“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
“If you are going through hell, keep going.”
“God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.”
In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
~Aeschylus
he world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that it will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
~Ernest Hemingway
I believe in nothing; everything is sacred.
I believe in everything; nothing is sacred.
~Tom Robbins
Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburgers. ~Abbie Hoffman
Cats were put into the world to disprove the dogma
that all things wre created to serve man. ~Paul Gray
“Even if we are occupied with important things, if we attain honor or fall into misfortune; still let us remember how good it was once here, when we were all united by a good and kind feeling that made us better, perhaps, than we are.”—Dostoevsky
(That’s the one I want on my tombstone, if I change my mind about being cremated. I have given it as a toast numerous times and durned if all the men in the room don’t suddenly develop those allergies the Ol Gaffer mentioned a while back.)
While I am definitely a quote whore and own the Portable Curmudgeon books, tread lightly when using quotes. What is hilarious or terribly insightful to one person may not be to another. I, for one, have never been moved by the page of quotes so many authors–fiction and non– insist on including in their books.
Objections, non-sequiturs, cheerful distrust, joyous mockery – all are signs of health. Everything else belongs in the realm of pathology.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
– John Buchan (also attrib. to Bishop Fulton J. Sheen)
Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race.
– P. J. O’Rourke
The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour upon it, the more it will contract.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position and be bruised in a new place.
– Washington Irving
It is an odd fact that subjective certainty is inversely proportional to objective certainty. The less reason a man has to suppose himself in the right, the more vehemently he asserts that there is no doubt whatever that he is exactly right.
– Bertrand Russell
I always knew this one as Hanlon’s Razor, and The Jargon Lexicon indicates that a similar statement can be attributed to William James.
Who is Nick Daimos?
(jargon entry):
http://www.huis.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/jargon/LexiconEntries/Hanlon’s_Razor.html
“Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.” - - George Orwell
“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
“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” Robert A. Heinlein
“I’ll do my best to give thanks for gifts strangely, beautifully, painfully wrapped.” Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
A cite can be found here. He was, I believe, a science fiction author.
People see God every day … they just don’t recognize him.
~Pearl Bailey
Your dogma just got ran over by my karma.
~ ?
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.
~ Erica Jong
_There is
One art;
No more,
No less:
To do
All things
With art-
lessness.
–Piet Hein
“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
– Marcel Proust
“Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.”
– Isaac Asimov
“Live without hate but not without rage. Heal the world.”
– Paul Monette
“Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
– George Santayana
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
– Voltaire
“In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”
– H.L. Mencken
“Is marijuana addictive? Yes, in the sense that most of the really pleasant things in life are worth endlessly repeating.”
– Richard Neville
“My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.”
– Jack Nicholson
“Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.” Henry David Thoreau
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” e.e. cummings
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.” Jan L.A. van de Snepscheut
“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” H.G. Wells
“The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” Carl Sagan
Since the quote will go next to your artwork, how about:
Art is either plagiarism or revolution. – Paul Gauguin
A revolution is not a dinner party. – Mao Tse-Tung
Yes, I used both of these together on an invitation to an art-related party.
“Life is far too important to be taken seriously.” ~Oscar Wilde.
“Tis true my form is something odd, but blaming me is blaming God; Could I create myself anew, I would not fail in pleasing you. If I could reach from pole to pole or grasp the ocean with a span, I would be measured by the soul; the mind’s the measure of the man.”
-Joseph Merrick
“There is no personal problem that can’t be solved with a suitable application of high explosive.”
-John Czekaj
“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.”
-George Bernard Shaw
“What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.”
-Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2.
“The world is a den of thieves and night is falling. Soon it will be the hour for robbers and murderers. Evil is breaking its chains and goes through the world like a mad dog… So it shall be. Therefore let us be happy, let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. Therefore it is necessary, and not in the least shameful, to take pleasures in the little world, good food, gentle smiles, fruit-trees in bloom and waltzes”
–excerpted from Fanny & Alexander by Ingmar Bergman.
“God created all men, and Sam Colt made them equal.”_ -saying of the Old West.
“God comes to the hungry in the form of food.”
-Gandhi
“We are who we’re mean’t to be.”
-K. Pryde
“…some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”
-William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
“No epilogue, I pray you; for your play needs no
excuse. Never excuse; for when the players are all
dead, there needs none to be blamed.”
-Spoken by Theseus, Twelfth Night.
“Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.”
-Adolf Hitler
“A witty phrase proves nothing.”
-Voltaire
“I didn’t do it”
-Krusty the Clown
You must be the change you wish to see in this world.
– Mahatma Gahndi