WHO BLEW OUT THE CANDLES
"Am I dying or is this my birthday?"
When she woke briefly during her last illness and found all her family around her bedside.
~~ Lady Nancy Astor, d. 1964
AND ANOTHER THING, NO MORE WIRE HANGERS
"Damn it . . . Don't you dare ask God to help me."
To her housekeeper, who had begun to pray aloud.
~~ Joan Crawford, actress, d. May 10, 1977
WHAT WAS THAT YOU JUST SAID, GENERAL
"They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist. . . ."
Killed in battle during US Civil War.
~~ General John Sedgwick, Union Commander, d. 1864
IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE OLIVES
"I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis."
~~ Humphrey Bogart, actor, d. January 14, 1957
WHAT THE HELL DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE AT THIS POINT
"I am about to -- or I am going to -- die: either expression is correct."
~~ Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian, d. 1702
WOULDN'T IT HAVE BEEN EASIER JUST TO HIRE MARTHA STEWART
"Either that wallpaper goes, or I do."
~~ Oscar Wilde, writer, d. November 30, 1900
Success has a simple formula: do your best, and people may like it.
- Sam Ewing
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
- Annie Dillard
No truly great man ever thought himself so.
- William Hazlitt
It is no use saying, "We are doing our best." You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
- Sir Winston Churchill
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
- Mark Twain
Lawyers on opposite sides of a case are like the two parts of shears; they cut what comes between them, but not each other.
- Daniel Webster
The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. - Albert Einstein
Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them could not stand being laughed at.
- Unknown
The best kept secret in America today is that people would rather work hard for something they believe in than live a life of aimless diversion.
- John Gardner
I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.
- Robert Frost
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
- Baron de Montesquieu
Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
- Mark Twain
Power doesn't corrupt people. People corrupt power.
- Unknown
The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man. - George Bernard Shaw
Whatever does not destroy me makes me stronger.
- Nietzsche
The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
- Eden Phillpotts
And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incompleteness, round our restlessness His rest.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
- Unknown
The unexamined life is not worth living.
- Socrates
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
- Albert Einstein
The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and likewise pain.
- Dante
Fate leads the willing, and drags along those who hang back.
- Seneca
For though we sleep or wake, or roam, or ride, Aye fleets the time, it will no man abide.
- Geoffrey Chaucer
Pleasure must succeed to pleasure; else past pleasure turns to pain.
- Robert Browning
Better by far you should forget and smile, than that you should remember and be sad.
- Christina Rossetti
Respect is what we owe; love, what we give.
- Philip James Bailey
Every man has a right to be wrong in his opinions .But no man has a right to be wrong in his facts.
- Bernard Baruch
We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow; Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so.
- Alexander Pope
I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
- Abraham Lincoln
Courage consists in equality to the problem before us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
But the fruit that can fall without shaking, Indeed is too mellow for me.
- Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
What sought they thus afar? Bright jewels of the mine, The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? They sought a faith's pure shrine.
- Felicia D. Hemas, Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers
Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod: They have left unstained what there they found,--Freedom to worship God. - Felicia D. Hemas, Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers
Knowledge by suffering entereth, And life is perfected by death.
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
WELCOME TO MY WORLD
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 Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
THE BRIITISH HAVE SUCH A WAY WITH WORDS...
"After all, what is a pedestrian? He is a man who has two cars- one being driven by his wife, the other by one of his children." -Robert Bradbury, city official, Liverpool, England
MY OWN PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY
"Always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said."
-Mark Twain
NOW HERE'S A VISUAL
I know that faraway look which men get when they're peeing. And when you see that in a pool, you know, it's most unnerving. -Orson Welles
BE HONEST, HAVEN'T YOU THOUGHT THE SAME THING...
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.
- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
- Eric Hoffer
That is not dead which can eternal lie; And with strange eons, even death may die.
- H.P. Lovecraft
Science is built up of facts, as a house is with stone, but a collection of facts is no more of a science than a heap of stones is a house.
- Jules Henri Poincare
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
- Martin Luther King Jr.
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
- Ambrose Redmoon
Nothing comes from nothing.
- Shakespeare
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.
- Buckminster Fuller
