
%%
Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or
star. If you have knowledge, let others light their candles at
it.
-- Margaret Fuller
%%
Everyone needs optimism. If you don't get it inside you get it
outside.
-- Dr. Denis Waitley
%%
There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains
of nature ... the assurance that dawn comes after night, and
spring after the winter.
-- Rachel Carson
%%
As a girl my temper often got out of bounds. But one day when I
became angry at a friend over some trivial matter, my mother
told me, "Elizabeth, anyone who angers you conquers you."
-- Sister Elizabeth Kenny
%%
... keep watch over your ability and prudence, do not let them
slip from sight... Then you will go your way without a care, and
your feet will not stumble. When you sit, you need have no
fear; when you lie down, your sleep will be pleasant.
-- Proverbs
%%
... the first sight of the lighthouse set boldly on its outer
rock, the flash of a gull, the waiting procession of
seaward-bound firs on an island, made me feel solid and definite
again, instead of a poor, incoherent being... It was a return to
happiness.
-- Sarah Orne Jewett
%%
Weigh thy words in a balance, and make a door and bar for thy
mouth.
-- Old Testament Apocrypha
%%
Go ahead with your life, your plans, your preparation, as fully
as you can. Don't waste time by stopping before the
interruptions have started.
-- Richard L. Evans
%%
My father taught me that a bill is like a crying baby and must
be attended to at once.
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
%%
You would do well to budget your time as follows: one-half in
work, taking care of personal belongings, etc.; one-fourth in
social pastimes with others, both young and old; and one-fourth
as an interested, pleased observer of life.
-- William B. Terhune
%%
It has never been, and never will be, easy work! But the road
that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the
road that is built in despair, even though they both lead to the
same destination.
-- Marian Zimmer Bradley
%%
Don't waste your time striving for perfection; instead, strive
for excellence ... doing your best.
-- Sir Laurence Olivier
%%
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for
every dream precedes the goal.
-- Pamela Vaull Starr
%%
How many times have we heard. "Why? I've given him the shirt
off my back and now look what he has done to me," or "I've given
him the best years of my life and look what I get in return."
If we bestow a gift or favor and expect a return for it, it is
not a gift but a trade.
-- Anonymous
%%
Ozone and friendship will be our stimulants ... let the drugs,
tobacco, and strong drink go forever. Natural joy brings no
headaches or heartaches.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
A mother's heart is the child's schoolroom.
-- Henry Ward Beecher
%%
Love is a great thing, a good above all others, which alone
maketh every burden light. Love is watchful, and whilst
sleeping still keeps watch; though fatigued, it is not weary;
though pressed, it is not forced.
-- Thomas Kempis
%%
We live on a line between the past and the future. That line is
our lifeline.
-- George A. Buttrick
%%
The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; the
optimist, the opportunity in every difficulty.
-- L. P. Jacks
%%
We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is
nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be
intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk,
embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in
Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self,
unrelenting, identical fact that I fled from.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
If you don't have such a clear picture of what you want, you may
become more humble.
-- Carlos Castaneda
%%
Imagine how little good music there would be if, for example, a
conductor refused to play Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on the
ground that his audience may have heard it before.
-- A.P. Herbert
%%
After 8,000 unsuccessful trials on a nickel-iron storage
battery, Thomas Edison said, "Well, at least we know 8,000
things that won't work."
-- Robert Millikan
%%
Happiness is knowing that you do not necessarily require
happiness.
-- William Saroyan
%%
You just have to learn to care about the dust-mice under the
beds.
-- Margaret Mead
%%
... she looked around and found there were no monsters, only
shifting shadows from the play of the moonlight through the
trees outside the window.
-- Lisa Alther
%%
Sometimes I feel mad at her. Feel like I could scratch her hair
right off her head. But then I think [she] got a right to live
too. She got a right to look over the world in whatever company
she choose. Just cause I love her don't take away none of her
rights.
-- Alice Walker (The Color Purple)
%%
The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts.
-- Marcus Aurelius
%%
Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. And bad habits can be
broken, good habits formed.
-- William James
%%
There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you
want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind
can achieve the second.
-- Logan Pearsall Smith
%%
I think the important thing is caring about someone. It's being
by themselves that does people in, makes them old and bitter.
-- Thomas Tryon
%%
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the
lamp of experience.
-- Patrick Henry
%%
Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems
true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage.
-- Andre Maurois
%%
Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two
golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is
offered, for they are gone forever.
-- Horace Mann
%%
The first step in solving a problem is to tell someone about it.
-- John Peter Flynn
%%
The voice of intelligence is soft an weak. It is drowned out by
the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is
contradicted by the voice of shame. It is hissed away by hate
and extinguished by anger. Most of all, it is silenced by
ignorance.
-- Karl Menninger
%%
As the old man walked the beach at dawn, he noticed a young man
ahead of him picking up starfish and flinging them into the sea.
Finally catching up with the youth, he asked him why he was
doing this. The answer was that the stranded starfish would die
if left until the morning sun. "But the beach goes on for miles
and there are millions of starfish," countered the other. "How
can your effort make any difference?" The young man looked at
the starfish in his hand and then threw it to safety in the
waves. "It makes a difference to this one," he said.
-- Minnesota Literacy Council
%%
You're only human, you're supposed to make mistakes.
-- Billy Joel
%%
The ebb and flow of will is like the movements of the tides ...
If we case our vain struggles and lamentations long enough to
look away from the personal self... we realize life is going
well with us after all.
-- Charles B. Newcomb
%%
In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life;
It goes on.
-- Robert Frost
%%
Fear imprisons, faith liberates; fear paralyzes, faith empowers;
fear disheartens, faith encourages; fear sickens, faith heals;
fear makes useless, faith makes serviceable.
-- Harry Emerson Fosdick
%%
... mankind has advanced in the footsteps of men and women of
unshakable faith. Many of these great ones... have set stars in
the heavens to light others through the night.
-- Olga Rosmanith
%%
The mind is its own place, and it itself ... can make a heaven
of hell, a hell of heaven.
-- John Milton
%%
We ought to hear at least one little song every day, read a good
poem, see a first-rate painting, and if possible speak a few
sensible words.
-- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
%%
When you worry, you go ever the same ground endlessly and come
out the same place you started. Thinking makes progress from
one place to another... The problem of life is to change worry
into thinking and anxiety into creative action.
-- Harold B. Walker
%%
I wish there were windows to my soul, so that you could see some
of my feelings.
-- Artemus Ward
%%
So I can't sink down and let the time of my real being take me,
for if I try and for a moment can see no direction, cannot tell
where I am going, I am filled with panic, scared of emptiness.
I must be doing something...
-- Joanna Field
%%
Use what talents you have; the woods would have little music if
no birds sang their song except those who sang best.
-- Oliver G. Wilson
%%
This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know
what to do with it.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy, fear. I wish
to be simple, honest, frank, natural, clean in mind and clean in
body... to face any obstacle and meet every difficulty unabashed
and unafraid.
-- Elbert Hubbart
%%
Love comes unseen; we only see it go.
-- Austin Dobson
%%
When you want to hurry something, that means you no longer care
about it and want to get on to other things.
-- Robert M. Pirsig
%%
For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights
left open to chance.
-- Mignon McLaughlin
%%
The man who makes no mistakes lacks boldness and the spirit of
adventure. He never tries anything new. He is a brake on the
wheels of progress.
-- M.W. Larmour
%%
Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.
-- Robert Ingersoll
%%
A person remains immature, whatever his age, as long as he
thinks of himself as an exception to the human race.
-- Harry A. Overstreet
%%
One must do more, think less, and not watch oneself live.
-- Sebastien Roch Nicolas de Chamfort
%%
Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never
use.
-- Charles M. Schulz
%%
Don't find fault. Find a remedy.
-- Henry Ford
%%
Blame yourself if you have no branches or leaves; don't accuse
the sun of partiality.
-- Chinese Proverb
%%
It is better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.
-- Sister Elizabeth Kenny
%%
... If we want to keep living with ourselves, we must keep
trying, trying, trying.
-- Robert J. White, M.D.
%%
Anger blows out the lamp of the mind.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll
%%
If you can't be thankful for what you receive, be thankful for
what you escape.
-- Anonymous
%%
Victory is not won in miles, but in inches. Win a little now,
hold your ground, and later win a little more.
-- Louis L'Amour
%%
Why do some people always see beautiful skies and grass and
lovely flowers and incredible human beings, while others are
hard-pressed to find anything or any place that is beautiful?
-- Leo Buscaglia
%%
We can't all be captains, we've got to be crew.
-- Douglas Malloch
%%
Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been
suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
-- Samual Johnson
%%
Patience is a virtue that carries a lot of WAIT!
-- Our Daily Bread
%%
Panics, in some cases, have their uses. Their duration is
always short; the mind soon grows through them and acquires a
firmer habit than before.
-- Thomas Paine
%%
You have learned something. That always feels at first as if
you had lost something.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long
ago.
-- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
%%
You take yourself too seriously! You are too damn important in
your own mind. That must be changed!
-- Carlos Castaneda
%%
You must travel the river, live on it, follow it when there is
morning light, and follow it when there is nothing but dark and
the banks have blurred into shadows.
-- Wil Haygood
%%
I never make the mistake of arguing with people for whose
opinions I have no respect.
-- Gibbon
%%
The highest compact we can make with our fellow is, let there be
truth between us two forevermore.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
It was like a revelation to me, taking complete responsibility
for one's own actions.
-- Cary Grant
%%
When I hear somebody sigh, "Live is hard," I am always tempted
to ask, "Compared to what?"
-- Sydney J. Harris
%%
When something does not insist on being noticed, when we aren't
grabbed by the collar or struck on the skull by a presence or an
event, we take for granted the very things that most deserve our
gratitude.
-- Cynthia Ozick
%%
The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness
while they snub contentment.
-- Doug Larson
%%
When the cards are dealt and you pick up your hand... there's
nothing you can do except to play it out for whatever it may be
worth. And the way you play your hand is free will.
-- Jawaharlal Nehru
%%
Three... are my friends: [One] that loves me, [one] that hates
me, [one] that is indifferent to me. Who loves me, teaches me
tenderness. Who hates me, teaches me caution. Who is
indifferent to me, teaches me self-reliance.
-- Ivan Panin
%%
Sickness tells us what we are.
-- Proverb
%%
Sometimes I found that in my happy moments I could not believe
that I had ever been miserable; I planned for the future as if
happiness were all there was...
-- Joanna Field
%%
When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when heath is lost,
something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.
-- German Proverb
%%
The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem
to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last
year.
-- John Foster Dallas
%%
This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense,
and imbibes delight through every pore.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%%
Never let your head hang down. Never give up and sit down and
grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains if you
don't pray when the sun shines.
-- Sachel Paige
%%
You have no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself, and how
little I deserve it.
-- William Gilbert
%%
The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such
parts of the marble block as are not needed ... it is a process
of elimination.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
The error of the past is the success of the future. A mistake
is evidence that someone tried to do something.
-- Anonymous
%%
Give us to go blithely on our business this day, bring us to our
resting beds weary and content and undishonored, and grant us in
the end the gift of sleep.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson
%%
... each cycle of the tide is valid; each cycle of a
relationship is valid.
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
%%
Worry is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If
encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are
drained.
-- Arthur Somers Roche
%%
What must I do is all that concerns me ... not what people
think. It is easy in the world to live after the world's
opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; ... but
the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with
perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
The height of wisdom is to take things as they are ... to endure
what we cannot evade.
-- Montaigne
%%
I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to
think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to
read, and all the friends I want to see.
-- John Burroughs
%%
I offer you no reward for being loyal to me, and surely I do not
threaten you with pain, penalty, and dire disaster if you are
indifferent to me.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
The man who goes alone can start today, but he who travels with
another must wait till that other is ready.
-- Henry David Thoreau
%%
I have accepted fear as a part of life... specifically the fear
of change... I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart
that says; turn back...
-- Erica Jong
%%
... We look upon Niagara and say, wonderful.. thinking nothing
of all that makes its glory and majesty possible. We look upon
a man or a woman of character; we are lost in admiration, but we
omit to consider the thousand influences, conscious and
unconscious, which have gone to make up the result.
-- Stephen S. Wise
%%
Listen, or thy tongues will keep thee deaf.
-- American Indian Proverb
%%
The biggest lesson I've learned... was that if you have all the
fresh water you want to drink and all the food you want to eat,
you ought never complain about anything.
-- Eddie Rickenbacker
%%
Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by
deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give
up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
-- Samuel Ullman
%%
I am sick and tired of the snivelers, the defeated, and the
whiners. I am sick and tired of being expected to believe that
ugliness is beauty, that melancholy is man's sole pleasure, that
delinquency is delight, that laughter is something to be ashamed
of.
-- John Madison Brown
%%
Laughing... stirs up the blood, expands the chest, electrifies
the nerves, clears away the cobwebs from the brain, and gives
the whole system a cleansing rehabilitation.
-- Anonymous
%%
If a ship has been sunk, I can't bring it up. If it is going to
be sunk, I can't stop it. I can use my time much better working
on tomorrow's problem than by fretting about yesterday's.
-- Admiral Ernest J. King
%%
... there are hundreds of tasks we feel we must accomplish in
the day, but if we do not take them one at a time and let them
pass through the day slowly and evenly, as do the grains of sand
passing through the narrow neck of the hourglass, then we are
bound to break our own physical or mental structure.
-- Ted Bengermino
%%
For every ailment under the sun,
There is a remedy, or there is none;
If there be one, try to find it;
If there is none, never mind it.
-- Mother Goose
%%
When we hate our enemies, we give them power over us... power
over our sleep, our appetites, and our unhappiness. Our hate is
not hurting them at all, but it is turning our days and nights
into hellish turmoil.
-- Dale Carnegie
%%
You can observe a lot just by watchin'.
-- Yogi Berra
%%
Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe
more, talk less, say more, love more, and good things will be
yours.
-- Swedish Proverb
%%
Never measure the height of a mountain until you have reached
the top. Then you'll see how low it is.
-- Dag Hammarskjold
%%
You want me to succeed so much.
Could you understand if I failed? ...
Could you love me if I failed?
-- Sister Mary Paul
%%
The message is, "It's okay if you mess up. You should give
yourself a break."
-- Billy Joel
%%
To get peace, if you want it, make for yourselves nests of
pleasant thoughts.
-- John Ruskin
%%
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new
landscapes but in having new eyes.
-- Marcel Proust
%%
How poor are they who have not patience. What wound did ever
heal but by degrees?
-- William Shakespeare
%%
It takes more than a soft pillow to ensure sound sleep.
-- Anonymous
%%
The awareness of the ambiguity of one's highest achievements (as
well as one's deepest failures) is a definite symptom of
maturity.
-- Paul Tillich
%%
A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives you roses.
-- Chinese Proverb
%%
The secret of being miserable is to have the leisure to bother
about whether you are happy or not.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they
have to live than other things do.
-- Willa Cather
%%
... loneliness is a bitter thing... more bitter when you think
you have been freed from it and find it returning again.
-- Anne Cameron
%%
Rest is not a matter of doing absolutely nothing. Rest is
repair.
-- Daniel W. Josselyn
%%
Life is an experience of ripening. The green fruit has but
small resemblance to that which is matured.
-- Charles B. Newcomb
%%
We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
-- Inscription in crypt of
Allegheny Observatory,
University of Pittsburgh
%%
Don't try to saw sawdust.
-- Dale Carnegie
%%
It would all be so beautiful if people were just kind... what is
more wise that to be kind? And what is more kind that to
understand?
-- Thomas Tryon
%%
Nowadays some people expect the door of opportunity to be opened
with an electric eye.
-- Anonymous
%%
...It has been observed that one's nose is never so happy as
when it is thrust into the affairs of another, from which some
physiologists have drawn the inference that the nose is devoid
of the sense of smell.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the
last resort of the scoundrel. With all due respect to an
enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it
is the first.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
"It is bad luck to be superstitious."
-- Andrew W. Mathis
%%
If A = B and B = C, then A = C, except where void or prohibited
by law.
-- Roy Santoro
%%
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
-- Noelie Altito
%%
If while you are in school, there is a shortage of qualified
personnel in a particular field, then by the time you graduate
with the necessary qualifications, that field's employment
market is glutted.
-- Marguerite Emmons
%%
"If you wants to get elected president, you'se got to think up
some memoraboble homily so's school kids can be pestered into
memorizin' it, even if they don't know what it means."
-- Walt Kelly
%%
In an organization, each person rises to the level of his own
incompetency
-- the Peter Principle
%%
A bird in the hand is worth what it will bring.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
HE: Let's end it all, bequeathin' our brains to science.
SHE: What?!? Science got enough trouble with their OWN brains.
-- Walt Kelley
%%
Dentist: A Prestidigitator who, putting metal in one's mouth,
pulls coins out of one's pockets.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
-- Harry S Truman
%%
"He is now rising from affluence to poverty."
-- Mark Twain
%%
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and
nobody wants to read.
-- Mark Twain
%%
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will
not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog
and a man.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Cauliflower is nothing but Cabbage with a College Education.
-- Mark Twain
%%
"Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral?
It is because we are not the person involved"
-- Mark Twain
%%
"...an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite
often picturesque liar."
-- Mark Twain
%%
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I
said I didn't know.
-- Mark Twain
%%
"...all the modern inconveniences..."
-- Mark Twain
%%
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
-- Walt Kelly
%%
"Humor is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse."
-- William Gilbert
%%
The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion
for lists of "Ten Best".
-- H. Allen Smith
%%
Not far from here, by a white sun, behind a green star, lived
the Steelypips, illustrious, industrious, and they hadn't a
care: no spats in their vats, no rules, no schools, no gloom, no
evil influence of the moon, no trouble from matter or antimatter
... for they had a machine, a dream of a machine, with springs
and gears and perfect in every respect. And they lived with it,
and on it, and under it, and inside it, for it was all they had
... first they saved up all their atoms, then they put them all
together, and if one didn't fit, why they chipped at it a bit,
and everything was just fine...
-- Stanislaw Lem
%%
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and
all the stars were lined up in their proper places, you could
easily count them from left to right, or top to bottom, and the
larger and bluer ones were set apart, and the smaller yellowing
types pushed off to the corners as bodies of a lower grade...
-- Stanislaw Lem
%%
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the
beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish
to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?
-- Ralph Emerson
%%
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to
it
-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Two can Live as Cheaply as One for Half as Long.
-- Howard Kandel
%%
To be is to do.
-- I. Kant
To do is to be.
-- A. Sartre
Yabba-Dabba-Doo!
-- F. Flintstone
%%
God is Dead
-- Nietzsche
Nietzsche is Dead
-- God
Nietzsche is God
-- Dead
%%
"So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an
apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the
street pops its head into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died,
and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were
present the Picninnies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with
the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the
game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the
heels of their boots."
-- Samuel Foote
%%
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting
because if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could
confuse a lot of people.
-- Dolph Sharp
%%
You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to
fight for freedom and liberty.
-- Henrick Ibson
%%
Yield to Temptation...it may not pass your way again.
-- Lazarus Long
%%
"The Lord gave us farmers two strong hands so we could grab as
much as we could with both of them."
-- Major Major's father
%%
Crime does not pay...as well as politics.
-- A. E. Newman
%%
Many years ago in a period commonly know as Next Friday
Afternoon, there lived a King who was very Gloomy on Tuesday
mornings because he was so Sad thinking about how Unhappy he had
been on Monday and how completely Mournful he would be on
Wednesday...
-- Walt Kelly
%%
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of
Jackals by Jackasses.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Guiseppe?
Everything he says is wrong.
GUISEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything
he says will be right.
-- G. B. Shaw
%%
People who have what they want are very fond of telling people
who haven't what they want that they don't want it.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
A lot of people I know believe in positive thinking, and so do
I. I believe everything positively stinks.
-- Lew Col
%%
Receiving a million dollars tax free will make you feel better
than being flat broke and having a stomach ache.
-- Dolph Sharp
%%
Children aren't happy without something to ignore, And that's
what parents were created for.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Confucius say too much.
-- Recent Chinese Proverb
%%
Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels
it with a tempest of words.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Anyone who hates Dogs and Kids Can't be All Bad.
-- W. C. Fields
%%
"Hey! Who took the cork off my lunch??!"
-- W. C. Fields
%%
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence
on society.
-- Mark Twain
%%
If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?
-- Art Hoppe
%%
Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL.
-- Mae West
%%
A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but
abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of
others.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Acquaintance: A person whom we know well enough to borrow from,
but not well enough to lend to.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum...
"I think that I think, therefore I think that I am."
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable,
justifiable, and praiseworthy...
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
...but as records of courts and justice are admissible, it can
easily be proved that powerful and malevolent magicians once
existed and were a scourge to mankind. The evidence (including
confession) upon which certain women were convicted of
witchcraft and executed was without a flaw; it is still
unimpeachable. The judges' decisions based on it were sound in
logic and in law. Nothing in any existing court was ever more
thoroughly proved than the charges of witchcraft and sorcery for
which so many suffered death. If there were no witches, human
testimony and human reason are alike destitute of value.
-- Ambrose Bierce
%%
There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics.
-- Disraeli
%%
You don't have to think too hard when you talk to teachers.
-- J. D. Salinger
%%
"It's not Camelot, but it's not Cleveland, either."
-- Kevin White, mayor of Boston
%%
You may have heard that a dean is to faculty as a hydrant is to
a dog.
-- Alfred Kahn
%%
United Nations, New York, December 25. The peace and joy of
the Christmas season was marred by a proclamation of a general
strike of all the military forces of the world. Panic reigns in
the hearts of all the patriots of every persuasion.
Meanwhile, fears of universal disaster sank to an all-time
low over the world.
-- Isaac Asimov
%%
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University
education.
-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that
made sense from things she found in gift shops.
-- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
%%
A sine curve goes off to infinity or at least the end of the
blackboard.
-- Prof. Steiner
%%
"I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
"I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent."
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
%%
"If God lived on Earth, people would knock out all His windows."
-- Yiddish saying
%%
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting
on people.
-- W. C. Fields
%%
There is something fascinating about science. One gets such
wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling
investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things
which otherwise require harder thinking.
-- Jerome Lettvin
%%
Ten years of rejection slips is nature's way of telling you to
stop writing.
-- R. Geis
%%
Paranoids are people, too; they have their own problems. It's
easy to criticize, but if everybody hated you, you'd be paranoid
too.
-- D. J. Hicks
%%
The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course
it is none of my business, but..." is to place a period after
the word "but." Don't use excessive force in supplying such a
moron with a period. Cutting his throat is only a momentary
pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.
-- Lazarus Long
%%
What use is magic if it can't save a unicorn?
-- Peter S. Beagle
%%
The seven eyes of Ningauble the Wizard floated back to his
hood as he reported to Fafhrd: "I have seen much, yet cannot
explain all. The Gray Mouser is exactly twenty-five feet below
the deepest cellar in the palace of Gilpkerio Kistomerces. Even
though twenty-four parts in twenty-five of him are dead, he is
alive.
"Now about Lankhmar. She's been invaded, her walls breached
everywhere and desperate fighting is going on in the streets, by
a fierce host which out-numbers Lankhamar's inhabitants by fifty
to one... and equipped with all modern weapons. Yet you can
save the city."
"How?" demanded Fafhrd.
Ningauble shrugged. "You're a hero. You should know."
-- Fritz Leiber, from
"The Swords of Lankhmar"
%%
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
-- Salvor Hardin
%%
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to
reality.
-- Albert Einstein
%%
Death is life's way of telling you you've been fired.
-- R. Geis
%%
"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might
be, and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.
That's logic!"
-- Lewis Carroll
%%
It is the business of the future to be dangerous.
-- Hawkwind
%%
"Why isn't there a special name for the tops of your feet?"
-- Lily Tomlin
%%
"If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
If someone had told me I would be Pope one day, I would have
studied harder.
-- Pope John Paul I
%%
There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I
learn what it is I'll get married again.
-- Clint Eastwood
%%
"A programmer is a person who passes as an exacting expert on
the basis of being able to turn out, after innumerable punching,
an infinite series of incomprehensive answers calculated with
micrometric precisions from vague assumptions based on debatable
figures taken from inconclusive documents and carried out on
instruments of problematical accuracy by persons of dubious
reliability and questionable mentality for the avowed purpose of
annoying and confounding a hopelessly defenseless department
that was unfortunate enough to ask for the information in the
first place."
-- IEEE Grid newsmagazine
%%
Accident: A condition in which presence of mind is good, but
absence of body is better.
-- Foolish Dictionary
%%
Advertisement: The most truthful part of a newspaper
-- Thomas Jefferson
%%
Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a
bad example.
-- La Rouchefoucauld
%%
Alimony is a system by which, when two people make a mistake,
one of them keeps paying for it.
-- Peggy Joyce
%%
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be
lazy.
-- Charlie McCarthy
%%
America may be unique in being a country which has leapt from
barbarism to decadence without touching civilization.
-- John O'Hara
%%
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking
off your shoes.
-- Mickey Mouse
%%
A bachelor is a selfish, undeserving guy who has cheated some
woman out of a divorce.
-- Don Quinn
%%
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is
shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-- Mark Twain
%%
California is a fine place to live... if you happen to be an
orange.
-- Fred Allen
%%
A city is a large community where people are lonesome together
-- Herbert Prochnow
%%
College football is a game which would be much more interesting
if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more
interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great
increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an
appreciable diminution in the loss to humanity.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
"Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of
Plymouth Corner, Vermont."
-- Clarence Darrow
%%
The cow is nothing but a machine with makes grass fit for us
people to eat.
-- John McNulty
%%
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by
the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-- G. B. Shaw
%%
Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to
wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class
management.
-- Senator Soaper
%%
Die: To stop sinning suddenly.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
Egotism is the anesthetic given by a kindly nature to relieve
the pain of being a damned fool.
-- Bellamy Brooks
%%
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a
mistake when you make it again.
-- F. P. Jones
%%
"It's Fabulous! We haven't seen anything like it in the last
half an hour!"
-- Macy's
%%
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to
alter it every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
If the weather is extremely bad, church attendance will be down.
If the weather is extremely good, church attendance will be
down. If the bulletin covers are in short supply, however,
church attendance will exceed all expectations.
-- Reverend Chichester
%%
The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant
because it isn't here.
-- Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley)
%%
Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.
-- Groucho Marx
%%
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
-- Groucho Marx
%%
Eggheads unite! You have nothing to lose but your yolks.
-- Adlai Stevenson
%%
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses
interest in students.
-- John Ciardi
%%
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
-- Jules de Gaultier
%%
Man is the only animal that blushes... or needs to.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is
called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark
side, and it holds the universe together...
-- Carl Zwanzig
%%
"If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to
do is make the rubble bounce"
-- Winston Churchill
%%
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the
last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other
side of his atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
-- Mark Twain
%%
When two people are under the influence of the most violent,
most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they
are required to swear that they will remain in that excited,
abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do
them part.
-- George Bernard Shaw
%%
"Now is the time for all good men to come to."
-- Walt Kelly
%%
But in our enthusiasm, we could not resist a radical overhaul of
the system, in which all of its major weaknesses have been
exposed, analyzed, and replaced with new weaknesses.
-- Bruce Leverett
"Register Allocation in
Optimizing Compilers"
%%
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus
handicapped.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but
World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."
-- Albert Einstein
%%
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-- Eleanor Roosevelt
%%
"I just need enough to tide me over until I need more."
-- Bill Hoest
%%
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it
is time to reform.
-- Mark Twain
%%
There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already
full.
-- Henry Kissinger
%%
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
--Oscar Wilde
%%
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
About the time we think we can make ends meet, somebody moves
the ends.
-- Herbert Hoover
%%
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked
about, and that is not being talked about.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there
when it happens.
-- Woody Allen.
%%
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more
annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near
relation.
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
I can't complain, but sometimes I still do.
-- Joe Walsh
%%
THE STORY OF CREATION
or
THE MYTH OF URK
In the beginning there was data. The data was without form and
null, and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the
Spirit of IBM was moving over the face of the market. And DEC
said, "Let there be registers"; and there were registers. And
DEC saw that they carried; and DEC separated the data from the
instructions. DEC called the data Stack, and the instructions
they called Code. And there was evening and there was morning,
one interrupt...
-- Rico Tudor
%%
Never try to outstubborn a cat.
-- Lazarus Long
%%
"Why be a man when you can be a success?"
-- Bertold Brecht
%%
God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School
Board.
-- Mark Twain
%%
Put your Nose to the Grindstone!
-- Amalgamated Plastic Surgeons
and Toolmakers, Ltd.
%%
Chicken Soup: An ancient miracle drug containing equal parts of
aureomycin, cocaine, interferon, and TLC. The only ailment
chicken soup can't cure is neurotic dependence on one's mother.
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that
someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew
named Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or
Stevenson or Reid or Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names
just about guarantee that every other person you meet with that
name will be Jewish. Why is this?
Who knows? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for
centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you
think you can find one? Get serious. You don't even understand
why it's forbidden to eat crab... fresh cold crab with
mayonnaise... or lobster... soft tender morsels of lobster
dipped in melted butter. You don't even understand a simple
thing like that, and yet you hope to discover why there are more
Jews named Miller than Katz? Fat Chance.
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
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 minute
seems like an hour. But if you're sitting with a beautiful
woman on your lap, an hour seems like a minute."
The old man considers this profound bit of thinking for a
moment and says, "And from this he makes a living?"
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Gay shlafen: Yiddish for "go to sleep".
Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound
than the harsh, staccato "go to sleep"? Listen to the
difference:
"Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen,
darling." Obvious, isn't it?
Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to
start speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of
English as long as you live. This will, of course, entail
teaching Yiddish to all your friends, business associates, the
people at the supermarket, and so on, but that's just the point.
It has to start with committed individuals and then grow....
Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course:
those signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be
funny when everything is written in Yiddish. And we'll have to
start driving on the left side of the road so we won't be
reading the street signs backwards. But is that too high a
price to pay for world peace? I think not, my friend, I think
not.
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
"God gives burdens; also shoulders"
Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession
speech at the end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was
a Jewish saying; I can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's
telling the truth though; why would he lie about a thing like
that?
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Goy: ... The distinction between Jewish and goyish can be quite
subtle, as the following quote from Lenny Bruce illustrates:
"I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish.
Eddie Cantor's goyish. The B'nai Brith is goyish. The Hadassah
is Jewish. Marine Corps... heavy goyish, dangerous.
"Kool-Aid is goyish. All Drake's Cakes are goyish.
Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very
goyish. Instant potatoes... goyish. Black cherry soda's very
Jewish. Macaroons are very Jewish. Fruit salad is Jewish. Lime
Jell-O is goyish. Lime soda is very goyish. Trailer parks are
so goyish that Jews won't go near them..."
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
One of the oldest problems puzzled over in the Talmud is: "Why
did God create goyim?" The generally accepted answer is
"somebody has to buy retail."
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Half-done: This is the best way to eat a kosher dill... when
it's still crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The
difference between this and the typical soggy dark green
cucumber corpse is like the difference between life and
death.
You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher
dill there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out
to the airport, fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay
Street-Borough Hall, transfer to an uptown F, get off at East
Broadway, walk north on Essex (along the park), make your first
left onto Hester Street, walk about fifteen steps, turn ninety
degrees left, and stop. Say to the man, "Let me have a nice
half-done."
Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
A man goes to a tailor to try on a new custom-made suit.
The first thing he notices is that the arms are too long.
"No problem," says the tailor. "Just bend them at the elbow
and hold them out in front of you. See, now it's fine."
"But the collar is up around my ears!"
"It's nothing. Just hunch your back up a little...no, a
little more...that's it."
"But I'm stepping on my cuffs!" the man cries in
desperation.
"Nu, bend you knees a little to take up the slack. There
you go. Look in the mirror... the suit fits perfectly."
So, twisted like a pretzel, the man lurches out onto the
street. Reba and Florence see him go by.
"Oh, look," says Reba, "that poor man!"
"Yes," says Florence, "but what a beautiful suit."
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
Murray and Esther, a middle-aged Jewish couple, are touring
Chile. Murray just got a new camera and is constantly snapping
pictures. One day, without knowing it, he photographs a
top-secret military installation. In an instant, armed troops
surround Murray and Esther and hustle them off to prison.
They can't prove who they are because they've left their
passports in their hotel room. For three weeks they're tortured
day and night to get them to name their contacts in the
liberation movement.. Finally they're hauled in front of a
military court, charged with espionage, and sentenced to death.
The next morning they're lined up in front of the wall where
they'll be shot. The sergeant in charge of the firing squad
asks them if they have any lasts requests. Esther wants to know
if she can call her daughter in Chicago. The sergeant says he's
sorry, that's not possible, and turns to Murray.
"This is crazy!" Murray shouts. "We're not spies!" And he
spits in the sergeants face.
"Murray!" Esther cries. "Please! Don't make trouble."
-- Arthur Naiman
%%
"I am not an Economist. I am an honest man!"
-- Paul McCracken
%%
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to
have nothing whatever to do with it.
-- W. Somerset Maughm
%%
Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
-- George Saunders' dying words
%%
Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow
such a conventional thing to happen to him.
-- John Barrymore's dying words
%%
I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only
longer.
-- Kehlog Albran
%%
Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.
He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of
the Jordan, then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his
wares in an open market.
If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then
he should not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give
of himself.
Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
-- Kehlog Albran
%%
A priest asked:
What is Fate, Master?
And he answered:
It is that which gives a beast of burden its reason for
existence.
It is that which men in former times had to bear upon their
backs.
It is that which has caused nations to build byways from
City to City upon which carts and coaches pass, and alongside
which inns have come to be built to stave off Hunger, Thirst and
Weariness.
And that is Fate? said the priest.
Fate... I thought you said Freight, responded the Master.
That's all right, said the priest. I wanted to know what
Freight was too.
-- Kehlog Albran
%%
"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if
it is lightly greased."
-- Kehlog Albran
%%
"Arguments with furniture are rarely productive."
-- Kehlog Albran
%%
"Even the best of friends cannot attend each other's funeral."
-- Kehlog Albran
%%
There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish
sometimes.
-- Dr. Who
%%
"Just once, I wish we would encounter an alien menace that
wasn't immune to bullets"
-- The Brigader, from Dr. Who
%%
Signs of crime: screaming or cries for help.
-- from the Brown Security
Crime Prevention Pamphlet
%%
In the long run, every program becomes rococo, and then rubble.
-- Alan Perlis
%%
You can measure a programmer's perspective by noting his
attitude on the continuing viability of Fortran.
-- Alan Perlis
%%
A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing.
-- Alan Perlis
%%
The computing field is always in need of new cliches.
-- Alan Perlis
%%
It is against the grain of modern education to teach children to
program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring
discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail,
and learning to be self-critical?
-- Alan Perlis
%%
"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."
-- N. Meyrowitz
%%
Pereant, inquit, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt. [Confound those
who have said our remarks before us.]
-- Aelius Donatus
%%
It is amusing that a virtue is made of the vice of chastity; and
it's a pretty odd sort of chastity at that, which leads men
straight into the sin of Onan, and girls to the waning of their
color.
-- Voltaire
%%
The superfluous is very necessary.
-- Voltaire
%%
It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have
imagined that virginity could be a virtue.
-- Voltaire
%%
An Englishman never enjoys himself, except for a noble purpose.
-- A. P. Herbert
%%
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a
man.
-- Trotsky
%%
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
-- Gore Vidal
%%
The world's as ugly as sin, and almost as delightful.
-- Frederick Locker-Lampson
%%
Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.
-- Jules Feiffer
%%
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple,
neat, and wrong.
-- H. L. Mencken
%%
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
-- Wernher von Braun
%%
"Grub first, then ethics."
-- Bertolt Brecht
%%
"I drink to make other people interesting."
-- George Jean Nathan
%%
"Pascal is not a high-level language."
-- Steven Feiner
%%
Immortality... a fate worse than death.
-- Edgar A. Shoaff
%%
Nothing is illegal if one hundred businessmen decide to do it.
-- Andrew Young
%%
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.
-- Donald N. Smith, president
of Burger King
%%
"If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars."
-- J. Paul Getty
%%
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
-- Milton Friedman
%%
There are really not many jobs that actually require a penis or
a vagina, and all other occupations should be open to everyone.
-- Gloria Steinem
%%
We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.
-- Pogo
%%
Nothing recedes like success.
-- Walter Winchell
%%
I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.
-- Isaac Asimov
%%
Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
-- Lily Tomlin
%%
Tax reform means "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax that fellow
behind the tree."
-- Russell Long
%%
Some people are born mediocre, some people achieve mediocrity,
and some people have mediocrity thrust upon them.
-- Joseph Heller
%%
Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably
still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.
-- Snoopy
%%
If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple
of car payments.
-- Earl Wilson
%%
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by
spectacular error.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
Where humor is concerned there are no standards... no one can
say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone
will.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
%%
TV is chewing gum for the eyes.
-- Frank Lloyd Wright
%%
He who attacks the fundamentals of the American broadcasting
industry attacks democracy itself.
-- William S. Paley, chairman of CBS
%%
Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
-- Eric Hoffer
%%
You couldn't even prove the White House staff sane beyond a
reasonable doubt.
-- Ed Meese, on the Hinckley verdict
%%
If you think the United States has stood still, who built the
largest shopping center in the world?
-- Richard Nixon
%%
Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was
a pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his
city until about his 35th year, when he became a Christian... To
him is ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est
(I believe because it is absurd). This does not altogether
accord with historical fact, for he merely said:
"And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible
because it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is
certain because it is impossible."
Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty
of philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously
rejected it.
-- C. G. Jung, in Psychological Types
(Teruillian was one of the founders of the Catholic Church).
%%
In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen
world to drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and
light shows at discotheques.
-- Art Linkletter
%%
Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on
the ass.
-- Frank Zappa
%%
Justice is incidental to law and order.
-- J. Edgar Hoover
%%
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
gobbledegook than the rest of the world put together.
-- Sir Peter Medawar
%%
To YOU I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
-- Woody Allen
%%
"Earth is a great funhouse without the fun."
-- Jeff Berner
%%
Marriage is the only adventure open to the cowardly.
-- Voltaire
%%
POLITICIAN: From the Greek 'poly' ("many") and the French
'tete' ("head" or "face," as in 'tete-a-tete': head to head or
face to face). Hence 'polytetien', a person of two or more
faces.
-- Martin Pitt
%%
CALIFORNIA: From Latin 'calor', meaning "heat" (as in English
'calorie' or Spanish 'caliente'); and 'fornia', for "sexual
intercourse" or "fornication." Hence: Tierra de California,
"the land of hot sex."
-- Ed Moran, Covina, California
%%
ETYMOLOGY: Some early etymological scholars come up with
derivations that were hard for the public to believe. The term
'etymology' was formed from the Latin 'etus' ("eaten"), the root
'mal' ("bad"), and 'logy' ("study of"). It meant "the study of
things that are hard to swallow."
-- Mike Kellen, Oakdale, Minnesota
%%
"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.
-- Lewis Carrol
%%
Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else...
unless it is an enemy.
-- A. Einstein
%%
"Calvin Coolidge looks as if he had been weaned on a pickle."
-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth
%%
"There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike
it, the other is to read Pope."
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
"She is descended from a long line that her mother listened to."
-- Gypsy Rose Lee
%%
"The difference between a misfortune and a calamity? If
Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But
if someone dragged him out again, it would be a calamity."
-- Benjamin Disraeli
%%
"It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day.
Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to
decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the
date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at).
There's a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours;
it never grows old, it never loses its novelty .... Other
letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are
kept forever... unread. One of them will last a reasonable man
a lifetime."
-- Thomas Aldrich
%%
"MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of
words into the smallest amount of thoughts."
-- Winston Churchill
%%
"Sherry [Thomas Sheridan] is dull, naturally dull; but it must
have taken him a great deal of pains to become what we now see
him. Such an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in Nature."
-- Samuel Johnson
%%
"Why was I born with such contemporaries?"
-- Oscar Wilde
%%
"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
-- Mark Twain
%%
On a paper submitted by a physicist colleague:
"This isn't right. This isn't even wrong."
-- Wolfgang Pauli
%%
When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure
clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite
answer to a definite problem. For better or worse you have
acted decisively.
In a way, the next move is up to him.
-- R. A. Lafferty
%%
"You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or
they don't."
-- Dagwood Bumstead
%%
Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.
-- A. E. Housman
%%
Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
Silently scheming,
Sightlessly seeking
Some savage, spectacular suicide.
-- Stanislaw Lem
%%
But soft you, the fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery ... go!
-- Mark "The Bard" Twain
%%
The Preacher, the Politician, the Teacher,
Were each of them once a kiddie.
A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature.
Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Who made the world I cannot tell;
'Tis made, and here am I in hell.
My hand, though now my knuckles bleed,
I never soiled with such a deed.
-- A. E. Housman
%%
Families, when a child is born
Want it to be intelligent.
I, through intelligence,
Having wrecked my whole life,
Only hope the baby will prove
Ignorant and stupid.
Then he will crown a tranquil life
By becoming a Cabinet Minister
-- Su Tung-p'o
%%
This is for all ill-treated fellows
Unborn and unbegot,
For them to read when they're in trouble
And I am not.
-- A. E. Housman
%%
"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time.
Moping, melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."
-- A. E. Housman
%%
Santa Claus wears a Red Suit,
He must be a communist.
And a beard and long hair,
Must be a pacifist.
What's in that pipe that he's smoking?
-- Arlo Guthrie
%%
Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to postulate how.
-- Frederick Winsor
%%
Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine:
This living, this living, this living,
Was never a project of mine.
Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is
The gain of the one at the top,
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle ...
Would you kindly direct me to hell?
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
The ladies men admire, I've heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They'd rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints...
So far, I've had no complaints.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
THEORY
Into love and out again,
Thus I went and thus I go.
Spare your voice, and hold your pen:
Well and bitterly I know
All the songs were ever sung,
All the words were ever said;
Could it be, when I was young,
Someone dropped me on my head?
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
Here in my heart, I am Helen;
I'm Aspasia and Hero, at least.
I'm Judith, and Jael, and Madame de Stael;
I'm Salome, moon of the East.
Here in my soul I am Sappho;
Lady Hamilton am I, as well.
In me Recamier vies with Kitty O'Shea,
With Dido, and Eve, and poor nell.
I'm all of the glamorous ladies
At whose beckoning history shook.
But you are a man, and see only my pan,
So I stay at home with a book.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
If I don't drive around the park,
I'm pretty sure to make my mark.
If I'm in bed each night by ten,
I may get back my looks again.
If I abstain from fun and such,
I'll probably amount to much;
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
FIGHTING WORDS
Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad...
Still behold me at your side.
Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue...
Still you have my heart to wear.
But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
COMMENT
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
A lady with one of her ears applied
To an open keyhole heard, inside,
Two female gossips in converse free...
The subject engaging them was she.
"I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
As soon as no more of it she could hear
The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
"I will not stay," she said with a pout,
"To hear my character lied about!"
-- Gopete Sherany
%%
...And malt does more than Milton can
to justify God's ways to man
-- A. E. Housman
%%
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
We wish you a Hare Krishna
And a Sun Myung Moon!
-- Maxwell Smart
%%
If I traveled to the end of the rainbow
As Dame Fortune did intend,
Murphy would be there to tell me
The pot's at the other end.
-- Bert Whitney
%%
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
-- Hilaire Belloc
%%
A computer, to print out a fact,
Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
But this output can be
No more than debris,
If the input was short of exact.
-- Gigo
%%
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
-- Dorothy Parker
%%
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright...
And this was very odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
-- Lewis Carroll
%%
"Reflections on Ice-Breaking"
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy,
but it's very funny...
Did you ever try buying them without money?
-- Ogden Nash
%%
Money is the wise man's religion.
-- EURIPIDES
%%
Money, which represents the prose of life, and is hardly spoke
of in parlors without apology, is, in its effects and laws, as
beautiful as roses.
-- RALPH WALDO EMERSON
%%
You can be as romantic as you please about love, Hector; but you
mustn't be romantic about money.
-- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
%%
Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex; you thought of
nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things
if you did.
-- JAMES BALDWIN
%%
Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.
-- J. PAUL GETTY
%%
Money is the poor people's credit card.
-- MARSHALL MCLUHAN
%%
I've been in trouble all my life; I've done the most unutterable
rubbish, all because of money. I didn't need it... the lure of
the zeros was simply too great.
-- RICHARD BURTON
%%
If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no
meaning.
-- ARISTOTLE ONASSIS
%%
Make money and the whole world will conspire to call you a
gentleman.
-- MARK TWAIN
%%
The greater the wealth, the thicker will be the dirt. This
undoubtedly describes a tendency of our time.
-- JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH
%%
So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever
asked what is the root of money?
-- AYN RAND
%%
Not to be covetous is money in your purse; not to be eager to
buy is income.
-- CICERO
%%
The covetous man never has money; the prodigal will have none
shortly.
-- BEN JOHNSON
%%
I would rather have my people laugh at my economics than weep
for my extravagance.
-- OSCAR II OF SWEDEN
%%
Who needs money when you're funny.
-- RANDY NEWMAN
%%
The petty economics of the rich are just as amazing as the silly
extravagances of the poor.
-- WILLIAM FEATHER
%%
Money is a terrible master, but an excellent servant.
-- P.T. BARNUM
%%
The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money.
-- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
%%
The value of money is that with it we can tell any man to go to
the devil. It is the sixth sense, which enables you to enjoy the
other five.
-- W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
%%
Money may be the husk of many things, but not the kernel. It
brings you food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health;
acquaintances, but not friends; servants, but not faithfulness;
days of joy, but not peace or happiness.
-- HENRIK IBSEN
%%
I believe in the dollar. Everything I earn, I spend!
-- JOAN CRAWFORD
%%
There are three great friends: an old wife, and old dog, and
ready money.
-- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
%%
Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the
unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than
they know what to do.
-- SAMUEL JOHNSON
%%
Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.
-- MAE WEST
%%
Everything in the world may be endured except continued
prosperity.
-- GOETHE
%%
The entire essence of America is the hope to first make money...
then make money with money... then make lots of money with lots
of money.
-- PAUL ERDMAN
%%
The highest user of capital is not to make money, but to make
money do more for the betterment of life.
-- HENRY FORD
%%
The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he
becomes.
-- GORE VIDAL
%%
A feast is made for laughter,
And wine maketh merry,
But money answereth all things.
-- ECCLESIASTES 10:19
%%
The man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man
who respects it has earned it.
-- AYN RAND
%%
When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the
thing," it's the money.
-- FRANK MCKINNEY "KIN" HUBBARD
%%
Finance is the art of science of managing revenues and resources
for the best advantage of the manager.
-- AMBROSE BIERCE
%%
Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to
trust nobody.
-- AGATHA CHRISTIE
%%
Those heros of finance are like beads on a string -- when one
slips off, the rest follow.
-- HENRIK IBSEN
%%
I don't want to make money. I just want to be wonderful.
-- MARILYN MONROE
%%
I don't want to be a star, I want to be a millionaire.
-- "KINKY" FRIEDMAN
%%
Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to
administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.
-- ANDREW CARNEGIE
%%
Prosperity is only an instrument to be used, not a deity to be
worshipped.
-- CALVIN COOLIDGE
%%
Make money your God, and it will plague you like the devil.
-- HENRY FIELDING
%%
There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches but the wrong
comes when riches posses men.
-- BILLY GRAHAM
%%
You know, Ernest, the rich are different from us.
-- F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
%%
Yes, I know. They have more money.
-- ERNEST HEMINGWAY
%%
Paying attention to simple little things that most men neglect
makes a few men rich.
-- HENRY FORD
%%
As a general rule, nobody has money who ought to have it.
-- BENJAMIN DISREALI
%%
Sudden money is going from zero to two hundred dollars a week.
The rest doesn't count.
-- NEIL SIMON
%%
The only way to keep score in business is to add up how much
money you make.
-- HARRY HELMSLEY
%%
If you can count your money, you don't have a billion dollars.
-- J. PAUL GETTY
%%
The end is easily foretold,
When every blessed thing you hold
Is made of silver, or of gold,
You long for simple pewter.
When you have nothing else to wear
But long for cloth of gold and satins rare,
For cloth of gold you cease to care
Up goes the price of shoddy.
-- W.S. GILBERT (Gilbert & Sullivan)
%%
I've been rich and I've been poor, and believe me, rich is
better.
-- JOE E. LEWIS
%%
I've never been poor, only broke. Being poor is a frame of
mind. Being broke is only a temporary situation.
-- MIKE TODD
%%
I have tried to become conservative. In 1958 I resolved to be
simply a piano player. That was the year I lost $800,000.
-- LIBERACE
%%
That money talks
I'll not deny,
I head it once:
It said: "Goodbye"
-- RICHARD ARMOUR
%%
Neither great poverty nor great riches will hear reason.
-- HENRY FIELDING
%%
Poor people know poor people and rich people know rich people.
It is one of the few things that La Rochefoucauld did not say,
but then La Rouchefoucauld never lived in the Bronx.
-- MOSS HART
%%
The chief problem of the lower-income farmers is poverty.
-- NELSON ROCKEFELLER
%%
There is a serious tendency towards capitalism among the
well-to-do peasants.
-- MAO TSE TUNG
%%
The rouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
-- WILLIAM DE KOONING
%%
Poverty is uncomfortable; but nine times out of ten the best
thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard
and compelled to sink or swim.
-- JAMES A. GARFIELD
%%
Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the
world have been achieved by poor men, poor scholars, poor
professional men, poets, and men of genius. A certain staidness
and sobriety, a certain moderation and restraint, a certain
pressure of circumstances are good for men. His body was not
made for luxuries. It sickens, sinks and dies under them.
-- HENRY DAVID THOREAU
%%
I'd like to live like a poor man with lots of money.
-- PABLO PICASSO
%%
I never wanted to be a millionaire. I just wanted to live like
one.
-- WALTER HAGEN
%%
Momma may have;
Poppa may have;
But God bless the child that's got his own.
That's got his own.
-- BILLIE HOLIDAY
%%
Money is always there but the pockets of change; it is not the
same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say
about money.
-- GERTRUDE STEIN
%%
Most people seek after what they do not possess and are enslaved
by the very things they want to acquire.
-- ANWAR EL-SADAT
%%
Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a
positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that
others may become rich, and hence, is just another encouragement
to industry and enterprise.
-- ABRAHAM LINCOLN
%%
Government has no other end but the preservation of property.
-- JOHN LOCKE
%%
It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else,
that prevents men from living freely and nobly.
-- BERTRAND RUSSEL
%%
Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury... to me these
have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and
unassuming manner of life is best for everyone, best for both
the body and the mind.
-- ALBERT EINSTEIN
%%
In God we trust, all others pay cash.
-- [Sign used in retail stores
during the Depression]
%%
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
-- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
%%
It is better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same.
-- SIR PHILIP GIBBS
%%
Let us all be happy and live within our means, even if we have
to borrow the money to do it with.
-- C.F. BROWNE (ARTEMUS WARD)
%%
I get by with a little help from my friends.
-- JOHN LENNON & PAUL MCCARTNEY
%%
Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one
thing that insures the successful outcome of our venture.
-- William James
%%
The cure for grief is motion.
-- Elbert Hubbard
%%
Love does not consist of gazing at each other but in looking
together in the same direction.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
%%
Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still
dark.
-- Sir Rabindranath Tagore
%%
Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell
you you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which
tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a
course of action and follow it to an end requires... courage.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
%%
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around
us in awareness.
-- James Thurber
%%
If you make an error, use it as a stepping stone to a new idea
you might not otherwise have discovered.
-- Anonymous
%%
Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the
ability to stick to one thing until it gets there.
-- Josh Billings
%%
When the friendly light goes out, there is a light by which the
heart sees.
-- Olga Rosmanith
%%
The great victories of life are oftenest won in a quiet way, and
not with alarms and trumpets.
-- Benjamen N. Cardozo
%%
Live so that you wouldn't be ashamed to sell the family parrot
to the town gossip.
-- Will Rogers
%%
No one can really pull you up very high... you lose your grip on
the rope. But on your own to feet you can climb mountains.
-- Louis Brandeis
%%
Worry is most often apt to ride you ragged not when you are in
action, but when the days work is done. Your imagination can
run riot then... your mind is like a motor operating without its
load.
-- James L. Mursell
%%
We should think seriously before we slam doors, before we burn
bridges, before we saw off the limb on which we find ourselves
sitting.
-- Richard L. Evans
%%
I will not meddle with that which I cannot mend.
-- Thomas Fuller
%%
You who are letting miserable misunderstandings run on from year
to year, meaning to clear them up someday... if you could only
know and see and feel all of a sudden that time is short, how it
would break the spell!
-- Phillips Brooks
%%
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived
forwards.
-- Sorren Kierkegaard
%%
Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance,
but to do what lies clearly at hand.
-- Thomas Carlyle
%%
I could tell where the lamplighter was by the trail he left
behind him.
-- Harry Lauder
%%
Sir Isaac Newton secretly admitted to friends: He understood how
gravity behaved, but not how it worked!
-- Lily Tomlin
"The Search for Signs of
Intelligent Life in the
Universe"
%%
Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of
nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such
faith comforts the software engineer. Much of the complexity
that he must master is arbitrary complexity.
-- F. Brooks
"No Silver Bullet: Essence
and Accidents of Software
Engineering"
%%
The world is only sparsely populated with geniuses. There is no
reason to believe that the software engineering community has an
inordinately large proportion of them.
-- L. Peters
"Software Design"
%%
Ink: A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic,
and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy
and promote intellectual crime.
%%
Kleptomaniac: A rich thief.
%%
Labor: One of the processes by which A acquires property for B.
%%
Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission.
%%
Mad: Affected with a high degree of intellectual independence...
%%
Magnet, n.: Something acted upon by magnetism.
Magnetism, n.: Something acting upon a magnet.
The two definition immediately foregoing are condensed from the
works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated
the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible
advancement of human knowledge.
%%
Man: An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he
thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be.
His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his
own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent
rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
%%
Misfortune: The kind of fortune that never misses.
%%
Miss: A title with which we brand unmarried women to indicate
that they are in the market.
%%
Molecule: The ultimate, indivisible unit of matter. It is
distinguished from the corpuscle, also the ultimate, indivisible
unit of matter, by a closer resemblance to the atom, also the
ultimate, indivisible unit of matter...The ion differs from the
molecule, the corpuscle and the atom in that it is an ion...
%%
Monday: In Christian countries, the day after the baseball game.
%%
Mythology: The body of a primitive people's beliefs concerning
its origin, early history, heroes, deities and so forth, as
distinguished from the true accounts which it invents later.
%%
November: The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
%%
Once, adv.: Enough.
%%
Pig: An animal (Porcus omnivorous) closely allied to the human
race by the splendor and vivacity of its appetite, which,
however, is inferior in scope, for it balks at pig.
%%
Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
%%
Frisbeetarianism: The belief that when you die, your soul goes
up the on roof and gets stuck.
%%
186,000 miles per second: it's not just a good idea, it's the
law.
%%
A bird in the hand makes it awfully hard to blow your nose.
%%
A bird in the hand might.
%%
A committee is an animal with a hundred stomachs and no brains.
%%
A cow eats without a knife.
%%
A friend asks only for your time, not your money.
%%
A gift of flowers will soon be made to you.
%%
A guy has to get fresh once in a while so the girl doesn't lose
her confidence.
%%
A king's castle is his home.
%%
A lie in time saves nine.
%%
A lost ounce of gold may be found, a lost moment of time never.
%%
A man who turns green has eschewed protein.
%%
A member of your family will soon do something that will make
you proud.
%%
A plucked goose doesn't lay golden eggs.
%%
A present, over which you will shed tears of joy.
%%
A stitch in time saves nine.
%%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a Unicorn.
%%
A virtuous life is its own punishment.
%%
A vivid and creative mind characterizes you.
%%
A wise man can see more from a mountain top than a fool can
from the bottom of a well.
%%
Ain't no horse can't be rode; ain't no cowboy can't be throwed.
%%
Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth.
%%
All the troubles you have will pass away very quickly.
%%
Although the moon is smaller than the earth, it is farther away.
%%
Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.
%%
An abstract term is like a valise with a false bottom, you may
put in it what ideas you please, and take them out again,
without being observed.
%%
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
%%
Anything is impossible, if you don't attempt it.
%%
Art is your fate; don't debate.
%%
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected
error.
%%
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of
demand.
%%
Avert misunderstanding by calm, poise, and balance.
%%
Be self-reliant and your success is assured.
%%
Be tactful; overlook not your own opportunity.
%%
Beauty and harmony are as necessary to you as the very breath of
life.
%%
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.
%%
Beauty seldom recommends one woman to another.
%%
Bedfellows make strange politicians.
%%
Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.
%%
Better to use medicines at the outset than at the last moment.
%%
Beware of friends who are false and deceitful.
%%
Beware of quantum ducks: Quark, Quark.
%%
Business is like oil, it won't mix with anything but business.
%%
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
%%
By following the good, you learn to be good.
%%
Cheap things are of no value, valuable things are not cheap.
%%
Chicken Little only has to be right once.
%%
Common sense is very uncommon.
%%
Contact with a friend may provide some unexpected income
advantages.
%%
Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the
school of genius.
%%
Courage is your greatest present need.
%%
Creditors have much better memories than debtors.
%%
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.
%%
Deprive a mirror of its silver and even the Czar won't see his
face.
%%
Do not clog intellect's sluices with knowledge of questionable
uses.
%%
Don't be overly suspicious where it's not warranted.
%%
Don't believe in miracles, expect them.
%%
Don't get yourself involved with persons or situations that
can't bear inspection.
%%
Don't look back, always look ahead.
%%
Don't worry if you're a kleptomaniac, you can always take
something for it.
%%
Draw your salary before spending it.
%%
Economy makes men independent.
%%
Enjoy your life; be pleasant and gay, like the birds in May.
%%
Even a hawk is an eagle among crows.
%%
Even the boldest zebra fears the hungry lion.
%%
Even the smallest candle burns brighter in the dark.
%%
Every purchase has its price.
%%
Everyone complains of his memory, no one of his judgment.
%%
Everything bows to success, even grammar.
%%
Executive ability is prominent in your make-up.
%%
Expect a letter from a friend who will ask a favor of you.
%%
Faith goes out through the window when beauty comes in at the
door.
%%
Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth.
%%
For people who like that kind of book, that is the kind of book
they will like.
%%
For success today, look first to yourself.
%%
Fortune truly helps those who are of good judgment.
%%
Friendship is one soul in two bodies.
%%
From listening comes wisdom and from speaking repentance.
%%
Generosity and perfection are your everlasting goals.
%%
God gives us relatives; thank God we can chose our friends.
%%
God is REAL (unless declared INTEGER).
%%
Good health will be yours for a long time.
%%
Good news from afar can bring you a welcome visitor.
%%
Handle all business ventures with discretion so you do not end
up a loser.
%%
Happiness is just an illusion, filled with sadness and
confusion.
%%
He is no lawyer who cannot take two sides.
%%
He is truly wise who gains wisdom from another's mishap.
%%
He likes to flirt, but toward you his intentions are honorable.
%%
He that will not command his thoughts will soon lose the command
of his actions.
%%
He thinks he could easily win your heart.
%%
He walks as if balancing the family tree on his nose.
%%
He was so narrow-minded he could see through a keyhole with two
eyes.
%%
He who has a shady past knows that nice guys finish last.
%%
He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.
%%
He who invents adages for others to peruse takes along a rowboat
when going on a cruise.
%%
He who is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything
else.
%%
He who laughs last didn't understand the joke.
%%
He who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is not fit for
the kingdom of winners.
%%
Help fight continental drift.
%%
Here comes the orator, with his flood of words and his drop of
reason.
%%
His heart was yours from the first moment that you met.
%%
His life was formal; his actions seemed ruled with a ruler.
%%
History always repeats itself: once as tragedy, the second time
as farce.
%%
History books which contain no lies are extremely dull.
%%
How many "coming men" has one known! Where on earth do they all
go to?
%%
How sharper than a hound's tooth it is to have a thankless
serpent.
%%
How you look depends on where you go.
%%
I despise the pleasure of pleasing people whom I despise.
%%
I don't remember ever having had the itch, and yet scratching is
one of nature's sweet pleasures, and so handy.
%%
I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.
%%
I like work; it fascinates me; I can watch it for hours.
%%
I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they
could do was to go away.
%%
I've given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.
%%
Ideas don't stay in some minds very long because they don't like
solitary confinement.
%%
Idleness is the holiday of fools.
%%
If a town has one lawyer, he starves; if it has two lawyers,
they both get rich.
%%
If at first you don't succeed, you're doing about average.
%%
If it pours before seven, it has rained by eleven.
%%
If one word does not succeed, ten thousand are of no avail.
%%
If some people didn't tell you, you'd never know they'd been
away on vacation.
%%
If we weren't supposed to juggle, tennis balls wouldn't come
three to a can.
%%
If you always postpone pleasure you will never have it. Quit
work and play for once.
%%
If you believe in gambling, in the end you will sell your house.
%%
If you continually give you will continually have.
%%
If you eat a live toad every morning, nothing worse will happen
to you all day.
%%
If you make a mistake you right it immediately to the best of
your ability.
%%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but
if you really make them think they'll hate you.
%%
If you suspect a man, don't employ him.
%%
If you wish to succeed, consult three old people.
%%
If you wish, you will have an opportunity.
%%
If you would keep a secret from an enemy, tell it not to a
friend.
%%
If your desires are not extravagant they will be granted.
%%
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
%%
In jealousy there is more self-love than love.
%%
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is insane.
%%
Integrity is praised, and starves.
%%
It is Fortune, not wisdom that rules man's life.
%%
It is a poor judge who cannot award a prize.
%%
It is better to have flunked your Wasserman test than never to
have loved at all.
%%
It is better to wear out than to rust out.
%%
It is commonly not your practice to make up your mind until the
very last minute.
%%
It is easier to run down a hill than up one.
%%
It is far better to be deceived than to be undeceived by those
we love.
%%
It is fortune, not wisdom that rules man's life.
%%
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has
plenty of work to do.
%%
It is often better not to see an insult than to avenge it.
%%
It is the wise bird who builds his nest in a tree.
%%
It is unwise to trust those you do not know well.
%%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves
the flag.
%%
It takes both a weapon, and two people, to commit a murder.
%%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%%
It's a poor workman who blames his tools.
%%
It's clever, but is it art?
%%
It's easy to make decisions if you ignore the facts.
%%
It's later than you think, the joint Russian-American space
mission has already begun.
%%
It's not reality that's important, but how you perceive things.
%%
It's sweet to be remembered, but it's often cheaper to be
forgotten.
%%
Lend money to a bad debtor and he will hate you.
%%
Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
%%
Let he who takes the plunge remember to return it by Tuesday.
%%
Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
%%
Let's just be friends and make no special effort to ever see
each other again.
%%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you
find there is nothing in it.
%%
Life is to you a dashing and bold adventure.
%%
Like winter snow on summer lawn, time past is time gone.
%%
Lonely is a man without love.
%%
Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and
wait. They never meet.
%%
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
%%
Love is in the offing. Be affectionate to one who adores you.
%%
Love is sentimental measles.
%%
Love the sea? I dote upon it -- from the beach.
%%
Make a wish, it might come true.
%%
Make new friends but keep the old ones; One is silver and the
other's gold.
%%
Make this evening a memorable one.
%%
Man and wife make one fool.
%%
Man's horizons are bounded by his vision.
%%
Many a family tree needs trimming.
%%
Many changes of mind and mood; do not hesitate too long.
%%
Many pages make a thick book, except for pocket bibles which are
on very very thin paper.
%%
Massachusetts has the best politicians money can buy.
%%
Matrimony is the root of all evil.
%%
Men do not mind a bust in the mouth if provided by beautiful
voluptuous lady!
%%
Men seldom show dimples to girls who have pimples.
%%
Might as well be frank, monsieur; it would take a miracle to get
you out of Casablanca.
%%
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
%%
Mistakes are oft the stepping stones to failure.
%%
Money cannot buy love, nor even friendship.
%%
Money will say more in one moment than the most eloquent lover
can in years.
%%
Mother is the invention of necessity.
%%
My cup hath runneth'd over with love.
%%
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the
rest of my life there.
%%
Neither the poor nor the rich may sleep under bridges or beg in
the streets.
%%
Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
%%
Never do anything twice that you don't have to do at all.
%%
Never drink from your finger bowl -- it contains only water.
%%
Never say you know a man until you have divided an inheritance
with him.
%%
New financial propositions may be offered at the turn of the
year.
%%
Nice guys get sick.
%%
Night falls when the street lights turn on. Swedish Law.
%%
No doubt Jack the Ripper excused himself on the grounds that it
was human nature.
%%
No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach.
%%
No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
%%
Nobody can be as agreeable as an uninvited guest.
%%
Occasionally, an innocent man is sent to the legislature.
%%
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal.
%%
Often statistics are used as a drunken man uses lampposts -- for
support rather than illumination.
%%
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for
their inability to give bad examples.
%%
One family builds a wall, two families enjoy it.
%%
One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true.
%%
One peek is worth a thousand finesses.
%%
Only someone with nothing to be sorry for smiles back at the
rear of an elephant.
%%
Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are
willing to go through hell to get it.
%%
People who have no faults are terrible; there is no way of
taking advantage of them.
%%
People who take cat naps don't usually sleep in a cat's cradle.
%%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%%
People will laugh at you, but let not that prevent you.
%%
Please all, and you will please none.
%%
Please follow more cautiously Life's Golden Rule.
%%
Premature withdrawal may lead to loss of interest.
%%
Preserve the old, but know the new.
%%
Pride invites calamity; humility reaps its harvest.
%%
Promptness is its own reward, if one lives by the clock instead
of the sword.
%%
Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down
the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
%%
Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
%%
Put your brain in gear before starting your mouth.
%%
Put your trust in those who are worthy.
%%
Recent investments will yield a slight profit.
%%
Reputation: what others are not thinking about you.
%%
Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.
%%
Satire does not look pretty upon a tombstone.
%%
Satire is what closes in New Haven.
%%
Seek companionship, love and social activity at home.
%%
Seek domestic happiness and faithful friends.
%%
Sex is nothing but Love misunderstood.
%%
Share your happiness with others today.
%%
She's learned to say things with her eyes that others waste time
putting into words.
%%
Show your affection, which will probably meet with pleasant
response.
%%
Simplicity and clarity should be your theme in dress.
%%
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
%%
Smile, you're on candid cookie.
%%
Some men are discovered; others are found out.
%%
Some rise by sin and some by virtue fall.
%%
Someone is speaking well of you.
%%
Someone is unenthusiastic about your work.
%%
Someone whom you reject today, will reject you tomorrow.
%%
Standing on your head makes a smile of a frown, but the rest of
your face is also upside down.
%%
Stop day dreaming about success. Go out and obtain it.
%%
Stop searching forever. Happiness is just next to you.
%%
Stop searching forever. Happiness is unattainable.
%%
Stupidity is not an impeachable offense.
%%
Take advantage of the pleasurable opportunities that come your
way.
%%
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of
themselves.
%%
That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all.
%%
The actions of your companion or close allies will help you to
make an important decision.
%%
The attacker must vanquish; the defender need only survive.
%%
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains because
the average man can see better than he can think.
%%
The best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft a-glay.
%%
The best prophet of the future is the past.
%%
The best way to keep your friends is not to give them away.
%%
The brave man is known only in war; the wise man in anger; the
friend in time of need.
%%
The days just prior to marriage are like a snappy introduction
to a tedious book.
%%
The early bird gets the early worm.
%%
The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and
sharpen my tongue.
%%
The fish that escaped is the big one.
%%
The gent who wakes up and finds himself a success hasn't been
asleep.
%%
The hardest thing is to disguise your feelings when you put a
lot of relatives on the train for home.
%%
The heart is wiser than the intellect.
%%
The information in this message is subject to change without
notice and should not be construed as a commitment by Digital
Equipment Corporation.
%%
The interesting thing about a waltzing bear is not how well it
dances.
%%
The light of a hundred stars does not equal the light of the
moon.
%%
The luck that is ordained for you will be coveted by others.
%%
The minute a man is convinced that he is interesting, he isn't.
%%
The moving finger writhes and, having writhed, moves on.
%%
The next sentence is true. The previous sentence is false.
%%
The next dreadful thing to a battle lost is a battle won.
%%
The only rose without thorns is friendship.
%%
The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and
connection of things.
%%
The person you rejected yesterday could make you happy, if you
say yes.
%%
The plural of spouse is spice.
%%
The rich get rich, and the poor get poorer. The haves get more,
the have-nots die.
%%
The rich get richer; the poor get babies.
%%
The star of riches is shining upon you.
%%
The time is right to make new friends.
%%
The time is right to pursue your endeavors.
%%
The universe is laughing behind your back.
%%
The value of knowledge lies not in its accumulation, but in its
utilization.
%%
The weed of crime bears bitter fruit.
%%
The wise shepherd never trusts his flock to a smiling wolf.
%%
There are few people more often in the wrong than those who
cannot endure to be thought so.
%%
There are many people today who literally do not have a close
personal friend.
%%
There are more old drunkards than old doctors.
%%
There are more ways of killing a cat than choking her with
cream.
%%
There are three things I have always loved and never understood
-- art, music, and women.
%%
There is always someone worse off than yourself.
%%
There is many a good man to be found under a shabby hat.
%%
There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.
%%
There is no vaccine against stupidity.
%%
There will always be some delightful mysteries in your life.
%%
There will be big changes for you but you will be happy.
%%
There's at least one fool in every married couple.
%%
There's so much to say but your eyes keep interrupting me.
%%
Think twice before speaking. But don't say "think think click
click".
%%
Those of you who think you know everything are annoying those of
us who do.
%%
Those who are prospering do not argue about taxes.
%%
Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; and those who can't
teach, teach teachers.
%%
To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.
%%
To criticize the incompetent is easy; it is more difficult to
criticize the competent.
%%
To give happiness is to deserve happiness.
%%
To keep your friends treat them kindly; to kill them, treat them
often.
%%
To laugh at men of sense is the privilege of fools.
%%
To profit from good advice requires more wisdom than to give it.
%%
To refuse praise is to seek praise twice.
%%
To save a single life is better than to build a seven story
pagoda.
%%
Today is a good day to bribe a high ranking public official.
%%
Traveler, there is no path, paths are made by walking.
%%
True happiness will be found only in true love.
%%
Trust him, but still keep your eyes open.
%%
Try to divide your time evenly to keep others happy.
%%
Try to value useful qualities in one who loves you.
%%
Valuable insights and your persuasive ability achieve results.
%%
Watch out for the old mortar in the rocks in the fourteenth hole
trick.
%%
We prefer to speak evil of ourselves than not speak of ourselves
at all.
%%
We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our
fears.
%%
We read to say that we have read.
%%
Wed in haste, repent in leisure.
%%
What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that
they think themselves cleverer than we are.
%%
What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer
is working when he's staring out the window.
%%
What orators lack in depth they make up in length.
%%
What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than
man's transparency.
%%
What this country needs is a dime that will buy a good five-cent
bagel.
%%
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to
guarantee them.
%%
When the wind is great, bow before it; when the wind is heavy,
yield to it.
%%
When you become used to never being alone, you may consider
yourself Americanized.
%%
When you go out to buy, don't show your silver.
%%
Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling
passes.
%%
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it
was to avoid responsibility?
%%
Wisdom and good sense guard life from harm.
%%
With a mind like yours, who needs a body.
%%
With clothes the new are best, with friends the old are best.
%%
Without fools there would be no wisdom.
%%
Without health you cannot enjoy wealth or happiness.
%%
Words are the voice of the heart.
%%
Words must be weighed, not counted.
%%
Worth seeing? Yes, but not worth going to see.
%%
You are a bundle of energy always on the go.
%%
You are a general favorite among your many friends.
%%
You are a person of firm, yet honest intentions.
%%
You are always busy.
%%
You are an individual interested in forward thrust and the
future.
%%
You are broad minded and socially active.
%%
You are capable of planning your future.
%%
You are careful and systematic in your business arrangements.
%%
You are clever, alert, and intellectual.
%%
You are deeply attached to your friends and acquaintances.
%%
You are dishonest, but never to the point of hurting a friend.
%%
You are fair-minded, just and loving.
%%
You are faithful to duty, adaptable to environment, loyal to
friends.
%%
You are farsighted, a good planner, an ardent lover, and a
faithful friend.
%%
You are fixed in your opinions and will not be easily moved from
your purpose.
%%
You are generous and always think of the other fellow.
%%
You are going to have a new love affair.
%%
You are heading for a land of sunshine.
%%
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
%%
You are interested in higher education whether material or
spiritual.
%%
You are magnetic in your bearing.
%%
You are never selfish with your advice or your help.
%%
You are next in line for promotion in your firm.
%%
You are scrupulously honest, frank, and straightforward.
%%
You are secretive in your dealings but never to the extent of
trickery.
%%
You are standing on my toes.
%%
You are the center of every group's attention.
%%
You are tricky, but never to the point of dishonesty.
%%
You are versatile, energetic, artistic and good-natured.
%%
You are witty and fond of fun.
%%
You attempt things that you do not even plan because of your
extreme stupidity.
%%
You can do very well in speculation where land or anything to do
with earth is concerned.
%%
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
%%
You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the
back.
%%
You display the wonderful traits of charm and courtesy.
%%
You enjoy the company of other people.
%%
You have a deep appreciation of the arts and music.
%%
You have a deep interest in all that is artistic.
%%
You have a reputation for being thoroughly reliable and
trustworthy.
%%
You have a strong appeal for members of the opposite sex.
%%
You have a strong desire for a home and your family interests
come first.
%%
You have a truly strong individuality.
%%
You have a will that can be influenced by all with whom you come
in contact.
%%
You have a yearning for perfection.
%%
You have an ability to sense and know higher truth.
%%
You have an ambitious nature and may make a name for yourself.
%%
You have an unusual equipment for success. Be sure to use it
properly.
%%
You have an unusual magnetic personality.
%%
You have an unusual understanding of the problems of human
relationship.
%%
You have been selected for a secret mission.
%%
You have had a long-term stimulation relative to business.
%%
You have literary talent that you should take pains to develop.
%%
You have many friends and very few enemies.
%%
You have no real enemies.
%%
You have the attitude of a winner.
%%
You have the power to influence all with whom you come in
contact.
%%
You like participating in competitive sports.
%%
You like to form new friendships and make new acquaintances.
%%
You love peace.
%%
You love your home and want it to be beautiful.
%%
You may attend a party where strange customs prevail.
%%
You may be conservative, cautious and practical.
%%
You must be patient for a little while.
%%
You need not worry about your future.
%%
You never hesitate to tackle the most difficult problems.
%%
You plan things that you do not even attempt because of your
extreme caution.
%%
You prefer the company of the opposite sex, but are well liked
by your own.
%%
You recoil from the crude; you tend naturally toward the
exquisite.
%%
You seek to shield those you love and you like the role of the
provider.
%%
You shall be rewarded for a dastardly deed.
%%
You understand human nature and sympathize with its weakness.
%%
You will always be successful in your business or professional
career.
%%
You will always get what you want through your charm and
personality.
%%
You will always have good luck in your personal affairs.
%%
You will attract cultured and artistic people to your home.
%%
You will be a great success both in the business world and
society.
%%
You will be a guest at a happy party that'll have important
consequences for you.
%%
You will be aided greatly by a person whom you thought to be
unimportant.
%%
You will be awarded a medal for disregarding safety in saving
someone.
%%
You will be awarded some great honor.
%%
You will be called upon to help a friend in trouble.
%%
You will be given a post of trust and responsibility.
%%
You will be honored for contributing your time and skill to a
worthy cause.
%%
You will be made happy by receipt of good news.
%%
You will be married within a year.
%%
You will be proud in manner but tolerant and generous.
%%
You will be recognized and honored as a community leader.
%%
You will be singled out for promotion in your work.
%%
You will be successful in love.
%%
You will be successful in your work.
%%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%%
You will be surrounded by luxury.
%%
You will be traveling and coming into a fortune.
%%
You will be unusually successful in business.
%%
You will engage in a profitable business activity.
%%
You will engage in a profitable friendship.
%%
You will enjoy the high praise of solving a problem of long
standing.
%%
You will gain money by a speculation or lottery.
%%
You will have good luck and overcome many hardships.
%%
You will have long and healthy life.
%%
You will have many friends when you use a corkscrew.
%%
You will hear good news from one you thought unfriendly to you.
%%
You will inherit some money or a small piece of land.
%%
You will marry your present lover and be happy.
%%
You will meet an important person who will help you advance
professionally.
%%
You will never know hunger.
%%
You will overcome the attacks of jealous associates.
%%
You will probably marry after a very brief courtship.
%%
You will receive a legacy which will place you above want.
%%
You will receive a present, over which you will shed tears of
joy.
%%
You will secure the greatest degree of happiness if you marry
young.
%%
You will soon meet a person who will play an important role in
your life.
%%
You will soon take that long awaited vacation.
%%
You will step on the soil of many countries.
%%
You will triumph over your enemy.
%%
You will visit some faraway land that has long been in your
waking thoughts.
%%
You will win success in whatever calling you adopt.
%%
Your aims are high, and you are capable of much.
%%
Your are the guiding star of his existence.
%%
Your business will assume vast proportions.
%%
Your depth of comprehension may tend to make you lax in worldly
ways.
%%
Your domestic life may be harmonious.
%%
Your first impressions of people are best.
%%
Your happiness is intertwined with your outlook on life.
%%
Your heart is pure, and your mind clear, and your soul devout.
%%
Your help will be needed in an embarrassing situation.
%%
Your long forgotten kindness to someone will bring a substantial
sum of money.
%%
Your love life will be happy and harmonious.
%%
Your lover will never wish to leave you.
%%
Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart,
what is true.
%%
Your mode of life will be changed for the better because of good
news soon.
%%
Your mode of life will be changed for the better because of new
developments.
%%
Your nature demands love and your happiness depends on it.
%%
Your next acquaintance will be the right one.
%%
Your own qualities will help prevent your advancement in the
world.
%%
Your place in the path of life is in the driver's seat.
%%
Your present plans will be successful.
%%
Your reasoning powers are good, and you are a fairly good
planner.
%%
Your society will be sought by people of taste and refinement.
%%
Your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded.
%%
Your temporary financial embarrassment will be relieved in a
surprising manner.
%%
After his Ignoble Disgrace, Satan was being expelled from
Heaven. As he passed through the Gates, he paused a moment in
thought, and turned to God and said, "A new creature called Man,
I hear, is soon to be created."
"This is true," He replied.
"He will need laws," said the Demon slyly.
"What! You, his appointed Enemy for all Time! You ask for
the right to make his laws?"
"Oh, no!" Satan replied, "I ask only that he be allowed to
make his own."
It was so granted.
%%
Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as
quickly as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds;
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.
%%
Keep in mind always the two constant Laws of Frisbee:
1) The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
force is technically termed "car suck").
2) Never precede any maneuver by a comment more predictive
than "Watch this!"
%%
Hofstadter's Law:
It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take
Hofstadter's Law into account.
%%
Once Law was sitting on the bench
And Mercy knelt a-weeping.
"Clear out!" he cried, "disordered wench!
Nor come before me creeping.
Upon you knees if you appear,
'Tis plain you have no standing here."
Then Justice came. His Honor cried:
"YOUR states? -- Devil seize you!"
"Amica curiae," she replied --
"Friend of the court, so please you."
"Begone!" he shouted -- "There's the door --
I never saw your face before!"
%%
If God had not given us sticky tape, it would have been
necessary to invent it.
%%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%%
Afternoon: That part of the day we spend worrying about how we
wasted the morning.
%%
God is not dead! He's alive and autographing bibles at Cody's.
%%
Three great scientific theories of the structure of the universe
are the molecular, the corpuscular and the atomic. A fourth
affirms, with Haeckel, the condensation or precipitation of
matter from ether -- whose existence is proved by the
condensation or precipitation...A fifth theory is held by
idiots, but it is doubtful if they know any more about the
matter than the others.
%%
It has just been discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
%%
Main's Law:
For every action there is an equal and opposite government
program.
%%
"When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."
%%
Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning:
It's on the other side.
%%
Slick's Three Laws of the Universe:
1) Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad
check.
2) A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.
3) There are two types of dirt: the dark kind, which is
attracted to light objects, and the light kind, which is
attracted to dark objects.
%%
Any small object that is accidentally dropped will hide under a
larger object.
%%
Pro is to con as progress is to Congress.
%%
The probability of someone watching you is proportional to the
stupidity of your action.
%%
Hurewitz's Memory Principle:
The chance of forgetting something is directly proportional
to.....to........uh..............
%%
Money is the root of all evil, and man needs roots
%%
It is said that the lonely eagle flies to the mountain peaks
while the lowly ant crawls the ground, but cannot the soul of
the ant soar as high as the eagle?
%%
If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction. On the
other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is
also a psychological interaction. The difference is that one is
friendly and the other is not so friendly. The crucial point is
if you can tell which is which.
%%
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
%%
A penny saved is ridiculous.
%%
The right half of the brain controls the left half of the body.
This means that only left handed people are in their right mind.
%%
"You must realize that the computer has it in for you. The
irrefutable proof of this is that the computer always does what
you tell it to do."
%%
If a President doesn't do it to his wife, he'll do it to his
country.
%%
It is better to kiss an avocado than to get in a fight with an
aardvark.
%%
Joe's sister puts spaghetti in her shoes!
%%
Bank error in your favor. Collect $200.
%%
Remember that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only
be worse in Cleveland.
%%
As the trials of life continue to take their toll, remember that
there is always a future in Computer Maintenance.
%%
Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what value
there may be in owning a piece thereof.
%%
For a good time, call (415) 642-9483
%%
AAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccckkkkkk!!!!!!!!!
You brute! Knock before entering a ladies room!
%%
A gleekzorp without a tornpee is like a quop without a fertsneet
(sort of).
%%
Jesus Saves,
Moses Invests,
But only Buddha pays Dividends.
%%
Acid absorbs 47 times it's weight in excess Reality.
%%
Reality is a cop-out for people who can't handle drugs.
%%
Census Taker to Housewife: Did you ever have the measles, and,
if so, how many?
%%
Anything free is worth what you pay for it.
%%
Ask Not for whom the Bell Tolls, and You will Pay only the
Station-to-Station rate.
%%
Necessity is a mother.
%%
Help! I'm trapped in a PDP 11/70!
%%
!07/11 PDP a ni deppart m'I !pleH
%%
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
%%
May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest one of your Erogenous
Zones.
%%
May a Misguided Platypus lay its Eggs in your Jockey Shorts
%%
May your Tongue stick to the Roof of your Mouth with the Force
of a Thousand Caramels.
%%
In the days of old,
When Knights were bold,
And women were too cautious;
Oh, those gallant days,
When women were women,
And men were really obnoxious...
%%
Sex is not the answer. Sex is the question. "Yes" is the answer.
%%
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%%
$100 invested at 7% interest for 100 years will become $100,000,
at which time it will be worth absolutely nothing.
%%
If God had intended Men to Smoke, He would have put Chimneys in
their Heads.
%%
If God had intended Man to Smoke, He would have set him on Fire.
%%
If God had intended Man to Walk, He would have given him Feet.
%%
If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him
Rabbit Ears.
%%
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
%%
You're at the end of the road again.
%%
If anything can go wrong, it will.
%%
The best equipment for your work is, of course, the most
expensive.
However, your neighbor is always wasting money that should be
yours by judging things by their price.
%%
"You are old, father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
Pray what is the reason of that?"
"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling the box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"
"In my youth," said his father, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
What made you so awfully clever?"
"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs!"
%%
Come, let us hasten to a higher plane,
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n,
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
%%
Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
%%
In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our symptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.
%%
I'll grant the random access to my heart,
Thoul't tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove
And in our bound partition never part.
%%
Cancel me not -- for what then shall remain?
Abscissas, some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.
%%
I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die
Had he but known such a-squared cos 2(thi)!
%%
A very intelligent turtle
Found programming UNIX a hurdle
The system, you see,
Ran as slow as did he,
And that's not saying much for the turtle.
%%
This program is out of order. For those in desperate need,
please use the program "randchar". This program generates
random characters, and, given enough time, will undoubtedly come
up with something profound. It will, however, take it no time
at all to be more profound than THIS program has ever been.
%%
This message intentionally not included.
%%
Speak roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy
Because he knows it teases.
Wow! wow! wow!
I speak severely to my boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when he pleases!
Wow! wow! wow!
%%
"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral
of that is -- 'Be what you would seem to be' -- or, if you'd
like it put more simply -- 'Never imagine yourself not to be
otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were
or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been
would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'"
%%
Il brilgue: les toves libricilleux
Se gyrent et frillant dans le guave,
Enmimes sont les gougebosquex,
Et le momerade horgrave.
%%
Es brilig war. Die schlichte Toven
Wirrten und wimmelten in Waben;
Und aller-mumsige Burggoven
Dir mohmen Rath ausgraben.
%%
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,'" Alice said
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't--
till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument
for you!'"
"But glory doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument,'" Alice
objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather
scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean --
neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words
mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be
master-- that's all."
%%
Pohl's law: Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will
not hate it.
%%
Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this
simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not
suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical
Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist.
Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply
demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further
here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem
analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: the
mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They
were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an
entirely different way...
%%
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a
way that you will look forward to the trip.
%%
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
%%
When Marriage is Outlawed,
Only Outlaws will have Inlaws.
%%
Look out! Behind you!
%%
Give me the Luxuries, and the Hell with the Necessities!
%%
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing
%%
It will be advantageous to cross the great stream...the Dragon
is on the wing in the Sky...the Great Man rouses himself to his
Work.
%%
If all be true that I do think,
There be Five Reasons why one should Drink;
Good friends, good wine, or being dry,
Or lest we should be by-and-by,
Or any other reason why.
%%
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one
that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
%%
If you perceive that there are four possible ways in which a
procedure can go wrong, and circumvent these, then a fifth way
will promptly develop.
%%
Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.
%%
Every solution breeds new problems.
%%
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so
ingenious.
%%
O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law:
"Murphy was an optimist."
%%
Boling's postulate:
If you're feeling good, don't worry. You'll get over it.
%%
Anytime things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.
%%
If you explain so clearly that nobody can misunderstand,
somebody will.
%%
Scott's first Law:
No matter what goes wrong, it will probably look right.
%%
Scott's second Law:
When an error has been detected and corrected, it will be
found to have been wrong in the first place.
Corollary:
After the correction has been found in error, it will be
impossible to fit the original quantity back into the
equation.
%%
Finagle's first Law:
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
%%
Finagle's second Law:
No matter what the anticipated result, there will always be
someone eager to (a) misinterpret it, (b) fake it, or (c)
believe it happened according to his own pet theory.
%%
Finagle's third Law:
In any collection of data, the figure most obviously
correct, beyond all need of checking, is the mistake
Corollaries:
1. Nobody whom you ask for help will see it.
2. The first person who stops by, whose advice you really
don't want to hear, will see it immediately.
%%
Finagle's fourth Law:
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it only
makes it worse.
%%
Do not believe in miracles -- rely on them.
%%
Issawi's Laws of Progress:
The Course of Progress:
Most things get steadily worse.
The Path of Progress:
A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.
%%
Simon's Law:
Everything put together falls apart sooner or later.
%%
Ginsberg's Theorem:
1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't even quit the game.
Freeman's Commentary on Ginsberg's theorem:
Every major philosophy that attempts to make life seem
meaningful is based on the negation of one part of
Ginsberg's Theorem. To wit:
1. Capitalism is based on the assumption that you can win.
2. Socialism is based on the assumption that you can break
even.
3. Mysticism is based on the assumption that you can quit
the game.
%%
Ehrman's Commentary:
1. Things will get worse before they get better.
2. Who said things would get better?
%%
Dimensions will always be expressed in the least usable term.
Velocity, for example, will be expressed in furlongs per
fortnight.
%%
Non-Reciprocal Laws of Expectations:
Negative expectations yield negative results.
Positive expectations yield negative results.
%%
Howe's Law:
Everyone has a scheme that will not work.
%%
Sturgeon's Law:
90% of everything is crud.
%%
Glib's Fourth Law of Unreliability:
Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the
probable cost of errors, or until someone insists on getting
some useful work done.
%%
Brook's Law:
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later
%%
Bolub's Fourth Law of Computerdom:
Project teams detest weekly progress reporting because it so
vividly manifests their lack of progress.
%%
Lubarsky's Law of Cybernetic Entomology:
There's always one more bug.
%%
Shaw's Principle:
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool
will want to use it.
%%
Law of the Perversity of Nature:
You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of
the bread to butter.
%%
Law of Selective Gravity:
An object will fall so as to do the most damage.
Jenning's Corollary:
The chance of the bread falling with the buttered side down
is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
%%
Paul's Law:
You can't fall off the floor.
%%
Johnson's First Law:
When any mechanical contrivance fails, it will do so at the
most inconvenient possible time.
%%
Watson's Law:
The reliability of machinery is inversely proportional to
the number and significance of any persons watching it.
%%
Sattinger's Law:
It works better if you plug it in.
%%
Lowery's Law:
If it jams -- force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing
anyway.
%%
Fudd's First Law of Opposition:
Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
%%
Cahn's Axiom:
When all else fails, read the instructions.
%%
Jenkinson's Law:
It won't work.
%%
Murphy's Law of Research:
Enough research will tend to support your theory.
%%
Maier's Law:
If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be
disposed of.
Corollaries:
1. The bigger the theory, the better.
2. The experiment may be considered a success if no more
than 50% of the observed measurements must be discarded
to obtain a correspondence with the theory.
%%
Williams and Holland's Law:
If enough data is collected, anything may be proven by
statistical methods.
%%
Harvard Law:
Under the most rigorously controlled conditions of pressure,
temperature, volume, humidity, and other variables, the
organism will do as it damn well pleases.
%%
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to
get out.
%%
Brooke's Law:
Whenever a system becomes completely defined, some damn fool
discovers something which either abolishes the system or
expands it beyond recognition.
%%
Meskimen's Law:
There's never time to do it right, but there's always time
to do it over.
%%
Heller's Law:
The first myth of management is that it exists.
Johnson's Corollary:
Nobody really knows what is going on anywhere within the
organization.
%%
Peter's Law of Substitution:
Look after the molehills, and the mountains will look after
themselves.
%%
Parkinson's Fourth Law:
The number of people in any working group tends to increase
regardless of the amount of work to be done.
%%
Parkinson's Fifth Law:
If there is a way to delay in important decision, the good
bureaucracy, public or private, will find it.
%%
Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work in the past tense.
%%
Iron Law of Distribution:
Them that has, gets.
%%
H. L. Mencken's Law:
Those who can -- do.
Those who can't -- teach.
Martin's Extension:
Those who cannot teach -- administrate.
%%
Jone's Law:
The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of
someone to blame it on.
%%
Rule of Feline Frustration:
When your cat has fallen asleep on your lap and looks
utterly content and adorable, you will suddenly have to go
to the bathroom.
%%
A transistor protected by a fast-acting fuse will protect the
fuse by blowing first.
%%
After the last of 16 mounting screws has been removed from an
access cover, it will be discovered that the wrong access cover
has been removed.
%%
After an instrument has been assembled, extra components will be
found on the bench.
%%
In any formula, constants (especially those obtained from
handbooks) are to be treated as variables.
%%
Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will
be.
%%
First Law of Bicycling:
No matter which way you ride, it's uphill and against the
wind.
%%
Boob's Law:
You always find something in the last place you look.
%%
Osborn's Law:
Variables won't; constants aren't.
%%
Skinner's Constant (or Flannagan's Finagling Factor):
That quantity which, when multiplied by, divided by, added
to, or subtracted from the answer you get, gives you the
answer you should have gotten.
%%
Miksch's Law:
If a string has one end, then it has another end.
%%
Law of Communications:
The inevitable result of improved and enlarged
communications between different levels in a hierarchy is a
vastly increased area of misunderstanding.
%%
Harris's Lament:
All the good ones are taken.
%%
Putt's Law:
Technology is dominated by two types of people:
Those who understand what they do not manage.
Those who manage what they do not understand.
%%
First Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination shortens the job and places the
responsibility for its termination on someone else (i.e.,
the authority who imposed the deadline).
%%
Fifth Law of Procrastination:
Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling
that there is nothing important to do.
%%
Swipple's Rule of Order:
He who shouts the loudest has the floor.
%%
Wiker's Law:
Government expands to absorb revenue and then some.
%%
Gray's Law of Programming:
'n+1' trivial tasks are expected to be accomplished in the
same time as 'n' tasks.
Logg's Rebuttal to Gray's Law:
'n+1' trivial tasks take twice as long as 'n' trivial tasks.
%%
Ninety-Ninety Rule of Project Schedules:
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of
the time, and the last ten percent takes the other ninety
percent.
%%
Weinberg's First Law:
Progress is made on alternate Fridays.
%%
Weinberg's Second Law:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote
programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would
destroy civilization.
%%
Paul's Law:
In America, it's not how much an item costs, it's how much
you save.
%%
Malek's Law:
Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.
%%
Weinberg's Principle:
An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while
sweeping on to the grand fallacy.
%%
Barth's Distinction:
There are two types of people: those who divide people into
two types, and those who don't.
%%
Weiler's Law:
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it
himself.
%%
First Law of Socio-Genetics:
Celibacy is not hereditary.
%%
Beifeld's Principle:
The probability of a young man meeting a desirable and
receptive young female increases by pyramidal progression
when he is already in the company of: (1) a date, (2) his
wife, (3) a better looking and richer male friend.
%%
Hartley's Second Law:
Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.
%%
Pardo's First Postulate:
Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or
fattening.
Arnold's Addendum:
Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in
rats.
%%
Parker's Law:
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.
%%
Captain Penny's Law:
You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of
the people all of the time, but you Can't Fool Mom.
%%
Katz' Law:
Man and nations will act rationally when all other
possibilities have been exhausted.
%%
Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the
population is growing.
%%
Steele's Plagiarism of Somebody's Philosophy:
Everybody should believe in something -- I believe I'll have
another drink.
%%
The Kennedy Constant:
Don't get mad -- get even.
%%
Canada Bill Jone's Motto:
It's morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.
Supplement:
A .44 magnum beats four aces.
%%
Jone's Motto:
Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.
%%
The Fifth Rule:
You have taken yourself too seriously.
%%
Cole's Law:
Thinly sliced cabbage.
%%
Hartley's First Law:
You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to
float on his back, you've got something.
%%
Jacquin's Postulate on Democratic Government:
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the
legislature is in session.
%%
Churchill's Commentary on Man:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of
the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
%%
Newton's Little-Known Seventh Law:
A bird in the hand is safer than one overhead.
%%
Mosher's Law of Software Engineering:
Don't worry if it doesn't work right. If everything did,
you'd be out of a job.
%%
ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
church- door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
%%
"I cannot read the fiery letters," said Frodo in a quavering
voice.
"No," Said Gandalf, "but I can. The letters are Elvish, of
course, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor,
which I will not utter here. They are lines of a verse long
known in Elven-lore:
"This Ring, no other, is made by the elves,
Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves.
Ruler of creeper, mortal, and scallop,
This is a sleeper that packs quite a wallop.
The Power almighty rests in this Lone Ring.
The Power, alrighty, for doing your Own Thing.
If broken or busted, it cannot be remade.
If found, send to Sorhed (with postage prepaid)."
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Second Law of The Average American:
All the postmasters in small towns read all the postcards.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Ninth Law of The Average American:
The quality of a champagne is judged by the amount of noise
the cork makes when it is popped.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Fifteenth Law of The Average American:
The worst actress in the company is always the manager's
wife.
%%
Mencken and Nathan's Sixteenth Law of The Average American:
Milking a cow is an operation demanding a special talent
that is possessed only by yokels, and no person born in a
large city can never hope to acquire it.
%%
Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.
%%
Angels we have heard on High
Tell us to go out and Buy.
%%
we will invent new lullabies, new songs, new acts of love,
we will cry over things we used to laugh &
our new wisdom will bring tears to eyes of gentile
creatures from other planets who were afraid of us till then &
in the end a summer with wild winds &
new friends will be.
%%
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue, a
custom whereof the memory of man runneth not howsomever to the
contrary, nohow.
%%
Emersons' Law of Contrariness:
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what
we can. Having found them, we shall then hate them for it.
%%
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain
dealing.
%%
There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that
of paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
%%
A fool must now and then be right by chance.
%%
Hi there! This is just a note from me, to you, to tell you, the
person reading this note, that I can't think up any more famous
quotes, jokes, nor bizarre stories, so you may as well go home.
%%
Arnold's Laws of Documentation:
1) If it should exist, it doesn't.
2) If it does exist, it's out of date.
3) Only documentation for useless programs transcends the
first two laws.
%%
Harrisberger's Fourth Law of the Lab:
Experience is directly proportional to the amount of
equipment ruined.
%%
Boren's Laws:
1) When in charge, ponder.
2) When in trouble, delegate.
3) When in doubt, mumble.
%%
Chisolm's First Corollary to Murphy's Second Law:
When things just can't possibly get any worse, they will.
%%
Rudin's Law:
If there is a wrong way to do something, most people will do
it every time.
%%
Bucy's Law:
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
%%
Hacker's Law:
The belief that enhanced understanding will necessarily stir
a nation to action is one of mankind's oldest illusions.
%%
Vail's Second Axiom:
The amount of work to be done increases in proportion to the
amount of work already completed.
%%
Never count your chickens before they rip your lips off
%%
"Sometimes I simply feel that the whole world is a cigarette and
I'm the only ashtray."
%%
Where there's a will, there's an Inheritance Tax.
%%
Hand: A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and
commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
%%
Wit: The salt with which the American Humorist spoils his
cookery... by leaving it out.
%%
I like work...
I can sit and watch it for hours.
%%
Know thyself. If you need help, call the C.I.A.
%%
Keep you Eye on the Ball,
Your Shoulder to the Wheel,
Your Nose to the Grindstone,
Your Feet on the Ground,
Your Head on your Shoulders.
Now...try to get something DONE!
%%
Magpie: A bird whose thievish disposition suggested to someone
that it might be taught to talk.
%%
Peace: In international affairs, a period of cheating between
two periods of fighting.
%%
Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
%%
Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most Souls would
scarcely get your Feet wet. Fall not in Love, therefore: it
will stick to your face.
%%
The Schwine-Kitzenger Institute study of 47 men over the age of
100 showed that all had these things in common:
1) They all had moderate appetites.
2) They all came from middle class homes.
3) All but two of them were dead.
%%
Fats Loves Madelyn
%%
A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four,
Divided by seven,
Plus five time eleven,
Equals nine squared plus zero, no more.
%%
Who's on first?
%%
We really don't have any enemies. It's just that some of our
best friends are trying to kill us.
%%
The Killer Ducks are coming!!!
%%
"The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble
acturiety and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is
an exaulted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good
philosophy...neither its pipes nor its theories will hold
water."
%%
"This is a country where people are free to practice their
religion, regardless of race, creed, color, obesity, or number
of dangling keys..."
%%
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world --
And I wish I'd never met him.
%%
My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams --
And I wish he were in Asia.
%%
My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway or the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart --
And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
%%
INVENTORY
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
%%
The Abrams' Principle:
The shortest distance between two points is off the wall.
%%
"He's just a politician trying to save both his faces..."
%%
"Drawing on my fine command of language, I said nothing."
%%
Blessed are they who Go Around in Circles, for they Shall be
Known as Wheels.
%%
Every absurdity has a champion who will defend it.
%%
He who Laughs, Lasts.
%%
Now and then, an innocent man is sent to the Legislature.
%%
Somebody ought to cross ball point pens with coat hangers so
that the pens will multiply instead of disappear.
%%
"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for
writing, but I couldn't give up because by that time I was too
famous."
%%
Today is a good day to bribe a high-ranking public official.
%%
To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.
%%
Famous last words:
%%
You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare
Thyself.
%%
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with
one's own opinion.
%%
Abstainer: A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying
himself a pleasure.
%%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
ourselves.
%%
Adore: To venerate expectantly.
%%
Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have
their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pocket that they cannot
separately plunder a third.
%%
Alone: In bad company.
%%
Ambidextrous: Able to pick with equal skill a right-hand pocket
or a left.
%%
God made the world in six days, and was arrested on the seventh.
%%
Anoint: To grease a king or other great functionary already
sufficiently slippery.
%%
Bacchus: A convenient deity invented by the ancients as an
excuse for getting drunk.
%%
Barometer: An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of
weather we are having.
%%
Her locks an ancient lady gave
Her loving husband's life to save;
And men -- they honored so the dame --
Upon some stars bestowed her name.
But to our modern married fair,
Who'd give their lords to save their hair,
No stellar recognition's given.
There are not stars enough in heaven.
%%
Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.
%%
Bore: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.
%%
Brain: The apparatus with which we think that we think.
%%
In our civilization, and under our republican form of
government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is
rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
%%
Cabbage: A familiar kitchen-garden vegetable about as large and
wise as a man's head.
%%
Critic: A person who boasts himself hard to please because
nobody tries to please him.
%%
Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed.
%%
Deliberation: The act of examining one's bread to determine
which side it is buttered on.
%%
Distress: A disease incurred by exposure to the prosperity of a
friend.
%%
Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than
me.
%%
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands
you are safe, for you can watch both of his.
%%
Garter: An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out
of her stockings and desolating the country.
%%
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the
misery of another.
%%
Hatred: A sentiment appropriate to the occasion of another's
superiority.
%%
Heaven: A place where the wicked cease from troubling you with
talk of their personal affairs, and the good listen with
attention while you expound your own.
%%
Did you know that clones never use mirrors?
%%
Hippogriff: An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and
half griffin. The griffin was itself a compound creature, half
lion and half eagle. The hippogriff was actually, therefore,
only one quarter eagle, which is two dollars and fifty cents in
gold. The study of zoology is full of surprises.
%%
Please ignore this message.
%%
Impartial: Unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage
from espousing either side of a controversy or adopting either
of two conflicting opinions.
%%
Incumbent: Person of liveliest interest to the outcumbents.
%%
Interpreter: One who enables two persons of different languages
to understand each other by repeating to each what it would have
been to the interpreter's advantage for the other to have said.
%%
Please take note:
%%
Do not read this under penalty of law.
Violators will be prosecuted.
(Penal Code sec. 2.3.2 (II.a.))
%%
Philogyny recapitulates erogeny; erogeny recapitulates
philogyny.
%%
The goal of science is to build better mousetraps. The goal of
nature is to build better mice.
%%
Genetics explains why you look like your father, and if you
don't, why you should.
%%
Children seldom misquote you. In fact, they usually repeat word
for word what you shouldn't have said.
%%
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as
warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the
heat.
%%
If bankers can count, how come they have eight windows and only
four tellers?
%%
Who needs friends when you can sit alone in your room and drink?
%%
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the double lock will keep;
May no brick through the window break,
And, no one rob me till I awake.
%%
Did you know...
That no-one ever reads these things?
%%
Hark, Hark, the dogs do bark
The Duke is fond of kittens
He likes to take their insides out
And use them for his mittens
From "The Thirteen Clocks"
%%
An elephant is a mouse with an operating system.
%%
f u cn rd ths, itn tyg h myxbl cd.
%%
Every successful person has had failures but repeated failure is
no guarantee of eventual success.
%%
"Now the Lord God planted a garden East of Whittier in a place
called Yorba Linda, and out of the ground he made to grow orange
trees that were good for food and the fruits thereof he labeled
SUNKIST..."
%%
...But among the children of the Great Society there were
those whose skins were black. And lo! Their portion was
niggardly, and of the fatted calf they were sucking hind teat...
Now it came to pass that a prophet rose up amongst them, and
they called him King. And he went unto Pharaoh and said, "Let
my people go to the front of the bus."
But Pharaoh answered: "In the fullness of time and with all
deliberate speed shall this thing come to pass. When ye shall
prove yourselves worthy, shall ye have your just portion -- yea,
verily, like unto a snowball in Hell."
%%
NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION
%%
$3,000,000
%%
It is much easier to suggest solutions when you know nothing
about the problem.
%%
77. HO HUM -- The Redundant
------- (7) This hexagram refers to a situation of extreme
--- --- (8) boredom. Your programs always bomb off. Your wife
------- (7) smells bad. Your children have hives. You are
---O--- (6) working on an accounting system, when you want to
---X--- (9) develop the GREAT AMERICAN COMPILER. You give up
--- --- (8) hot dates to nurse sick computers. What you need
now is sex.
Nine in the second place means:
The yellow bird approaches the malt shop. Misfortune.
Six in the third place means:
In former times men built altars to honor the Internal
Revenue Service. Great Dragons! Are you in trouble!
%%
Niklaus Wirth has lamented that, whereas Europeans pronounce his
name correctly (Ni-klows Virt), Americans invariably mangle it
into (Nick-les Worth). Which is to say that Europeans call him
by name, but Americans call him by value.
%%
The number of licorice gumballs you get out of a gumball machine
increases in direct proportion to how much you hate licorice.
%%
If you push the "extra ice" button on the soft drink vending
machine, you won't get any ice. If you push the "no ice"
button, you'll get ice, but no cup.
%%
Computers are not intelligent. They only think they are.
%%
Let He who taketh the Plunge Remember to return it by Tuesday.
%%
Those who can, do. Those who can't, simulate.
%%
Those who can't write, write manuals.
%%
Surprise! You are the lucky winner of random I.R.S Audit! Just
type in your name and social security number. Please remember
that leaving the room is punishable under law:
Name #
%%
You might have mail
%%
Never put off till tomorrow what you can avoid all together.
%%
Never call a man a fool. Borrow from him.
%%
Mistakes are often the stepping stones to utter failure.
%%
A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn.
%%
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you.
%%
Stop searching. Happiness is right next to you. Now, if they'd
only take a bath...
%%
"He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with
both eyes..."
%%
It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves
the flag.
%%
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it
was to avoid responsibility with?
%%
SHIFT TO THE LEFT! SHIFT TO THE RIGHT!
POP UP, PUSH DOWN, BYTE, BYTE, BYTE!
%%
The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because
the average man can see better than he can think.
%%
Waiter: "Tea or coffee, gentlemen?"
1st customer: "I'll have tea."
2nd customer: "Me, too -- and be sure the glass is clean!"
(Waiter exits, returns)
Waiter: "Two teas. Which one asked for the clean glass?"
%%
On his first day as a bus driver, Maxey Eckstein handed in
receipts of $65. The next day his take was $67. The third
day's income was $62. But on the fourth day, Eckstein emptied
no less than $283 on the desk before the cashier.
"Eckstein!" exclaimed the cashier. "This is fantastic.
That route never brought in money like this! What happened?"
"Well, after three days on that cockamamie route, I figured
business would never improve, so I drove over to Fourteenth
Street and worked there. I tell you, that street is a gold
mine!"
%%
The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the
klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
"Like a bowl of sour cream?" asked the other. "Why?"
"How should I know? What am I, a philosopher?"
%%
This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to
forget it.
%%
Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a
change.
%%
Beware of low-flying butterflies.
%%
Green light in A.M. for new projects. Red light in P.M. for
traffic tickets.
%%
Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
%%
Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
%%
Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't
believe a thing he tells you.
%%
Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until
noon.
%%
You may be recognized soon. Hide.
%%
You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a
lot today.
%%
Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.
%%
Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
%%
You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the
first and last month in advance.
%%
Surprise your boss. Get to work on time.
%%
You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
%%
Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
%%
Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening.
%%
Don't feed the bats tonight.
%%
Stay away from flying saucers today.
%%
You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
%%
Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
%%
Help a swallow land at Capistrano.
%%
Succumb to natural tendencies. Be hateful and boring.
%%
Half Moon tonight. (At least its better than no Moon at all.)
%%
Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%%
Message will arrive in the mail. Destroy, before the FBI sees
it.
%%
Do what comes naturally now. Seethe and fume and throw a
tantrum.
%%
Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
%%
Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any
better so get used to it.
%%
Truth will be out this morning. (Which may really mess things
up.)
%%
Travel important today; Internal Revenue men arrive tomorrow.
%%
Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall.
%%
You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a
senior executive.
%%
Fine day to throw a party. Throw him as far as you can.
%%
Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
%%
Think of your family tonight. Try to crawl home after the
computer crashes.
%%
Show respect for age. Drink good Scotch for a change.
%%
Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and
moving to a new town.
%%
If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what
happens tomorrow!
%%
Excellent day to have a rotten day.
%%
You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You are not paid
enough to worry.
%%
Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as
effective.
%%
Others will look to you for stability, so hide when you bite
your nails.
%%
Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
%%
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
%%
Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are,
not as they ought to be. Hence the custom among the Scythians
of plucking out a cynic's eyes to improve his vision.
%%
Happiness: An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the
misery of another.
%%
Our country has plenty of good five-cent cigars, but the trouble
is they charge fifteen cents for them.
%%
Question:
Man Invented Alcohol,
God Invented Grass.
Who do you trust?
%%
The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you
get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get to
school.
%%
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
%%
If at first you don't succeed, give up, no use being a damn
fool.
%%
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics
are totally worthless.
%%
Wasting time is an important part of living.
%%
Due to a shortage of devoted followers, the production of great
leaders has been discontinued.
%%
I'm prepared for all emergencies but totally unprepared for
everyday life.
%%
Excellent day for drinking heavily. Spike office water cooler.
%%
Excellent time to become a missing person.
%%
A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
%%
Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
%%
Spend extra time on hobby. Get plenty of rolling papers.
%%
Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your
face.
%%
Good day to avoid cops. Crawl to school.
%%
Screw up your courage! You've screwed up everything else.
%%
Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.
%%
Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
%%
You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
%%
Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful and wealthy
and live in eucalyptus trees.
%%
Surprise due today. Also the rent.
%%
Avoid reality at all costs.
%%
Good day to let down old friends who need help.
%%
Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact,
you don't have a lucky day this year.
%%
You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time
reading this sort of trash.
%%
What the hell, go ahead and put all your eggs in one basket.
%%
Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
%%
Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
%%
Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
%%
A chubby man with a white beard and a red suit will approach you
soon. Avoid him. He's a Commie.
%%
I really hate this damned machine
I wish that they would sell it.
It never does quite what I want
But only what I tell it.
%%
Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
%%
Remember, even if you win the rat race -- you're still a rat.
%%
Nihilism should commence with oneself.
%%
Vote anarchist
%%
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
%%
Nudists are people who wear one-button suits.
%%
Tomorrow will be canceled due to lack of interest.
%%
Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
%%
UFO's are for real: the Air Force doesn't exist.
%%
In case of atomic attack, the federal ruling against prayer in
schools will be temporarily canceled.
%%
Drive defensively. Buy a tank.
%%
Alexander Graham Bell is alive and well in New York, and still
waiting for a dial tone.
%%
The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse.
%%
Condense soup, not books!
%%
The world is coming to an end! Repent and return those library
books!
%%
Philadelphia is not dull -- it just seems so because it is next
to exciting Camden, New Jersey.
%%
Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
%%
Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.
%%
Mickey Mouse wears a Spiro Agnew watch.
%%
Minnie Mouse is a slow maze learner.
%%
Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
%%
Keep America beautiful. Swallow your beer cans.
%%
What this country needs is a good five cent ANYTHING!
%%
Hire the morally handicapped.
%%
I can resist anything but temptation.
%%
Modern man is the missing link between apes and human beings.
%%
Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam.
%%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends.
%%
Keep grandma off the streets -- legalize bingo.
%%
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of
Western Civilization?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
%%
Xerox never comes up with anything original.
%%
Acid -- better living through chemistry.
%%
"You'll never be the man your mother was!"
%%
George Orwell was an optimist.
%%
Chicken Little was right.
%%
"Qvid me anxivs svm?"
%%
Gravity is a myth, the Earth sucks.
%%
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
%%
Cleveland still lives. God must be dead.
%%
Don't cook tonight -- starve a rat today!
%%
They're only trying to make me LOOK paranoid!
%%
Hail to the sun god
He sure is a fun god
Ra! Ra! Ra!
%%
Brain fried -- Core dumped
%%
Remember, UNIX spelled backwards is XINU.
%%
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't
happen at once.
%%
If God had wanted you to go around nude, He would have given you
bigger hands.
%%
What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.
%%
Losing your drivers' license is just God's way of saying "BOOGA,
BOOGA!"
%%
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
%%
A diva who specializes in risque arias is an off-coloratura
soprano...
%%
Q: How many IBM cpu's does it take to do a logical right shift?
A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
%%
"Who cares if it doesn't do anything? It was made with our new
Triple-Iso-Bifurcated-Krypton-Gate-MOS process..."
%%
"There are three possibilities: Pioneer's solar panel has turned
away from the sun; there's a large meteor blocking transmission;
or someone loaded Star Trek 3.2 into our video processor."
%%
If time heals all wounds, how come the belly button stays the
same?
%%
Ban the bomb. Save the world for conventional warfare.
%%
Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down
%%
Down with categorical imperative!
%%
Earn cash in your spare time -- blackmail your friends
%%
Life is a yo-yo, and mankind ties knots in the string.
%%
Things are more like they used to be than they are now.
%%
Hummingbirds never remember the words to songs.
%%
Lysistrata had a good idea.
%%
Reality is an obstacle to hallucination.
%%
Paul Revere was a tattle-tale
%%
Familiarity breeds attempt
%%
Coronation: The ceremony of investing a sovereign with the
outward and visible signs of his divine right to be blown
sky-high with a dynamite bomb.
%%
Coward: One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
%%
Certain old men prefer to rise at dawn, taking a cold bath and a
long walk with an empty stomach and otherwise mortifying the
flesh. They then point with pride to these practices as the
cause of their sturdy health and ripe years; the truth being
that they are hearty and old, not because of their habits, but
in spite of them. The reason we find only robust persons doing
this thing is that it has killed all the others who have tried
it.
%%
Idiot: A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in
human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.
%%
Honorable: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In
legislative bodies, it is customary to mention all members as
honorable; as, "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur."
%%
Year: A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.
%%
God did not create the world in 7 days; he screwed around for 6
days and then pulled an all-nighter.
%%
God is a polytheist
%%
God isn't dead, he just couldn't find a parking place.
%%
If God is perfect, why did He create discontinuous functions?
%%
"And what will you do when you grow up to be as big as me?"
asked the father of his little son.
"Diet."
%%
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to
ourselves.
%%
Death: to stop sinning suddenly.
%%
"Might as well be frank, monsieur. It would take a miracle to
get you out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed
miracles."
%%
Slang is language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands,
and goes to work.
%%
"That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all."
%%
The chicken that clucks the loudest is the one most likely to
show up at the steam fitters' picnic.
%%
The earth is like a tiny grain of sand, only much, much heavier.
%%
There was a young poet named Dan,
Whose poetry never would scan.
When told this was so,
He said, "Yes, I know.
It's because I try to put every possible syllable into that last
line that I can.
%%
A limerick packs laughs anatomical Into space that is quite
economical. But the good ones I've seen So seldom are clean, And
the clean ones so seldom are comical.
%%
"We don't care. We don't have to. We're the Phone Company."
%%
"Here at the Phone Company, we serve all kinds of people; from
Presidents and Kings to the scum of the earth..."
%%
Flappity, floppity, flip
The mouse on the mobius strip;
The strip revolved,
The mouse dissolved
In a chronodimensional skip.
%%
WHERE CAN THE MATTER BE
Oh, dear, where can the matter be
When it's converted to energy?
There is a slight loss of parity.
Johnny's so long at the fair.
%%
PLUNDERER'S THEME
(to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius)
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
If you do the things we say, then you'll soon rule the nation.
Kill your foes and enemies and then kill your relations.
Pillage, rape, and loot and burn, but all in moderation.
%%
IBM had a PL/I,
Its syntax worse than JOSS;
And everywhere this language went,
It was a total loss.
%%
System/3! System/3!
See how it runs! See how it runs!
Its monitor loses so totally!
It runs all its programs in RPG!
It's made by our favorite monopoly!
System/3!
%%
As I was passing Project MAC,
I met a Quux with seven hacks.
Every hack had seven bugs;
Every bug had seven manifestations;
Every manifestation had seven symptoms.
Symptoms, manifestations, bugs, and hacks,
How many losses at Project MAC?
%%
Reclaimer, spare that tree!
Take not a single bit!
It used to point to me,
Now I'm protecting it.
It was the reader's CONS
That made it, paired by dot;
Now, GC, for the nonce,
Thou shalt reclaim it not.
%%
99 blocks of crud on the disk,
99 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
100 blocks of crud on the disk!
100 blocks of crud on the disk,
100 blocks of crud!
You patch a bug, and dump it again:
101 blocks of crud on the disk!...
%%
'Twas midnight, and the UNIX hacks
Did gyre and gimble in their cave
All mimsy was the CS-VAX
And Cory raths outgrave.
"Beware the software rot, my son!
The faults that bite, the jobs that thrash!
Beware the broken pipe, and shun
The frumious system crash!"
%%
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You
see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You
pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los
Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the
same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The
only difference is that there is no cat."
%%
THE GOLDEN RULE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
The one who has the gold makes the rules.
%%
If the odds are a million to one against something occurring,
chances are 50-50 it will.
%%
A.A.A.A.A.: An organization for drunks who drive
%%
Accordion: A bagpipe with pleats.
%%
Accuracy: The vice of being right
%%
"Acting is an art which consists of keeping the audience from
coughing."
%%
Adolescence: The stage between puberty and adultery.
%%
Adult: One old enough to know better.
%%
Antonym: The opposite of the word you're trying to think of.
%%
Ass: The masculine of "lass".
%%
Automobile: A four-wheeled vehicle that runs up hills and down
pedestrians.
%%
A baby is an alimentary canal with a loud voice at one end and
no responsibility at the other.
%%
Boy: A noise with dirt on it.
%%
Broad-mindedness: The result of flattening high-mindedness out.
%%
A budget is just a method of worrying before you spend money, as
well as afterward.
%%
A candidate is a person who gets money from the rich and votes
from the poor to protect them from each other.
%%
Children are natural mimic who act like their parents despite
every effort to teach them good manners.
%%
Christ: A man who was born at least 5,000 years ahead of his
time.
%%
Cigarette: A fire at one end, a fool at the other, and a bit of
tobacco in between.
%%
"The climate of Bombay is such that its inhabitants have to live
elsewhere."
%%
Collaboration: A literary partnership based on the false
assumption that the other fellow can spell.
%%
Conversation: A vocal competition in which the one who is
catching his breath is called the listener.
%%
Cynic: One who looks through rose-colored glasses with a
jaundiced eye.
%%
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a
rock.
%%
A diplomat is a man who can convince his wife she'd look stout
in a fur coat.
%%
Electrocution: Burning at the stake with all the modern
improvements.
%%
Fairy Tale: A horror story to prepare children for the
newspapers.
%%
Faith is the quality that enables you to eat blackberry jam on a
picnic without looking to see whether the seeds move.
%%
If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born
that way.
%%
There was a young lady from Hyde
Who ate a green apple and died.
While her lover lamented
The apple fermented
And made cider inside her inside.
%%
Silverman's Law:
If Murphy's Law can go wrong, it will.
%%
Hindsight is an exact science.
%%
Ducharme's Precept:
Opportunity always knocks at the least opportune moment.
%%
If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.
%%
Naeser's Law:
You can make it foolproof, but you can't make it
damnfoolproof.
%%
The Third Law of Photography:
If you did manage to get any good shots, they will be ruined
when someone inadvertently opens the darkroom door and all
of the dark leaks out.
%%
Mollison's Bureaucracy Hypothesis:
If an idea can survive a bureaucratic review and be
implemented it wasn't worth doing.
%%
Conway's Law:
In any organization there will always be one person who
knows what is going on.
This person must be fired.
%%
It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
%%
Consultants are mystical people who ask a company for a number
and then give it back to them.
%%
There is no time like the present for postponing what you ought
to be doing.
%%
Important letters which contain no errors will develop errors in
the mail. Corresponding errors will show up in the duplicate
while the Boss is reading it.
%%
Vital papers will demonstrate their vitality by spontaneously
moving from where you left them to where you can't find them.
%%
DeVries' Dilemma:
If you hit two keys on the typewriter, the one you don't
want hits the paper.
%%
When you do not know what you are doing, do it neatly.
%%
Finagle's Creed:
Science is true. Don't be misled by facts.
%%
Velilind's Laws of Experimentation:
1. If reproducibility may be a problem, conduct the test
only once.
2. If a straight line fit is required, obtain only two data
points.
%%
Rocky's Lemma of Innovation Prevention
Unless the results are known in advance, funding agencies
will reject the proposal.
%%
Jones' First Law:
Anyone who makes a significant contribution to any field of
endeavor, and stays in that field long enough, becomes an
obstruction to its progress -- in direct proportion to the
importance of their original contribution.
%%
Steinbach's Guideline for Systems Programming
Never test for an error condition you don't know how to
handle.
%%
When the government bureau's remedies do not match your problem,
you modify the problem, not the remedy.
%%
Horngren's Observation:
Among economists, the real world is often a special case.
%%
First Rule of History:
History doesn't repeat itself -- historians merely repeat
each other.
%%
Hanlon's Razor:
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained
by stupidity.
%%
Fourth Law of Applied Terror:
The night before the English History mid-term, your Biology
instructor will assign 200 pages on planaria.
Corollary:
Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do
except study for that instructor's course.
%%
Fifth Law of Applied Terror:
If you are given an open-book exam, you will forget your
book.
Corollary:
If you are given a take-home exam, you will forget where you
live.
%%
Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't
mean he knows what it is.
%%
Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
%%
Anything labeled "NEW" and/or "IMPROVED" isn't. The label means
the price went up. The label "ALL NEW", "COMPLETELY NEW", or
"GREAT NEW" means the price went way up.
%%
McGowan's Madison Avenue Axiom:
If an item is advertised as "under $50", you can bet it's
not $19.95.
%%
Van Roy's Law:
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
%%
How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door
you're on.
%%
Arthur's Laws of Love:
1. People to whom you are attracted invariably think you
remind them of someone else.
2. The love letter you finally got the courage to send will
be delayed in the mail long enough for you to make a
fool of yourself in person.
%%
Colvard's Logical Premises:
All probabilities are 50%. Either a thing will happen or it
won't.
Colvard's Unconscionable Commentary:
This is especially true when dealing with someone you're
attracted to.
Grelb's Commentary
Likelihoods, however, are 90% against you.
%%
Underlying Principle of Socio-Genetics:
Superiority is recessive.
%%
Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you.
They're too busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.
%%
Ducharm's Axiom:
If you view your problem closely enough you will recognize
yourself as part of the problem.
%%
A Law of Computer Programming:
Make it possible for programmers to write in English and you
will find the programmers cannot write in English.
%%
Turnaucka's Law:
The attention span of a computer is only as long as its
electrical cord.
%%
One good reason why computers can do more work than people is
that they never have to stop and answer the phone.
%%
Bradley's Bromide:
If computers get too powerful, we can organize them into a
committee -- that will do them in.
%%
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you
will find at least two human errors, including the error of
blaming it on the computer.
%%
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage.
But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive
machine, is somehow ennobled and none dare criticize it.
%%
Old programmers never die. They just branch to a new address.
%%
Eleanor Rigby
Sits at the keyboard
And waits for a line on the screen
Lives in a dream
Waits for a signal
Finding some code
That will make the machine do some more.
What is it for?
All the lonely users, where do they all come from?
All the lonely users, why does it take so long?
%%
The IQ of the group is the lowest IQ of a member of the group
divided by the number of people in the group.
%%
Ingrate: A man who bites the hand that feeds him, and then
complains of indigestion.
%%
Justice: A decision in your favor.
%%
Kin: An affliction of the blood
%%
Lie: A very poor substitute for the truth, but the only one
discovered to date.
%%
Love at first sight is one of the greatest labor-saving devices
the world has ever seen.
%%
Lunatic Asylum: The place where optimism most flourishes.
%%
Majority: That quality that distinguishes a crime from a law.
%%
Menu: A list of dishes which the restaurant has just run out of
%%
"The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to
start with a large fortune."
%%
BLISS is ignorance
%%
God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh
%%
The Briggs - Chase Law of Program Development:
To determine how long it will take to write and debug a
program, take your best estimate, multiply that by two, add
one, and convert to the next higher units.
%%
Predestination was doomed from the start.
%%
Xerox does it again and again and again and ...
%%
Never call a man a fool; borrow from him.
%%
Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
%%
Love is sentimental measles.
%%
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer, then you
find there is nothing in it.
%%
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but
if you really make them think they'll hate you.
%%
I never fail to convince an audience that the best thing they
could do was to go away.
%%
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where
we are headed.
%%
"All my friends and I are crazy. That's the only thing that
keeps us sane."
%%
The three laws of thermodynamics:
The First Law: You can't get anything without working for it.
The Second Law: The most you can accomplish by working is to
break even.
The Third Law: You can only break even at absolute zero.
%%
Famous last words:
1) "Don't worry, I can handle it."
2) "You and what army?"
3) "If you were as smart as you think you are, you wouldn't
be a cop."
%%
Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name.
Thy programs run, thy syscalls done,
in kernel as it is in user!
%%
Nothing is faster than the speed of light...
To prove this to yourself, try opening the refrigerator door
before the light comes on.
%%
AQUARIUS (Jan 20 - Feb 18)
You have an inventive mind and are inclined to be progressive.
You lie a great deal. On the other hand, you are inclined to be
careless and impractical, causing you to make the same mistakes
over and over again. People think you are stupid.
%%
PISCES (Feb. 19 - Mar. 20)
You have a vivid imagination and often think you are being
followed by the CIA or FBI. You have minor influence over your
associates and people resent your flaunting of your power. You
lack confidence and you are generally a coward. Pisces people
do terrible things to small animals.
%%
ARIES (Mar 21 - Apr 19)
You are the pioneer type and hold most people in contempt. You
are quick tempered, impatient, and scornful of advice. You are
not very nice.
%%
TAURUS (Apr 20 - May 20)
You are practical and persistent. You have a dogged
determination and work like hell. Most people think you are
stubborn and bull headed. You are a Communist.
%%
GEMINI (May 21 - June 20)
You are a quick and intelligent thinker. People like you
because you are bisexual. However, you are inclined to expect
too much for too little. This means you are cheap. Geminis are
known for committing incest.
%%
CANCER (June 21 - July 22)
You are sympathetic and understanding to other people's
problems. They think you are a sucker. You are always putting
things off. That's why you'll never make anything of yourself.
Most welfare recipients are Cancer people.
%%
LEO (July 23 - Aug 22)
You consider yourself a born leader. Others think you are
pushy. Most Leo people are bullies. You are vain and dislike
honest criticism. Your arrogance is disgusting. Leo people are
thieves.
%%
VIRGO (Aug 23 - Sept 22)
You are the logical type and hate disorder. This nitpicking is
sickening to your friends. You are cold and unemotional and
sometimes fall asleep while making love. Virgos make good bus
drivers.
%%
LIBRA (Sept 23 - Oct 22)
You are the artistic type and have a difficult time with
reality. If you are a man, you are more than likely gay.
Chances for employment and monetary gains are excellent. Most
Libra women are prostitutes. All Libra people die of Venereal
disease.
%%
SCORPIO (Oct 23 - Nov 21)
You are shrewd in business and cannot be trusted. You will
achieve the pinnacle of success because of your total lack of
ethics. Most Scorpio people are murdered.
%%
SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22 - Dec 21)
You are optimistic and enthusiastic. You have a reckless
tendency to rely on luck since you lack talent. The majority of
Sagittarians are drunks or dope fiends or both. People laugh at
you a great deal.
%%
CAPRICORN (Dec 23 - Jan 19)
You are conservative and afraid of taking risks. You don't do
much of anything and are lazy. There has never been a Capricorn
of any importance. Capricorns should avoid standing still for
too long as they take root and become trees.
%%
Q: How many heterosexual males does it take to screw in a light
bulb in San Francisco?
A: Both of them.
%%
San Francisco isn't what it used to be, and it never was.
%%
Insanity is hereditary. You get it from your kids.
%%
A doctor, an architect, and a computer scientist were
arguing about whose profession was the oldest. In the course of
their arguments, they got all the way back to the Garden of
Eden, whereupon the doctor said, "The medical profession is
clearly the oldest, because Eve was made from Adam's rib, as the
story goes, and that was a simply incredible surgical feat."
The architect did not agree. He said, "But if you look at
the Garden itself, in the beginning there was chaos and void,
and out of that, the Garden and the world were created. So God
must have been an architect."
The computer scientist, who had listened to all of this
said, "Yes, but where do you think the chaos came from?"
%%
Anarchy may not be the best form of government, but it's better
than no government at all.
%%
Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
Less dear than army ants in apple pies
Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
%%
Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?
%%
The University of California Bears announced the signing of
Reggie Philbin to a letter of intent to attend Cal next Fall.
Philbin is said to make up for no talent by cheating well. Says
Philbin of his decision to attend Cal, "I'm in it for the free
ride."
%%
Professor Gorden Newell threw another shutout in last week's
Chem Eng. 130 midterm. Once again a student did not receive a
single point on his exam. Newell has now tossed 5 shutouts this
quarter. Newell's earned exam average has now dropped to a
phenomenal 30%
%%
Laetrile is the pits
%%
Got Mole problems?
Call Avogardo 6.02 x 10^23
%%
There's no future in time travel
%%
Vitamin C deficiency is apauling
%%
Time flies like an arrow
Fruit flies like a banana
%%
Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.
%%
Electrical Engineers do it with less resistance.
%%
"Really ?? What a coincidence, I'm shallow too!!"
%%
Psychiatrists say that one out of four people are mentally ill.
Check three friends. If they're ok, you're it.
%%
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike
most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gage, nor
any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver.
Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant "?" lights up
in the center of the dashboard. "The experienced driver", he
says, "will usually know what's wrong."
%%
Frobnicate, v.: To manipulate or adjust, to tweak. Derived from
FROBNITZ. Usually abbreviated to FROB. Thus one has the saying
"to frob a frob". See TWEAK and TWIDDLE. Usage: FROB, TWIDDLE,
and TWEAK sometimes connote points along a continuum. FROB
connotes aimless manipulation; TWIDDLE connotes gross
manipulation, often a coarse search for a proper setting; TWEAK
connotes fine-tuning. If someone is turning a knob on an
oscilloscope, then if he's carefully adjusting it he is probably
tweaking it; if he is just turning it but looking at the screen
he is probably twiddling it; but if he's just doing it because
turning a knob is fun, he's frobbing it.
%%
USER n.: A programmer who will believe anything you tell him.
%%
Worst Month of the Year: February. February has only 28 days in
it, which means that if you rent an apartment, you are paying
for three full days you don't get. Try to avoid Februarys
whenever possible.
%%
Worst Vegetable of the Year: The brussels sprout. This is also
the worst vegetable of next year.
%%
Easiest Color to Solve on a Rubik's Cube: Black. Simply remove
all the little colored stickers on the cube, and each of side of
the cube will now be the original color of the plastic
underneath -- black. According to the instructions, this means
the puzzle is solved.
%%
Worst Month of 1981 for Downhill Skiing: August. The lines are
the shortest, though.
%%
There once was a girl named Irene
Who lived on distilled kerosene
But she started absorbin'
A new hydrocarbon
And since then has never benzene.
%%
Computer programmers do it byte by byte
%%
I must have slipped a disk -- my pack hurts
%%
What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to
do.
%%
This login session: $13.99, but for you $11.88
%%
Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Three. One to screw in the lightbulb and two to fend off all
those Californians trying to share the experience.
%%
Now and then an innocent person is sent to the legislature.
%%
She missed an invaluable opportunity to give him a look that you
could have poured on a waffle.
%%
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn't ordered.
%%
People will buy anything that's one to a customer.
%%
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
%%
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
%%
The new Congressmen say they're going to turn the government
around. I hope I don't get run over again.
%%
What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
%%
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out if it
alive.
%%
Forgetfulness: A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in
compensation for their destitution of conscience.
%%
Absentee: A person with an income who has had the forethought to
remove himself from the sphere of exaction.
%%
You will be surprised by a loud noise.
%%
As of next week, passwords will be entered in Morse code.
%%
"In short, N is Richardian if, and only if, N is not
Richardian."
%%
President Reagan has noted that there are too many economic
pundits and forecasters and has decided on an excess prophets
tax.
%%
Absent: Exposed to the attacks of friends and acquaintances;
defamed; slandered.
%%
Brain, v.: [as in "to brain"] To rebuke bluntly, but not
pointedly; to dispel a source of error in an opponent.
%%
Truthful: Dumb and illiterate.
%%
Corrupt: In politics, holding an office of trust or profit.
%%
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night,
God said, "Let Newton be," and all was light.
It did not last; the devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
%%
43rd Law of Computing:
Anything that can go wr
DOS: Segmentation violation -- Core dumped
%%
JACK AND THE BEANSTACK
by Mark Isaak
Long ago, in a finite state far away, there lived a JOVIAL
character named Jack. Jack and his relations were poor. Often
their hash table was bare. One day Jack's parent said to him,
"Our matrices are sparse. You must go to the market to exchange
our RAM for some BASICs." She compiled a linked list of items
to retrieve and passed it to him.
So Jack set out. But as he was walking along a Hamilton
path, he met the traveling salesman.
"Whither dost thy flow chart take thou?" prompted the
salesman in high-level language.
"I'm going to the market to exchange this RAM for some chips
and Apples," commented Jack.
"I have a much better algorithm. You needn't join a queue
there; I will swap your RAM for these magic kernels now."
Jack made the trade, then backtracked to his house. But
when he told his busy-waiting parent of the deal, she became so
angry she started thrashing.
"Don't you even have any artificial intelligence? All these
kernels together hardly make up one byte," and she popped them
out the window...
%%
FLASH! Intelligence of mankind decreasing. Details at ... uh,
when the little hand is on the ....
%%
Only God can make random selections.
%%
Limericks are art forms complex,
Their topics run chiefly to sex.
They usually have virgins,
And masculine urgin's,
And other erotic effects.
%%
Kinkler's First Law:
Responsibility always exceeds authority.
Kinkler's Second Law:
All the easy problems have been solved.
%%
"Matrimony isn't a word, it's a sentence."
%%
How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None. The Universe spines the bulb, and the Zen master stays
out of the way.
%%
University: Like a software house, except the software's free,
and it's usable, and it works, and if it breaks they'll quickly
tell you how to fix it, and ...
%%
How many hardware engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll fix it in software."
How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll document it in the manual."
How many tech writers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "The user can work it out."
%%
William Safire's Rules for Writers:
Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should
never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form.
Verbs have to agree with their subjects. Proofread carefully to
see if you words out. If you reread your work, you can find on
rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading
and editing. A writer must not shift your point of view. And
don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a
preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.) Don't
overuse exclamation marks!! Place pronouns as close as
possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words,
to their antecedents. Writing carefully, dangling participles
must be avoided. If any word is improper at the end of a
sentence, a linking verb is. Take the bull by the hand and
avoid mixing metaphors. Avoid trendy locutions that sound
flaky. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun
with singular nouns in their writing. Always pick on the
correct idiom. The adverb always follows the verb. Last but
not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable
alternatives.
%%
Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax
collectors and miss
%%
Bride: A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
%%
The Pig, if I am not mistaken,
Gives us ham and pork and Bacon.
Let others think his heart is big,
I think it stupid of the Pig.
%%
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
%%
Bizarreness is the essence of the exotic
%%
Today is the first day of the rest of the mess
%%
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday
%%
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they AREN'T after you.
%%
Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life.
%%
Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally
getting enough cheese
%%
Whether you can hear it or not
The Universe is laughing behind your back
%%
Go 'way! You're bothering me!
%%
Shamus: A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks
around the temple, and makes sure everything is in working
order.
A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagog
functionaries, and there's a joke about that:
A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the
middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not
to be bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!"
The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord,
I am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who
thinks he's nobody!"
%%
Every program is a part of some other program, and rarely fits.
%%
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a
correct one.
%%
If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed
some.
%%
Everything should be built top-down, except the first time.
%%
Every program has (at least) two purposes: the one for which it
was written and another for which it wasn't.
%%
If a listener nods his head when you're explaining your program,
wake him up.
%%
Optimization hinders evolution.
%%
A language that doesn't affect the way you think about
programming is not worth knowing.
%%
Everyone can be taught to sculpt: Michelangelo would have had
to be taught how not to. So it is with the great programmers.
%%
Re graphics: A picture is worth 10K words -- but only those to
describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be
adequately described with pictures.
%%
There are two ways to write error-free programs. Only the third
one works.
%%
As Will Rogers would have said, "There is no such things as a
free variable."
%%
The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in
Wonderland"; but that's because it's the best book on anything
for the layman.
%%
Bringing computers into the home won't change either one, but
may revitalize the corner saloon.
%%
Beware of the Turing Tar-pit in which everything is possible but
nothing of interest is easy.
%%
A LISP programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of
nothing.
%%
It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than
vice versa.
%%
In English, every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in
our programming languages.
%%
In a five year period we can get one superb programming
language. Only we can't control when the five year period will
begin.
%%
Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it
is meant to be discarded: That the whole point is to always see
it as a soap bubble?
%%
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one
believe in God.
%%
When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need
only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop.
%%
Dealing with failure is easy: Work hard to improve. Success is
also easy to handle: You've solved the wrong problem. Work
hard to improve.
%%
One can't proceed from the informal to the formal by formal
means.
%%
Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!
%%
Why did the Roman Empire collapse? What is the Latin for office
automation?
%%
If there are epigrams, there must be meta-epigrams.
%%
Be different: conform.
%%
Save energy: be apathetic.
%%
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
Q: How long does it take?
A: It's indeterminate. It will depend upon how many flats
they've brought with them.
Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
A: They replace your generator.
%%
"Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly."
%%
The National Short-Sleeved Shirt Association says:
Support your right to bare arms!
%%
They also surf who only stand on waves.
%%
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous;
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.
%%
Oh don't the days seem lank and long
When all goes right and none goes wrong,
And isn't your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at!
%%
A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
%%
The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella.
%%
Some people in this department wouldn't recognize subtlety if it
hit them on the head.
%%
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
%%
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
%%
My God, I'm depressed! Here I am, a computer with a mind a
thousand times as powerful as yours, doing nothing but cranking
out fortunes and sending mail about softball games. And I've
got this pain right through my ALU. I've asked for it to be
replaced, but nobody ever listens. I think it would be better
for us both if you were to just log out.
%%
Death is Nature's way of recycling human beings.
%%
I sent a letter to the fish,
I told them, "This is what I wish."
The little fishes of the sea,
They sent an answer back to me.
The little fishes' answer was
"We cannot do it, sir, because..."
I sent a letter back to say
It would be better to obey.
But someone came to me and said
"The little fishes are in bed."
I said to him, and I said it plain
"Then you must wake them up again."
I said it very loud and clear,
I went and shouted in his ear.
But he was very stiff and proud,
He said "You needn't shout so loud."
And he was very proud and stiff,
He said "I'll go and wake them if..."
I took a kettle from the shelf,
I went to wake them up myself.
But when I found the door was locked
I pulled and pushed and kicked and knocked,
And when I found the door was shut,
I tried to turn the handle, But...
"Is that all?" asked Alice.
"That is all." said Humpty Dumpty. "Goodbye."
%%
E Pluribus Unix
%%
Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
%%
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
%%
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have
nothing more important to do.
%%
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
%%
All I ask of life is a constant and exaggerated sense of my own
importance.
%%
If only one could get that wonderful feeling of accomplishment
without having to accomplish anything.
%%
My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.
%%
No man is an island, but some of us are long peninsulas.
%%
The goal of Computer Science is to build something that will
last at least until we've finished building it.
%%
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
%%
Everything is controlled by a small evil group to which,
unfortunately, no one we know belongs.
%%
All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy.
%%
If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
%%
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
%%
There has been an alarming increase in the number of things you
know nothing about.
%%
What makes the universe so hard to comprehend is that there's
nothing to compare it with.
%%
It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as
a warning to others.
%%
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you
hit, call it the target.
%%
If only I could be respected without having to be respectable.
%%
The cost of living is going up, and the chance of living is
going down.
%%
The trouble with being poor is that it takes up all your time.
%%
If at first you don't succeed, redefine success.
%%
AMAZING BUT TRUE...
If all the salmon caught in Canada in one year were laid end to
end across the Sahara Desert, the smell would be absolutely
awful.
%%
AMAZING BUT TRUE...
There is so much sand in Northern Africa that if it were spread
out it would completely cover the Sahara Desert.
%%
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (The Times of London)
Dear Sir,
I am firmly opposed to the spread of microchips either to the
home or to the office. We have more than enough of them foisted
upon us in public places. They are a disgusting Americanism,
and can only result in the farmers being forced to grow smaller
potatoes, which in turn will cause massive unemployment in the
already severely depressed agricultural industry.
Yours faithfully,
Capt. Quinton D'Arcy, J.P.
Sevenoaks
%%
A nuclear war can ruin your whole day.
%%
SOFTWARE -- formal evening attire for female computer analysts.
%%
Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
%%
The program is supported, in part, by user contributions and by
a major grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
%%
Flon's Law:
There is not now, and never will be, a language in which it
is the least bit difficult to write bad programs.
%%
GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN HISTORY (#21): July 30, 1917
On this day, New York City hotel detectives burst in and caught
then- Senator Warren G. Harding in bed with an underage girl.
He bought them off with a $20 bribe, and later remarked
thankfully, "I thought I wouldn't get out of that under $1000!"
Always one to learn from his mistakes, in later years President
Harding carried on his affairs in a tiny closet in the White
House Cabinet Room while Secret Service men stood lookout.
%%
I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
%%
This life is a test. It is only a test. Had this been an
actual life, you would have received further instructions as to
what to do and where to go.
%%
Cocaine -- the thinking man's Dristan.
%%
This is National Non-Dairy Creamer Week.
%%
When in doubt, do what the President does -- guess.
%%
THIS IS PLEDGE WEEK FOR THIS PROGRAM
If you like this program, why not support it now with your
contribution of a pithy quote, clean or obscene? We cannot
continue without your support. Less than 14% of all users are
contributors. That means that 86% of you are getting a free
ride. We can't go on like this much longer. Federal cutbacks
mean less money for quotes, and unless user contributions
increase to make up the difference, the quote program will have
to shut down between midnight and 8 a.m. Don't let this happen.
Mail your quotes right now to `sysop'. Just type in your
favorite pithy saying. Do it now before you forget. Our target
is 300 new messages by the end of the week. Don't miss out. All
messages will be acknowledged. If you contribute 30 or more, you
will receive a free subscription to "The Quote Hunter", our
monthly program guide. If you contribute 50 or more, you will
receive a free "Quote Hunter" coffee mug....
%%
Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat ?
A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
%%
Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to execute a job?
A: Four; three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
%%
SEMINARS: From 'semi' and 'arse', hence, any half-assed
discussion.
%%
Another Glitch in the Call
------- ------ -- --- ----
(Sung to the tune of a Pink Floyd song.)
We don't need no indirection
We don't need no flow control
No data typing or declarations
Did you leave the lists alone?
Hey! Hacker! Leave those lists alone!
Chorus:
All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
All in all, it's just a pure-LISP function call.
%%
Armadillo: to provide weapons to a Spanish pickle
%%
Micro Credo: Never trust a computer bigger than you can lift.
%%
"Nondeterminism means never having to say you are wrong."
%%
Bumper sticker:
"All the parts falling off this car are of the very finest
British manufacture"
%%
I'm not under the alkafluence of inkahol that some thinkle peep
I am. It's just the drunker I sit here the longer I get.
%%
Serocki's Stricture:
Marriage is always a bachelor's last option.
%%
Virtue is its own punishment.
%%
Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.
%%
The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a
boy.
%%
We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we
always respect their good judgement.
%%
A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and
rejoices that the system works.
%%
One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other
people.
%%
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
%%
Anybody who doesn't cut his speed at the sight of a police car
is probably parked.
%%
Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today, because if you
enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.
%%
Anybody with money to burn will easily find someone to tend the
fire.
%%
Teach children to be polite and courteous in the home, and, when
he grows up, he will never be able to edge his car onto a
freeway.
%%
A bore is someone who persists in holding his own views after we
have enlightened him with ours.
%%
Maybe you can't buy happiness, but these days you can certainly
charge it.
%%
The best thing about growing older is that it takes such a long
time.
%%
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire
someone, or forbid your kids to do it.
%%
The trouble with doing something right the first time is that
nobody appreciates how difficult it was.
%%
Politics is like coaching a football team. you have to be smart
enough to understand the game but not smart enough to lose
interest.
%%
Nobody wants constructive criticism. It's all we can do to put
up with constructive praise.
%%
History repeats itself. That's one thing wrong with history.
%%
Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably
get another chance later on.
%%
Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be found
to make it complex and wonderful.
%%
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking
an exam.
%%
Ever notice that even the busiest people are never too busy to
tell you just how busy they are.
%%
There's a fine line between courage and foolishness. Too bad its
not a fence.
%%
The marvels of today's modern technology include the development
of a soda can, when discarded will last forever...and a $7,000
car which when properly cared for will rust out in two or three
years.
%%
One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is
quiet when well oiled.
%%
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to
say it.
%%
Youth is when you blame all your troubles on your parents;
maturity is when you learn that everything is the fault of the
younger generation.
%%
A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice
without getting nervous.
%%
Behold the warranty...the bold print giveth and the fine print
taketh away.
%%
Always borrow money from a pessimist; he doesn't expect to be
paid back.
%%
How come wrong numbers are never busy?
%%
One thing the inventors can't seem to get the bugs out of is
fresh paint.
%%
Have you noticed that all you need to grow healthy, vigorous
grass is a crack in your sidewalk?
%%
Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.
%%
Cleanliness is next to impossible.
%%
Political T.V. commercials prove one thing: some candidates can
tell all their good points and qualifications in just 30
seconds.
%%
Ask not for whom the telephone bell tolls...if thou art in the
bathtub, it tolls for thee.
%%
One way to stop a run away horse is to bet on him.
%%
A real person has two reasons for doing anything...a good reason
and the real reason.
%%
Show me a man who is a good loser and i'll show you a man who is
playing golf with his boss.
%%
Serving coffee on aircraft causes turbulence.
%%
Nothing cures insomnia like the realization that it's time to
get up.
%%
If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to
every word you say, talk in your sleep.
%%
X-rated movies are all alike...the only thing they leave to the
imagination is the plot.
%%
People usually get what's coming to them...unless it's been
mailed.
%%
Isn't it strange that the same people that laugh at gypsy
fortune tellers take economists seriously?
%%
A recent study has found that concentrating on difficult
off-screen objects, such as the faces of loved ones, causes eye
strain in computer scientists. Researchers into the phenomenon
cite the added concentration needed to "make sense" of such
unnatural three dimensional objects...
%%
A musician of more ambition than talent composed an elegy at
the death of composer Edward MacDowell. She played the elegy
for the pianist Josef Hoffman, then asked his opinion. "Well,
it's quite nice," he replied, but don't you think it would be
better if..."
"If what?" asked the composer.
"If ... if you had died and MacDowell had written the
elegy?"
%%
G. B. Shaw to William Douglas Home: "Go on writing plays, my
boy. One of these days a London producer will go into his
office and say to his secretary, 'Is there a play from Shaw this
morning?' and when she says 'No,' he will say, 'Well, then we'll
have to start on the rubbish.' And that's your chance, my boy."
%%
Actor: "I'm a smash hit. Why, yesterday during the
last act, I had everyone glued in their seats!"
Oliver Herford: "Wonderful! Wonderful! Clever of you to think
of it!"
%%
Leibowitz's Rule:
When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger if you
hold the hammer with both hands.
%%
Drew's Law of Highway Biology:
The first bug to hit a clean windshield lands directly in
front of your eyes.
%%
Langsam's Laws:
1) Everything depends.
2) Nothing is always.
3) Everything is sometimes.
%%
Law of Probable Dispersal:
Whatever it is that hits the fan will not be evenly
distributed.
%%
Meader's Law:
Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to
everyone you know, only more so.
%%
Fourth Law of Revision:
It is usually impractical to worry beforehand about
interferences -- if you have none, someone will make one for
you.
%%
Sodd's Second Law:
Sooner or later, the worst possible set of circumstances is
bound to occur.
%%
Murphy's Law is recursive. Washing your car to make it rain
doesn't work.
%%
Rule of Defactualization:
Information deteriorates upward through bureaucracies.
%%
Spark's Sixth Rule for Managers:
If a subordinate asks you a pertinent question, look at him
as if he had lost his senses. When he looks down,
paraphrase the question back at him.
%%
Anthony's Law of Force:
Don't force it; get a larger hammer.
%%
Ray's Rule of Precision:
Measure with a micrometer. Mark with chalk. Cut with an axe.
%%
Rule of Creative Research:
1) Never draw what you can copy.
2) Never copy what you can trace.
3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
%%
Barach's Rule:
An alcoholic is a person who drinks more than his own
physician.
%%
"You are old, Father William," the young man said,
"All your papers these days look the same;
Those William's would be better unread --
Do these facts never fill you with shame?"
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I wrote wonderful papers galore;
But the great reputation I found that I'd won,
Made it pointless to think any more."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And make errors few people could bear;
You complain about everyone's English but yours --
Do you really think this is quite fair?"
"I make lots of mistakes," Father William declared,
"But my stature these days is so great
That no critic can hurt me -- I've got them all scared,
And to stop me it's now far too late."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "and your programs don't run,
And there isn't one language you like;
Yet of useful suggestions for help you have none --
Have you thought about taking a hike?"
"Since I never write programs," his father replied,
"Every language looks equally bad;
Yet the people keep paying to read all my books
And don't realize that they've been had."
%%
"You are old," said the youth, "and I'm told by my peers
That your lectures bore people to death.
Yet you talk at one hundred conventions per year --
Don't you think that you should save your breath?"
"I have answered three questions and that is enough,"
Said his father, "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you downstairs!"
%%
Speak roughly to your little VAX,
and boot it when it crashes;
It knows that one cannot relax
Because the paging thrashes!
Wow! Wow! Wow!
I speak severely to my VAX,
and boot it when it crashes;
In spite of all my favorite hacks
My jobs it always thrashes!
Wow! Wow! Wow!
%%
"My weight is perfect for my height -- which varies"
%%
"One planet is all you get."
%%
"If you have to hate, hate gently"
%%
Elevators smell different to midgets
%%
Human beings were created by water to transport it uphill.
%%
Air is water with holes in it
%%
"Every time I think I know where it's at, the move it."
%%
"Heisenberg may have slept here"
%%
"If dolphins are so smart, why did Flipper work for television?"
%%
The Roman Rule
The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt
the one who is doing it.
%%
Lackland's Laws:
1. Never be first.
2. Never be last.
3. Never volunteer for anything
%%
Tussman's Law:
Nothing is as inevitable as a mistake whose time has come.
%%
Oliver's Law:
Experience is something you don't get until just after you
need it.
%%
Mitchell's Law of Committees:
Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings
are held to discuss it.
%%
Baruch's Observation:
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
%%
Anthony's Law of the Workshop:
Any tool when dropped, will roll into the least accessible
corner of the workshop.
Corollary:
On the way to the corner, any dropped tool will first strike
your toes.
%%
Second Law of Business Meetings:
If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
will pick the wrong one.
Corollary:
If there is only one way to spell a name, you will spell it
wrong, anyway.
%%
Grelb's Reminder:
Eighty percent of all people consider themselves to be above
average drivers.
%%
Grandpa Charnock's Law:
You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
%%
Rule of the Great:
When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep
thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
%%
Lieberman's Law:
Everybody lies, but it doesn't matter since nobody listens.
%%
Goldenstern's Rules:
1. Always hire a rich attorney
2. Never buy from a rich salesman.
%%
Weiner's Law of Libraries:
There are no answers, only cross references.
%%
Brook's Law:
Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
%%
O'Toole's Commentary on Murphy's Law:
Murphy was an optimist.
%%