Post your favorite witticism, maxim, quote, excerpt, proverb, or aphorisms

[BikeWriter]

Here's one:

Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Mark Twain

[Heidi]

1. "Never trust a boiled egg."

(My mother)

[BikeWriter]

2. Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson)...

Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson) - "The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us."

[Heidi]

3. Annit the truth?

:rofl:

[BikeWriter]

4. I lurved that one! "The trouble with theocracy is ...

"The trouble with theocracy is that everyone wants to be Theo."
James Dunn

[hfojvt]

79. I thought you'd go with this pearl of wisdom

"Snow goons are bad news!"

"I like maxims that don't encourage behaviour modification."

[BikeWriter]

88. Do not go gentle into that good night...

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light...
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)

[Heidi]

5. OK, seriously, this is one of my favorite quotes ever.

I used to have it at the bottom of my letterhead:

"If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind."
John Stuart Mill

[BikeWriter]

6. Very good! 99.9% of lawyers...

99.9% of lawyers give the rest of them a bad name.

[Jazz2006]

74. Hey! Easy there.

I have it on very good authority that it's 92.7%

I, of course, am in the 7.3%

:P

And my fave quote:

Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit. - Aristotle

:hi:

[BikeWriter]

78. Pituita me tenet.

Pituita me tenet.
I've caught a cold.
Ancient Graffiti on the walls of Pompeii

[Mutley]

7. ...

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion;
it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from
personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and
emotions know what it means to want to escape these things." -T.S.
Eliot

[BikeWriter]

8. "... If something we said can be interpreted two ways...

"... If something we said can be interpreted two ways, and one of the ways makes you sad or angry, we meant the other one.

[Mutley]

9. "Art lives upon discussion,

upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints; and there is a presumption that those times when no one has anything particular to say about it, and has no reason to give for practice or preference, though they may be times of honour, are not times of development -- are times, possibly even, a little of dullness." -Henry James

[BikeWriter]

10. "Americans have different ways...

"Americans have different ways of saying things. They say "elevator", we say "lift" ... they say "President", we say "stupid psychopathic git."
Alexai Sayle.

[Mutley]

28. "Aristotle, I have been told,

has said that Poetry is the most philosophic of all writing: it is so: its object is truth, not individual and local, but general, and operative; not standing upon external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion; truth which is its own testimony, which gives competence and confidence to the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them from the same tribunal." -William Wordsworth

[Xipe Totec]

18. Art is passion, pursued with discipline

Science is discipline, pursued with passion.

- source unknown (to me)

[Mutley]

20. Mornin'

:hi:

[Xipe Totec]

38. Morning!

:hi:

I posted and left for work. Sorry I missed your reply!

[Mutley]

44. 'Sokay.

I ordered The Master and Margarita from Amazon. Couldn't find it in any bookstores around here. :silly:

I hope it gets here soon. :bounce:

[Xipe Totec]

60. Cool!

I was tempted to enroll in this course for the fall, but my Russian skills strong enough yet.



Next year, perhaps!

[Mutley]

63. That would be fun.

If only I could speak Russian. If only they offered classes like that at my University. :P

[BikeWriter]

25. Art is passion...

Art is passion practiced with great discipline. Science is discipline practiced with great passion.
Keith Black

[Xipe Totec]

39. Thanks!

I love that quote.

[BikeWriter]

51. I'm glad I could help, Pard. "Cockroaches and socialites...

"Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything."
Herb Caen.

[enigmatic]

11. "It's Just A Ride"- Bill Hicks

I miss him...

""The world is like a ride at an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it, you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly coloured and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question: Is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, 'Hey – don't worry, don't be afraid ever, because this is just a ride ...' And we ... kill those people. Ha ha, 'Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real.' It's just a ride.

But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because – it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace..."

[BikeWriter]

13. Damn, that's so true! "A computer once beat me at chess...

"A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing."
Emo Philips

[hfojvt]

83. unfortunately, people could say that

"a geek once beat me in chess, but he was no match for me in kickboxing."

There was an episode of "Family Ties" where Alex has a woman boss at a bank, and he treats her like an inferior or potential date. She goes off on a rant that concludes something like "I can compete with you. I can outrun you, and out-think you. I can beat you in chess, and I can beat you in kick-boxing."
to which he replies
"I'm not scared. Get out those chess pieces."

I thought the episode where he is playing a Russian prodigy, who tries to throw the game, was hilarious.

[Random_Australian]

12. S

(To explain, it is the symbol for entropy, the derivation of one meaning of which gives rise to my screenname)

[BikeWriter]

14. "I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at any time...

"I went to a restaurant that serves "breakfast at any time". So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance."
Steven Wright

[Random_Australian]

15. Yeh, it is the one that gives rise to the thermodynamic arrow of time.

Sharp working!

[rug]

45. My get up and go got up and left.

My mother.

[hfojvt]

84. stolen from Aerosmith?

or did she write for them?

"some sweet talking momma with a face like a gent
said my get up and go, musta got up and went
well I got good news she's a real good liar
because my back stage boogie will set your pants on fire."
(or something like that)
"Walk this way" circa 1975

[REDKING]

16. What have the romans..

ever done for us?:D

[BikeWriter]

19. (Superb graffitti!) Pompeii, two thousand years ago

Successus was here.
Gaius Julius Primigenius was here. Why are you late?
Lovers, like bees, lead a honey-sweet life.
I don't want to sell my husband.
Burglar, watch out!
Someone at whose table I do not dine, Lucius Istacidius, is a barbarian to me.
The fruit sellers ask you to elect Marcus Holconius Priscus as aedile.
I am amazed, o wall, that you have not collapsed and fallen, since you must bear the tedious stupidities of so many scrawlers.

[REDKING]

73. hehehehehehe...

:evilgrin:

[Wetzelbill]

17. "Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines"

Steven Wright. :)

[Heidi]

22. ". . . like she's never sooooooooooooooared befoooooore . . ."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riKGGWFqnH8&search=john%20ashcroft%20eagle%20soar

[Wetzelbill]

70. ahh so you think I'm going to fall for that trick

:)

[BikeWriter]

23. It's hard to soar with eagles, when...

It's hard to soar with eagles, when all around you are turkeys!

[reformedrepub]

21. Shit Happens

The dude from the Forrest Gump movie....

[BikeWriter]

24. I suffer from crs...

I suffer from crs, can't remember shit.

[pokerfan]

26. "Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood."

"Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist." -Epicurus

"Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood." -Marie Curie

"Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown, and partly the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing - fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand." -Bertrand Russell

"All you need is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure." -Mark Twain

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." -Napoleon Bonaparte

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -Aristotle

"I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it." -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

"If you're going through hell, keep going." -Winston Churchill

“You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle aged woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life." -Emo Philips

[BikeWriter]

27. "He was a great patriot, a humanitarian...

"He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead."
Voltaire.

[YankeyMCC]

30. wrong place

Deleted - posted in the wrong place

[kiraboo]

34. That's my favorite here so far!

[BikeWriter]

52. Thank you! "Do you know what it means...

"Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who'll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you're in the wrong house."
George Burns

[GCP]

41. I'm going to copy your list

Excellent stuff - and the Emo line is classic! :D

[YankeyMCC]

29. That's hilarious is it a true quote?

[YankeyMCC]

31. One that particularly fits today:

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

a couple others:

A Wolf, sorely wounded and bitten by dogs, lay sick and maimed in his lair. Being in want of food, he called to a Sheep who was passing, and asked him to fetch some water from a stream flowing close beside him. "For," he said, "if you will bring me drink, I will find means to provide myself with meat." "Yes," said the Sheep, "if I should bring you the draught, you would doubtless make me provide the meat also."


"I am a liberal. We live in a liberal democracy. That's what we created in this country. That's in our Constitution. ... I think we should be very clear on this. You know, this country was founded on the principals of the Enlightenment. It was the idea that people could talk, reason, have dialogue, discuss the issues. It wasn't founded on the idea that someone would get stuck by a divine inspiration and know everything right from wrong. I mean, people who founded this country had religion, they had strong beliefs, but they believed in reason, in dialogue, in civil discourse. We can't lose that in this country. We've got to get it back. "
-- Wes Clark

[RFKHumphreyObama]

32. Mine

"It is better to be defeated on principles than to win on lies -Arthur Calwell


When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, always -Mahatma Gandhi

[kiraboo]

33. "My life is utterly meaningless.

When I consider its various epochs, my life is like the word 'Schnur' in the dictionary, which first of all means a string, and second a daughter-in-law. All that is lacking is that in the third place the word 'Schnur' means a camel and in the fourth a whisk broom." -Soren Kierkegaard

[NewWaveChick1981]

35. My favorite quote of all time is in my signature line

Saw that graffiti in a ladies' room in college, and it's stuck with me ever since. :D I have no idea who put it there, and I'm sure they had no idea that they would make that kind of impression!

[Mutley]

36. This is another one...

"We succeeded in taking that picture , and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." - Carl Sagan

The link to the picture is in my sigline.

[miss_american_pie]

37. ...

"Pound’s crazy. All poets are.... They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin. For history’s sake we shouldn’t keep him there."

Only worthwhile thing Enrest Hemingway ever said. ;)

[riona]

40. n/t

"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."

[GCP]

42. Lady Astor to Churchill

"If you were my husband I'd put poison in your coffee"
Churchill to Lady Astor
"Nancy, if you were my wife, I'd drink it".

SNAP

[samplegirl]

43. Decider

When the president decides something on Monday he still believes it on Wednesday no
matter what happened on Tuesday.

Stephen Colbert~~~

[MrBenchley]

46. "Conservatives are not necessarily stupid...."

"....but most stupid people are conservatives."
--John Stuart Mill

"Everything in nature is lyrical in its ideal essence, tragic in its fate, and comic in its existence."
--George Santayana

"A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams."
--John Barrymore

"Every dead man must take upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that "such as he now is, I must shortly he." Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginest. In the mean-time I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters! Thy New Years' Days are past. I survive, a jolly candidate for 1821."
--Charles Lamb

[samplegirl]

47. one by Voltaire

In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give it to the other.

[derby378]

48. A Bertrand Russell quote

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."

[pokerfan]

89. That's one of my favorites

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
Bertrand Russell

[samplegirl]

49. bush should of read this before iraq

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts;
but if he will be content to begin with doubts,
he shall end in certainties.
--Francis Bacon



If money be not thy servant, it will be thy master
The covetous man cannot so properly be said to possess wealth as that may be said to posses him.
--Francis Bacon

[Calliope]

50. Benjamin Franklin

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

Also Yann Martel The Life of Pi
"If we, citizens, do not support our artists, then we sacrifice our imaginations on the altar of crude reality and we end up believing in nothing and having worthless dreams"

[crispini]

53. "No matter where you go, there you are."

-- Buckaroo Banzai

[crispini]

54. "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

-- Emerson

[crispini]

55. "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself.

I am large, I contain multitudes."

-- Whitman

[crispini]

56. "We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests;

.... as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them."

-- Thoreau

(Can ya'll tell I just LOVE the Trancendentalists?) :D

[wildhorses]

57. "Begin the morning by saying to yourself:

I shall meet today
Bores, Stupid men, hypocrites and liars
but, I can be reasonable and not harmed by any of them."
~Marcus Aurelius

[wildhorses]

58. Keep your mind of your ass and

keep your ass to yourself
and you'll be all right.
Military man to his daughter...

[Xipe Totec]

61. Never play leap frog with a unicorn

:hi:

Something about wild horses and asses reminded me of that quote...



:hide:

[wildhorses]

69. good advice...

"time's fun when you're having flies"
said one frog to the other
:hi:

[Fox Mulder]

59. I love this one from MLK:

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
--Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963

I also love the quote as my sig line here on the DU. :D

[LouisianaLiberal]

62. "Wagner's music is better than it sounds" Mark Twain

"One of the bad effects of an anti-intellectual philosophy is that thrives upon the errors and confusions of the intellect. Hence it is led to prefer bad thinking to good, to declare every momentary difficulty insoluble, and to regard every foolish mistake as revealing the bankruptcy of intellect and the triumph of intuition. -Bertrand Russel"

Does the human being reason? No; he thinks, muses, reflects, but does not reason...That is, in the two things which are the peculiar domain of the heart, not the mind,--politics and religion. He doesn't want to know the other side. He wants arguments and statistics for his own side, and nothing more.
- Mark Twain's Notebook

"The dark places of the Earth are the happy Christian homes" - RH Hutton

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study paintings, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
- John Adams

[Patiod]

64. "No good deed goes unpunished"

Shortened to "no good deed" whenever the little girl we ended up taking care of (after our friend, her mother died) would be lying on the floor of the supermarket, pitching a temper tantrum (at age 8) and everyone was staring at us.

Yes, we understood why she was so badly behaved, but we still wondered where kharma was taking us...

[otherlander]

65. The time has come.....

the Walrus said, to talk of many things....

okay no but seriously....

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. I thought that was a pretty great quote. And "Those who slip into the hands of the powerful often slip by the notice of the people."

[JunkYardAngel]

66. 3 of my favourites

"To live outside the law you must be honest" Bob Dylan

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission" Eleanor Roosevelt

And finally
"If you want to know what God thinks of money look at the people he gave it to" Dorothy Parker

[Onlooker]

67. bullshit

My grandfather used to say, "If bullshit was electricity, you'd be a powerhouse."

[Bunny]

68. I forget exactly how this one goes, but it's something like this:

I'm sitting in the smallest room in my house, your letter in front of me. In a few minutes, it will be behind me.



:rofl:

[BikeWriter]

75. That has been attributed to Max Reger. "The human race..."

The human race has improved everything except the human race.
Adlai Stevenson

[Xipe Totec]

76. Right down my alley,

this too shall pass...

:evilgrin:

[TallahasseeGrannie]

71. Treat the other man's faith

gently; it is all he has to believe with. His mind was created for his own thoughts, not yours or mine.

Henry S. Haskins

[Aristus]

72. "When I was fourteen years old, I thought my father was the

stupidest, most ignorant man that had ever lived. By the time I turned twenty-one, I was amazed at how much he'd learned in seven years."

Attributed to Mark Twain.

[BikeWriter]

77. Dorothy Parker I like to have a martini...

I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under my host.

[peacefreak]

80. Virtue is its own punishment.

And...that which does not kill me, makes me stronger. (I don't use this one as much as I used to, thank goodness)

[hfojvt]

87. as Calvin said of his good side

"He never complains. This doofus just loves to help other people." A few panels later "Talk about somebody who is easy to exploit!"

"deliver no evil, live on reviled"

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

81. Time exists so everything doesn't happen at once.

Space exists so everything doesn't happen to you.
(author unknown).

And my sig line: "Principiis obsta." Resist the beginning.

[leftofthedial]

82. "Music would be great . . .

"if it weren't for musician." --leftofthedial

[miss_american_pie]

85. Shakespeare

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Can't remember which play, though.

[HEyHEY]

86. "This horse needs its kidneys checked."

- Said when drinking bad whiskey