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| Inconvenience is two steps down the road from fury, and fury, the demon's breath. ~ A.M. Paquette "The Gap"
It's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse�no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies�not the death of his love but the shoelace that snaps with no time left. ~ Charles Bukowski Paul had told Carmen once that you could distinguish a drunk from a drinker, because a drinker could choose to stop and a drunk couldn't. Carmen was a drunk. She could take or leave alcohol; anger was her mode of self-destruction. She couldn't stop when normal people could. ~ Ann Brasheres Anyone can get angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way, that is not easy. ~ Aristotle When anger spreads through the breast, guard they tongue from barking idly. ~ Sappho "Woman in the Golden Ages" Why was it that her temper and her thinking never happened at the same time? Her temper behaved like a glutton sitting in an expensive restaurant ordering a hundred dishes, only to disappear when the bill came due. It left her lucid mind to do dishes. "You will not be invited back," she muttered to her temper, her evil twin, the bad Carmen. Maybe she should just cede her body to her temper all the time. Let it deal with the consequences, instead of her rational, conscientous self, which ruled her body most of the time. Okay, some of the time. ~ Ann Brasheres There is nothing worse than being forgotten. That is the true nature of death. ~ Eric Joel Bresin "Hunting a Child" Dying lends one special significance. They stand in line to see me, who once would not have glanced my way. ~ Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman "Test of the Twins" "I think of death as some delightful journey That I shall take when all my tasks are done. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox ""The Journey" A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perserverance, and to turn around three times before lying down. ~ Robert Benchley Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole. ~ Roger Caras Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful. If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man. ~ Mark Twain The average dog is a nicer person than the average person. ~ Andy Rooney There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face. ~ Ben Williams A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself. ~ Josh Billings The reason a dog has so many friends is that he wags his tail instead of his tongue. ~ Anonymous To travel in the company of animals is to walk with angels, guides, guardians, jesters, shadows and mirros. I cannot imagine how it is to travel bereft of such excellent companions. ~ Suzanne Clothier "Bones Would Rain From the Sky" We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare and love we can spare. And in return, dogs give us their all. It's th You can say any foolish thing to a dog and the dog will give you a look that says, "Wow, you're right! I never would've thought of that!" ~ Dave Barry Habit, laziness, and fear conspire to keep us comfortably within the familiar. ~ Jane Hirshfield Fear and admiration are cousins. ~ Shon Rathbone "TheMagnificent" Fear not those who argue but those who dodge. ~ Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach "Aphorism" A clear and innocent conscience fears nothing. ~ Elizabeth I "The Sayings of Queen Elizabeth" Courage is the swallowing of one's life, whole. ~ Keith Miller "The Book of Flying" Because, while I do not know who the enemy is any longer, I do know who my friends are, and that I have not done as well by them as I should. I hope to change that. I hope to do better. ~ J. Michael Strazcynski "Babylon 5 Londo" Fine, blood was thicker than water. But friendship, it struck Tibby, was thicker than both. ~ Ann Brasheres Friendship has splendours that love knows not. It grows stronger when crosses, whereas obstacles kill love. Friendship resists time, which wearies and severs couples. It has heights unknown to love. ~ Mariama Ba I have lost friends, some by death�others through sheer inability to cross the street. ~ Virginia Woolf "The Waves" My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadow cast by my deprivation. ~ Helen Keller "The Story of My Life" Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything. ~ Willa ather "Shadows on the Rock" The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We have really no absent friends. ~ Elizabeth Bowen "Death of the Heart" Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in their best light. ~ Jennie Jerome Churchill Trouble is a sieve through which we sift our acquaintances. Those too big to pass through are our friends. ~ Aristotle True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance. ~ Henry David Thoreau Yes'm, old friends is always best, 'less you can catch a new one that's fit to make an old one out of. ~ Sarah Orne Jewett "The Country of the Pointed" �I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives' tales about the way men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock around a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I had never seen this happen. ~ Dorothy Parker "Constant Reader" �I know nothing of man's rights, or woman's rights; human rights are all that I recognize. ~ Sarah M. Grimke "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women" �I scarcely am able to govern my muscles, when I see a man start with eager, and serious solitude to lift a handkerchief, or shut a door, when the lady could have done it herself, had she only moved a pace or two. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" �women have been called queens for a long time, but the kingdom given them isn't worth ruling. ~ Louisa May Alcott "An Old-Fashioned Girl" A father will have compassion on his son. A mother will never forget her child. A brother will cover the sin of his sister. But what husband ever forgave the faithlessness of his wife? ~ Marguerite of Navarre "Mirror of the Sinful Soul" A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after. ~ Gloria Steinem "Newsweek" A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary. ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher "Her Son's Wife" A woman who takes things from a man is called a girlfriend; a man who takes things from a woman is called a gigolo. ~ Ruthie Stein All the tired women, Who sewed their lives away, Speak in my deft fingers As I sew today. ~ Hazell Hall "Instruction" And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace By each button, hook and lace. ~ Amy Lowell "Patterns" Any woman can be wife and mother; and hundreds have been queens. My husband. My children. To center your life upon these five or six, to be bound and shut in with every-thing that concerns�each day filled--so filled--with the thousand occupations that help or comfort them, that finally one sinks into the grave loved and honored, but as ignorant as the day one was born-- ~ Thornton Wilder "The Alcestiad" Beauty comes in all sizes--not just size 5. ~ Roseanne Beauty fades, dumb is forever. ~ Judy Sheindlin Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother. ~ Oprah Winfrey By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh "Gift from the Sea" Consider the "new" woman. She's trying to be Pollyanna Borgia, clearly a conflict of interest. She's supposed to be a ruthless winner at work and a bundle of nurturing sweetness at home. ~ Rita Mae Brown Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin' to do wid Him. ~ Sojourner Truth Every woman should have a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill and a black lace bra. ~ Anonymous Every women who vacates a place in the teachers' ranks and enters an unusual line of work, does two excellent things: she makes room for someone waiting for a place and helps to open a new vocation for herself and other women. ~ Frances E. Willard "What America Owes to Women" For in other ways a woman is full of fear, defenseless, dreads the sight of cold steel; but when once she is wronged in the matter of love, no other soul can hold so many thoughts of blood. ~ Euripedes "Medea" From the moment I was six I felt sexy. And let me tell you it was hell, sheer hell, waiting to do something about it. ~ Bette Davis Hatred of domestic work is a natural and admirable result of civilization. ~ Rebecca West "The Freewoman" He looked at her hopelessly. Nothing is more perplexing to man than the mental process of a woman who reasons her emotions. ~ Edith Wharton "Souls Belated" His ambition, his wish to do good, his wish to control, that's not male, that's just human. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin How much it is to be regretted, that the British ladies should ever sit down contented to polish, when they are able to reform; to entertain when they might instruct; and to dazzle for an hour, when they are candidates for eternity! ~ Hannah More "On Dissipation" How say that by law we may torture and chase A woman whose crime is the hue of her face? ~ Frances Ellen Watkins Harper "She's Free!" I always say it was great for God to send his only son, but I'm waiting for him to send his only daughter. Then things will really be great. ~ Candace Pert I am obnoxious to each carping tongue, Who says my hand a needle better fits, A poet's pen, all scorn, I should thus wrong. ~ Anne Bradstreet "The Prologue" I do not consider, as it is so often stated, that the great object of marriage is to produce children; marriage has higher humanitarian objects. ~ Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell "How to Keep a Household in Health" I do not want a husband who honours me as a queen, if he does not love me as a woman. ~ Elizabeth I "The Sayings of Queen Elizabeth" I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" I felt more determined than ever to become a physician, and thus place a strong barrier between me and all ordinary marriage. I must have something to engross my thoughts, some object in life which will fill this vacuum and prevent this sad wearing away of the heart. ~ Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell "Pioneer Work for Women" I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes--and six months later you have to start all over again. ~ Joan Rivers I have such an intense pride of sex that the triumphs of women in art, literature, oratory, science, or song rouse my enthusiasm as nothing else can. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton "Eighty Years and More" I must have hated him too. I must have hated him without knowing it. It was he who brought me up to despise my own sex, to be half woman and half man. Who's to blame for what has happened? My father, my mother, myself? Myself? I don't have a self that's my own. I don't have a single thought I didn't get from my father, not an emotion I didn't get from my mother. And that last idea--about all people being equal--I got that from him. That's why I say he's beneath contempt. How can it be my own fault? Put the blame on Jesus, like she does? I'm too proud to do that--and too intelligent, thanks to why my father taught me...A rich man can't get into heaven? That's a lie. But at least she, who's got money in the savings bank, won't get in...Who's to blame? What difference does it make who's to blame? I'm still the one who has to bear the guilt, suffer the consequences. ~ August Strindberg "Miss Julie" I was, being human, born alone; I am, being woman, hard beset. ~ Elinor Wylie "Let No Charitable Hope" In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man; if you want anything done, ask a woman. ~ Margaret Thatcher It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him. ~ Helen Rowland "Reflections of a Bachelor Girl" It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens, but we, the whole people, who formed this Union. ~ Susan B. Anthony "speech" I've been described as a tough and noisy woman, a prize fighter, a man-hater, you name it. They call me Battling Bella, Mother Courage, and a Jewish mother with more complaints than Portnoy. There are those who say I'm impatient, impetuous, uppity, rude, profane, brash, and overbearing. Whether I'm any of these things, or all of them, you can decide for yourself. But whatever I am--and this ought to be made very clear--I am a very serious woman. ~ Bella Abzug "Bella!" Let's face it, there are no plain women on television. ~ Anna Ford "Observer" Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind. ~ Virginia Woolf "A Room of One's Own" Men and women should own the world as a mutual possession. ~ Pearl S. Buck Men seldom make passes At girls who wear glasses. ~ Dorothy Parker "News Item" Most men and women have both men and women inside them, lots of them, and are capable of being much more than they're told they're capable of being. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin Motherhood is the most important of all professions--requiring more knowledge than any other department in human affairs. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton "Eighty Years and More" Nagging is the repetition of unpalatable truths. ~ Edith Summerskill "speech to the Married Women's Association" Never think she loves him wholly, Never believe her love is blind, All his faults are locked securely In a closet of her mind. ~ Sara Teasdale "Appraisal" No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt No one should have to dance backward all their lives. ~ Jill Ruckelshaus No woman can call herself free who does not own and control her body. No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother. ~ Margaret Sanger "Woman and the New Race" One is not born a woman; one becomes one. ~ Simone de Beauvoir One of the trails of woman-kind is the fear of being an old maid. To escape this dreadful doom, young girls rush into matrimony with a recklessness which astonishes the beholder; never pausing to remember that the loss of liberty, happiness, and self-respect is poorly repaid by the barren honor of being called "Mrs." instead of "Miss." ~ Louisa May Alcott "Happy Women" Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have time. ~ Tallulah Bankhead Reason and religion teach us that we too are primary existences, that it is for us to move in the orbit of our duty around the holy center of perfection, the companions not the satellites of men. ~ Emma Hart Willard "inscribed in the Hall of Fame of Great Americans" Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could. If perticular care and attention is not paid to the Ladies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation. ~ Abigail Adams Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels. ~ Faith Whittlesey Society considers the sex experiences of man as attributes to his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good and noble in a human being. ~ Emma Goldman "Anarchism and Other Essays" Somewhere out in this audience may even be someone who will one day follow in my footsteps, and preside over the White House as the President's spouse. I wish him well! ~ Barbara Bush "The Ultimate Success Quotations Library" Suddenly you find--at the age of fifty, say--that a whole new life has opened before you,�as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you. ~ Agatha Christie "An Autobiography" The education of females has been exclusively directed to fit them for displaying to advantage the charms of youth and beauty�though well to decorate the blossom, it is far better to prepare for the harvest. ~ Emma Hart Willard "The Technique of Rest" The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor. ~ Willa Silbert Cather The fact that women in the home have shut themselves away from the thought and life of the world has done much to retard progress. We fill the world with the children of 20th century AD fathers and 20th century BC mothers. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman "History of Woman Suffrage"e best deal man has ever made. ~ M. Acklam The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton The labor of women in the house, certainly, enables men to produce more wealth than they otherwise could; and in this way women are economic factors in society but so are horses. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman "Women and Economics" The loneliest woman in the world is a woman without a close woman friend. ~ Toni Morrison "speech" The poets lie, for women are more like to lovely leeches than to flowers. ~ Michael J. DeLuca "The Sorcerer's Masterwork" The reason that husbands and wives do not understand each other is because they belong to difference sexes. ~ Dorothy Dix "syndicated column" To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. ~ Maya Angelou "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" Usually there are from a dozen to forty women really involved in every murder. ~ Stephen Crane "The Blue Hotel" Well-behaved women rarely make history. ~ Laurel Thatcher Ulrich When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment. ~ Warren Farrell Why not be oneself? That is the whole secret of a successful appearance. If one is a greyhound, why try to look like a Pekingese? ~ Dame Edith Sitwell Wife and servant are the same, But only differ in the name. ~ Lady Mary Chudleigh "To the Ladies" Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. ~ Robert A. Heinlein You can attack me, you can send assassins after me�that's fine. But nobody messes with my boyfriend. ~ Joss Whedon "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" You don't think I can stand the sight of blood, do you? You think I'm so weak, don't you? Oh, how I'd love to see your blood, your brains on that chopping block. I'd love to see the whole of your sex swimming in a sea of blood just like that. I could drink blood out of your skull. Use your chest as a footbath, dip my toes in your guts! I could eat your heart roasted whole! You think I'm weak! You think I loved you because my womb hungered for you semen. You think I want to carry your brood under my heart and feed it with my blood? Bear your child and take your name? Come to think of it, what is your name? I've never even heard your last name. I'll bet you don't have one. I'd be Mrs. Doorman or Madame Garbageman. You dog with my name on your collar--you lackey with my initials on your buttons! Do you think I�m going to share you with my cock and fight over you with my maid?! Ohh! You think I'm a coward who's going to run away! No, I'm going to stay--come hell or high water. ~ August Strindberg "Miss Julie" You have the skill. What is more, you were born a woman, and women, though most helpless in doing good deeds are of every evil the cleverest of contrivers. ~ Euripedes "Medea" To me the "female principle" is, or at least historically has been, basically anarchic. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin "Dancing at the Edge of the World" It is rather in the feminist mode to let one's changes of mind, and the processes of change, stand as evidence - and perhaps to remind people that minds that don't change are like clams that don't open. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin "Dancing at the Edge of the World" I eliminated gender, to find out what was left. Whatever was left would be, presumably human. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin "Dancing at the Edge of the World" There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope. ~ George Eliot "Adam Bede" There is no set limit on grief. Healing takes as long as it takes; you can't rush it. ~ Elizabeth Haydon "Rhapsody" The double grief of a lost bliss is to recall its happy hour in pain ~ Dante Alighieri How is it that a man wants to be made sad by the sight of tragic sufferings that he could not bear in his own person? Yet the spectator does want to feel sorrow, and it is actually his feeling of sorrow that he enjoys. Surely this is the most wretched lunacy? ~ St. Augustine I believe that maturity is not an outgrowing, but a growing up: that an adult is not a dead child, but a child who survived. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin "Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons?" I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. But my intellectual develpment was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up. ~ Albert Einstein If from infancy you treat children as gods they are liable in adulthood to act as devils. ~ P.D. james "The Children of Men" In youth we learn; in age we understand. ~ Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach "Aphorism" Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty. ~ Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel "Ladies Home Journal" Our fathers had their dreams; we have ours; the generation that follows will have its own. Without dreams and phantoms man cannot exist. ~ Olive Schreiner "The Story of an African Farm" Parents of young children should realize that few people, and maybe no one, will find their children as enchanting as they do. ~ Barbara Walters "How to Talk with Practically Anybody About Practically Anything" The Reverend Mother must combine the seductive wiles of a courtesan with the untouchable majesty of a virgin goddess, holding these attributes in tension so long as the powers of her youth endure. For when youth and beauty have gone, she will find that the place-between, once occupied by tension, has become a wellspring of cunning and resourcefulness. ~ Frank Herbert "Dune - Princess Irulan" "Did you have a happy childhood?" is a false question. As a child I did not know what happiness was, and whether I was happy or not. I was too busy being. ~ Alistair Reed "Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay "Kingdom Where Nobody Dies" Years do not always make age. ~ George Sand "The Haunted Pool" You will find as the children grow up that as a rule children are a bitter disappointment--their greatest object being to do precisely what their parents do not wish and have anxiously tried to prevent. ~ Queen Victoria "letter to the Crown Prince of Prussia" An adult is one who has lost the grace, the freshness, the innocence of the child, who is no longer capable of feeling pure joy, who makes everything complicated, who spreads suffering everywhere, who is afraid of being happy, and who, because it is easier to bear, has gone back to sleep. The wise man is a happy child. ~ Arnaud Desjardins Bridget wondered whether it came down to the claustrophobic choice between dying beautiful and living ugly. ~ Ann Brasheres The entire world is like school, only bigger. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin "Very Far Away" Ain't it wonderful to be young? But I wouldn't go through it again if you paid me. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin "The Beginning Place" There are things the Old Woman can do, say, and think that the Woman cannot do, say, or think. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin "Dancing at the Edge of the World" Let the athletes die young and laurel-crowned. Let the soldiers earn the Purple Hearts. Let women die old, white-crowned, with human hearts. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin "Dancing at the Edge of the World" At the end of your life you will never regret not having passed one more test, winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a child, a friend or parent. ~ Barbara Bush "Washington Post" There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the internal. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colors of life in all their purity. ~ George Santayana When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin "The Farthest Shore" Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery "The Little Prince" Little kids are just dumb, the smart ones and the slow ones. They do dumb things. They say what they think. They haven't learned enough yet to say what they don't really think. That comes later, when kids begin to turn into people and find out that they are alone. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin "Very Far Away" �all big changes in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt He who influences the thought of his times, influences all the times that follow. He has made his impress on eternity. ~ Hypatia "Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Teachers" Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. ~ Faith Baldwin "Face Toward the Spring" We need to haunt the halls of history and listen anew to the ancestors' wisdom. ~ Maya Angelou The loser's history isn't the one that is told and retold until it becomes legend. ~ Elizabeth Haydon "Rhapsody" Dreams and memories have a funny way of becoming close siblings after so many years, and it is sometimes hard to tell them apart. ~ Geoffrey Weyrick "Swindled" "Yes," I answered you last night; "No," this morning, sir, I say. Colours seen by candle-light Will not look the same by day. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning "The Lady's Yes" A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it. ~ Jane Austen "Mansfield Park" Always be smarter than the people who hire you. ~ Lena Horne "interview" An archeologist is the best husband a woman can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her. ~ Agatha Christie "Best Things Anybody Ever Said" An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences. ~ Edith Wharton "The Age of Innocence" Anybody who doesn't know what soap tastes like never washed a dog. ~ Franklin P. Jones Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them, and you have their shoes. ~ Frieda Norris Behind every working woman is an enormous pile of unwashed laundry. ~ Barbara Dale "The Working Woman Book" Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them. ~ Margaret Mitchell "Gone With the Wind" Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater. ~ Albert Einstein Ever consider what our dogs must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth! ~ Anne Tyler Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the". ~ Mary McCarthy "New York Times" Flops are a part of life's menu, and I've never been a girl to miss out on any of the courses. ~ Rosalind Russell "New York Herald Tribune" Four hours sleep a night plus the invention of algebra might well change a man. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin "The masters" from "The Wind's Twelve Quarters" Getting angry can sometimes be like leaping into a wonderfully responsive sports car, gunning the motor, taking off at high speed and then discovering the brakes are out of order. ~ Maggie Scarf He can't see a belt without hitting below it. ~ Margot Asquith "Listener" Home is where you come to when you have nothing better to do. ~ Margaret Thatcher "Vanity Fair" Housework can't kill you, but why take a chance? ~ Phyllis Diller Human nature is above all things--lazy. ~ Harriet Beecher Stove "Household Papers and Stories" I am as pure as the driven slush. ~ Tallulah Bankhead I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin "Why are Americans Afraid of Dragons?" I think housework is the reason most women go to the office. ~ Heloise Cruse "Editor and Publisher" I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult. ~ Rita Rudner If you don't find it in the index, look very carefully throughout the entire catalog. ~ Sears Roebuck Catalog If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then give him only two of them. ~ Phil Pastoret If your dog is fat, you aren't getting enough exercise. ~ Unknown I'll come and make love to you at five o'clock. If I'm late, start without me. ~ Tallulah Bankhead Is sex dirty? Only when you don't take a bath. ~ Madonna It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens. ~ Woody Allen I've been on a diet for two weeks and all I've lost is two weeks. ~ Totie Fields "Joe Franklin's Encyclopedia of Comedians" I've been rich and I've been poor; Believe me, honey, rich is better. ~ Sophie Tucker "Some of These Days" My dog is worried about the economy because Alpo is up to $3.00 a can. That's almost $21.00 in dog money. ~ Joe Weinstein Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics. ~ Karl Kraus On the other hand, you have different fingers. ~ Jack Handey Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity. ~ Albert Einstein The best way to get the better of temptation is just to yield to it. ~ Clementina Sterling Graham "Mystifications" The biggest seller is cookbooks and the second is diet books -- how not to eat what you've just learned to cook. ~ Andy Rooney The first rule of holes: when you're in one, stop digging. ~ Molly Ivins The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age. ~ Lucille Ball "Uncommon Scold" The two most beautiful words in the English language are "check enclosed." ~ Dorothy Parker "The Late Mrs. Dorothy Parker" There is no such thing as fun for the whole family. ~ Jerry Seinfeld Thin air? Why is it always thin air? Never fat air, chubby air, mostly-fit-could-stand-to-lost-a-few-pounds air? ~ J. Michael Strazcynski "Babylon 5 Garibaldi" Total absence of humor renders life impossible. ~ Colette "Chance Aquaintances" We don't believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack. ~ Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach "Aphorism" Well! Some people talk of morality, and some of religion, but give me a little snug property. ~ Maria Edgeworth "The Absentee" When I'm good, I'm very very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better. ~ Mae West "I'm no Angel" Wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. ~ Dorothy Parker "The Late Mrs. Dorothy" I am one of those who never knows the direction of my journey until I have almost arrived. ~ Anna Louise Strong "I Change Worlds" Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies. ~ William Shakespeare Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder. ~ Immermann Carmen was bad at loving. She loved too hard. ~ Ann Brasheres Even quarrels with one's husband are preferable to the ennui of a solitary existence. ~ Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte "The Life and Letters of Madame Bonaparte" Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. ~ Dorothy Parker "Inventory" Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. ~ Albert Einstein Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. ~ Jane Austen "Pride and Prejudice" How do I love thee? Let me count the way. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach. ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning "Sonnets from the Portuguese" I am as weak as other women are--Your frown can make the whole world like a tomb. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox "Individuality" I believe love, pure and true, Is to the soul a sweet, immortal dew. ~ Mary Ashley Townsend "Creed" I have yet to meet a man who can quench my thirst. I'm looking for a man as strong as I am, stronger than meat, than liquor, a man brave as a frightened mother, with a heart hard as a tooth. The hearts of men are too easily stolen, they are not vigilant in guarding the gates of their ribs and my thieving fingers can always reach beneath the sternum and snatch it. ~ Keith Miller "The Book of Flying" I sometimes think the gods have united human beings by some mysterious principle, like the according notes of music. Or is it as Plato has supposed, that souls originally one have been divided, and each seeks the half it lost? ~ Lydia Maria Child "Philothea: A Romance" If ever two were one, then surely we. ~ Anne Bradstreet "To My Dear and Loving Husband" In short I will part with anything for you but you. ~ Lady Mary Wortley Montagu It is strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel. ~ William M. Thackeray It's not the conversation that intimates what a relationship could become, it's the silences. ~ Chris Mayer Love is a rope stretched between hearts. I walk from one to the other but where I'm happiest is in between. ~ Keith Miller "The Book of Flying" Love is two blind people sword-fighting, love is a queen on a desert island, love is self-immolation, love is running scared in the dark, love is two people each of whose saliva is poison for the other, love is an empty house, a sunken boat, a crippled dancer. ~ Keith Miller "The Book of Flying" Love seeketh not itself to plase, nor for itself hath any case, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair. ~ William Blake Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful molder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage? ~ Emma Goldman "Anarchism and Other Essays" lovers alone wear sunlight ~ E.E. Cummings Marriage is a wonderful thing. But it's relatively new. Twelve, maybe fifteen thousand years old. It brings with it some ancient precivilization elements. Hence, difficult to manage. It's still trying to understand itself. ~ Thornton Wilder "Cement Hands" My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods; time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the tree--My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: --a source of little visible delight, but necessary. ~ Emily Bronte "Wuthering Heights" No one worth possessing can be quite possessed. ~ Sara Teasdale No riches from his scanty store My lover could impart; He gave a boon I valued more, He gave me all his heart. ~ Helen Maria Williams "Song" No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her; but many a woman hates a man for being her friend. ~ Alexander Pope Oh, what a dear ravishing thing is the beginning of an Amour! ~ Aphra Behn "The Emporer of the Moon" Pity me that the heart is slow to learn What the swift mind behold at every turn. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay "Pity Me Not" The fate of love is that it always seems too little or too much. ~ Amelia E. Barr "The Belle of Bowling Green" To her the name of father was another name for love. ~ Fanny Fern "Fresh Leaves" What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? ~ George Eliot "Middlemarch" Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. ~ Emily Bronte When two people love each other, they don't look at each other, they look in the same direction. ~ Ginger Rogers Where love is concerned, too much is not enough. ~ Pierre de Beaumarchais "Marriage of Figaro" You are ice and fire, The touch of you burns my hands like snow. ~ Amy Lowell "Opal" You are my lover and I am your mistress, and kingdoms and empires and governments have tottered and succumbed before now to that mighty combination. ~ Violet Trefuis Your thorns are the best part of you. ~ Marianne Moore "Roses Only" You've got to love life to have life, and you've got to have life to love life�It's what they call a vicious circle. ~ Thornton Wilder "Our Town" Love is an exercise in selective perception. ~ Esther Perel "Mating in Captivity" If love is an act of imagination, then intimacy is an act of fruition. ~ Esther Perel "Mating in Captivity" We choose each other again and again, and so create a community of two. ~ Esther Perel "Mating in Captivity" The seeds of intimacy are time and repitition. ~ Esther Perel "Mating in Captivity" In order to be one, you must first be two. ~Esther Perel "Mating in Captivity" A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections. ~ George Eliot "Daniel Deronda" I regret to say that we of the FBI are powerless to act in cases of oral-genital intimacy, unless it has in some way obstructed interstate commerce. ~ J. Edgar Hoover The great secret of successful marriages is to treat all disasters as incidents and none of the incidents as disasters. ~ Harold Nicholson Marriage - a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose. ~ Beverly Nichols True singing is a different breath, about nothing. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke The most important thing in music is what is not the notes. ~ Pablo Casals Songs remain. They last. The right song can turn an emporer into a laughingstock, can bring down dynasties. A song can last long after the events and the people in it are dust and dreams and gone. That's the power of songs. ~ Neil Gaiman "Anansi Boys" Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn't a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their own song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with out voices or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd. So people live their songs instead. ~ Neil Gaiman "Anansi Boys" |