These are quotes I've picked up over the years. They're separated into (hopefully) convenient sections. I do this because I can't think of anything witty to say on my own. If I have an incorrect quote, or I attribute it incorrectly, please e-mail me to correct me.

Movies and Television

There's nothing more exhilarating then pointing out the shortcomings of others.

I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cow bell.

The skit was a show depicting a rehearsal of Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear the Reaper and Walken was the producer.

I have a cunning plan...

Being that Baldrick's cunning plans always ended up with something blowing up, there is a bomb named after him.

This parrot is no more! It has ceased to be!

There are no accidents. Luck is not a mistake.

'isms' in my opinion are not good. People should not believe in 'isms.' He should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon: I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me. Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Life is an exceptional situation.

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides with the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon those with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know that my name is the Lord when I lay vengeance upon thee.

If you look in the Bible, you'll see that only the last part of the quote is actually in it.

Quit thinking about death, and have a doughnut.

You have to stop the Q-Tip when there's resistance.

Before you tell us to keep quiet again, could you give us a moment of silence?

Do you think I'd be working here if I could afford a real snake?

We sold our bodies; why can't we sell some wood?

We're women. We have double standards to live up to.

Brain: Do you know what today is?
Pinky: Today we spackle the cracks in my brain with Spam?
Brain: What a waste of good Spam.

Space officer: Well, what did you decipher? . . . Let's have it!
Space technician: It's just three words.
Space officer: I didn't ask for a word count, just give me the message!
Space technician: We've checked and double-checked. It keeps coming up to the same thing. The message is - "MARS NEEDS WOMEN!"

I was asked to come to Chicago because Chicago is one of our fifty-two states.

I'm sincere. I'm really curious. I care what people think. I listen to answers and leave my ego at the door. I don't use the word "I."

Okay, so this wasn't on TV, but King is a TV personality, so I thought it would fit here.

And what shape, then, is the Rubik's Cube?

They had the letters "UFO" on the side.

The X-Files

I found that I have collected so many quotes from this show that I decided to make a subsection just for these quotes.

The Truth Is Out There; Deny Everything; Tell No One; Apology Is Policy; Decieve, Inveigle, Obfuscate; Believe The Lie; Everything Dies; E Pur Si Mouve; All Lies Lead To The Truth; Resist Or Serve

You're so consumed by your personal vengeance against life. Whether it be its inherant cruelties of mysteries, that everything takes on a warped significance to fit your megalomaniacal cosmolgy.

It's not human. What is it?

Nothing happens in contradiction to nature; only in contradiction to what we know of it, and that's a place to start. That's where the hope is.

Mulder: He put the whammy on him.
Scully: Please explain to me the scientific nature of "the whammy."

Just because you stick a gun in my chest, I'm supposed to believe you're my friend?

Red Dwarf

Again, I felt the need to separate these quotes into a subsection. Red Dwarf was a low budget British sci-fi show that ran for 8 seasons from the late 80's to the late 90's.

I'm so gorgeous, there's a six month waiting list for birds to suddenly appear every time I'm near.

6:47, not a bad little time for the mile. Pity I was only doing the 300 metres.

Look, I'm a tenth generation AI hologramatic computer, I'm not your mum.

Rimmer: Lister, it has happened. You can't change it, any more than you can change what you had for breakfast.
Lister: Hey, it hasn't happened, has it? It has `will have going to have happened' happened, but it hasn't actually `happened' happened yet, actually.
Rimmer: Poppycock! It will be happened, it shall be going to be happening, it will be was an event that could will have been taken place in the future. Simple as that. Your buckets been kicked, baby.

Oh smeg! What the smeggin' smeg's he smeggin' done? He's smeggin' killed me!

In the Red Dwarf world, "smeg" is just a way to get around the f-word. It's not meant to be disgusting.

Lister: What's going on?
Kryten: Listen! Can anyone hear anything?
(Pause. There is silence)
Cat: No.
Kryten: Precisely. No one can hear anything! And you know WHY we can't hear anything?
Rimmer: Why?
Kryten: Because there are NO SOUNDS TO HEAR.

And the moral of the story is: Appreciate what you've got, because basically, I'm fantastic!

I just wanted some proof that I'd actually met the Duke of Deliciousness!

Music

Everybody knows that the world is full of stupid people.

Never met a wise man / If so it's a woman

When will the world listen to reason? / I've a feeling it'll be a long time. / When will the truth come into season? / I've a feeling it'll be a long time

All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die

Could I have been anyone other than me?

I am the voice inside you head / I am the lover in your bed / I am the sex that you provide / I am the hate you try to hide / I speak religion's message clear / I am denial, guilt, and fear / I am the prayers of the naive / I am the lie that you believe / I am the needle in your vein / I am the high you can't sustain / I am the pusher, I'm a whore / I am the need in you for more / I am the bullet in the gun / I am the truth from which you run / I am the silencing machine / I am the end of all your dreams / and I control you

You can be what you want / It's a matter of time

I don't run around trying to be what's not what's in me / Look into my eyes. I am free / You're just a wanna-be

No one said it would be easy / No one said it'd be this hard / No one said it would be easy / No one thought we'd come this far / Oh, and look we've come this far

I don't want the world / I just want your half

If the world was gonna end in an hour-and-a-half / Would you wanna get dirty / Would you wanna take a bath / Would you wanna go to bed with your best friend in it / Would you finish that novel / Would you waste another minute / If the world was gonna end in an hour-and-a-half / Would you find religion / Would you just laugh / Would you go and get bombed, try and dream it away / If the world was gonna end, would you get down and pray / If the world was gonna end in an hour-and-a-bit / Would you holler in the street / Would you give a shit / Would you call up your mom / Would you call up your ex / Would you walk up to strangers and ask them for sex / If the world was gonna end in an hour-and-a-half / Would you wanna get dirty / Would you wanna take a bath / Would you play your guitar, your last chance to learn / Or stare out the window, lie back and burn one / Pop just stood there smoking, he said / "Don't make it hard on yourself / Don't make it harder / 'Cause you know that just around the corner, there's something that's better, that's cooler, and brighter," so I said / "Everything's fine."

Straight through the heart peace can be found / That's where you start, not all around

Why sit and wait for the new world to begin?

At the risk of sounding pompous, I guess I would align it [playing the Tin Machine in 1991] with deconstructionism. The point made by the French in the Sixties that we are working our way towards a society that is deeply involved with hybridization and contradictory information almost to the point where contradiction simply ceases to exist.

Plays

The Importance of Being Earnest

This is my favorite Non-Shakesperian play. I have had to read it for two classes, and I've read it for fun many times. It's only fitting that I quote it to death.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone.

And you do not seem to realize, dear Doctor, that by persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation. Men should be more careful; this very celibacy leads weaker vessels astray.

The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly once a man begins to neglect his domestic duties he becomes painfully effeminate, does he not?

Well, I can't eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.

Indeed, no woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

Books

Your right eye is the night bark [of the sun god], your left eye is the day bark, your eyebrows are the Ennead of the Gods, your forehead is Annubis, the nape of your neck is Ptah-Soker.

Shall I tell you what sociology teaches us about the human race? . . . Show me a man or a woman alone and I'll show you a saint. Give me two and they'll fall in love. Give me three and they'll invent the charming thing we call "society." Give me four and they'll build a pyramid. Give me five and they'll make one an outcast. Give me six and they'll reinvent warfare. Man may have been made in the image of God, but human society was made in the image of His opposite number, and is always trying to get home.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be persecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

Only in Nevada would someone ask you to respect a parking lot, Peter thought. In New York, the sign would probably read UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES WILL BE STOLEN AND THEIR OWNERS EATEN.

A Wrinkle In Time

This is another thing I love to read over and over.

"It was a star," Mrs. Whatsit said sadly. "A star giving up it's life in battle with the Thing. It won, oh, yes, my children, it won. But it lost it's life in the winning.". . .
Charles Wallace went up to Mrs. Whatsit. "I see. Now I understand. You were a star once, weren't you?"
Mrs. Whatsit covered her face with her hands as though she were embarrassed, and nodded.
"And you did - you did what that star just did?"
Mrs. Whatsit nodded again.
Charles Wallace looked at her, very solemnly. "I should like to kiss you."

"The only reason we are here is because we think our father is here. Can you tell us where to find him?"
"Ah, your father!" There seemed to be a great chortling of delight. "Ah, yes, your father! It is not can I, you know, but will I?"
"Will you, then?"
"That depends on a number of things. Why do you want your father?"
"Didn't you ever have a father yourself?" Meg demanded. "You don't want him for a reason. You want him because he's your father".

What is it I have got that IT hasn't got?
"You have nothing that IT hasn't got," Charles Wallace said coldly. . . .
"No!" she screamed at the top of her lungs. "No! You lie!"
For a moment she was free from IT's clutches again. . . ."You are lying about that, and you were lying about Mrs. Whatsit!" she screamed.
"Mrs. Whatsit hates you," Charles Wallace said.
And that was where IT made IT's fatal mistake, for as Meg said, automatically, "Mrs. Whatsit loves me; that's what she told me, that she loves me," suddenly she knew.
She knew!
Love.
That was what she had that IT did not have. . . .
She could stand there and she could love . . . the real Charles Wallace. . . .
Charles, Charles, I love you. My baby brother who always takes care of me. Come back to me, Charles Wallace, come away from IT, come back, come home. I love you, Charles. Oh, Charles Wallace, I love you. . . .
Slowly his mouth closed. Slowly his eyes stopped their twirling. The tic in the forhead ceased its revolting twitch. Slowly he advanced toward her. . . . Then suddenly he was running, pelting, he was in her arms, he was shrieking with sobs. "Meg! Meg! Meg!"

Unknown

These are quotes to which I don't have someone to attribute it. If you know, again, please e-mail me.

All things are possible except skiing through a revolving door.

2 rules for living:
Rule 1: Don't sweat the small stuff.
Rule 2: It's all small stuff.

There is no time like the present to postpone what you ought to be doing.

Never put off for tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.

Education is the ability to quote Shakespeare without crediting it to the Bible.

A ship is always safe in its harbor, but that's not what it's for.

Newspaper headlines:
Cold Wave Linked To Temperatures
Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge
Steals Clock, Faces Time
Man Struck By Lightning Faces Battery Charge
British Left Waffles On Faulkland Islands

Teamwork is essential - it allows you to blame someone else.

The trouble with being a leader today is that you can't be sure if people are following you or chasing you.

Even when opportunity knocks, you still have to get out of your chair to open the door.

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Politics

Politics, for the most part, consist of a bunch of really stupid people trying to all get their way, with no one succeeding and billions of dollars wasted. At least, that's what I think. Granted, there were and are some very valuable politicians.

The glass ceiling gets more pliable when you turn up the heat.

"Radical" simply means "grasping things at the root"

She's right, you know.

I am extraordinarily patient, provided I get my own way in the end.

I want to come back as me.

When written in Chinese, crisis consists of two characters; one means danger, the other means opportunity.

Our privileges can be no greater than our obligations. The protection of our rights can endure no longer than the performance of our responsibilities.

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

This is still the greatest country in the world, if we steel our wills and lose our minds.

Don't quote me as saying that we will or we should increase our external aid. That would be my opinion if I had an opinion, but as a member of my government I have no opinion.

I have opinions of my own - strong opinions - but I don't always agree with them.

Hey listen. I'm a member of the NRA. You're hurting my feelings, as they say in China.

Mr. Speaker, would you please turn me on?

I've been blessed with wonderful parents and a wonderful family and I am proud of my family. Anybody turns to their family. I have a very good family. I'm very fortunate to have a very good family. I believe very strongly in the family. It's one of the things we have in our platform to talk about.

He doesn't have the greatest smarts in the world.

Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teaches our children.

If we [legislators] don't watch our respective tails, the people are going to be running the government.

I guess I would have voted with the majority if it was a close vote. But I agree with the arguments the minority made.

The loss of life will be irreplaceable.

I didn't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs.

The first black president will be a politician who is black.

I'm not against the blacks, and a lot of the good blacks will attest to that.

My goal is an America where something or anything that is done to or for anyone is done neither because of nor in spite of any difference between them, racially, religiously, or ethnic-originwise.

We were able to slow down and dilute child care.

Some reporters said I don't have any vision. I don't see that.

We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed without them in Red Storm Rising.

Known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert . . . [Pepper was] reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law and has a sister who was once a Thespian in Greenwich Village. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, practiced celibacy.

My fellow Americans. I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.

What a waste to lose one's mind - or not to have a mind. How true that is.

1. Resolved by this council, that we build a new jail.
2. Resolved, that the new jail be built out of the materials of the old jail.
3. Resolved, that the old jail be used until the new jail is finished.

Our parents were of Midwestern stock and very strict. They didn't want us to grow up to be spoiled and rich. If we left our tennis rackets out in the rain, we were punished.

In the words of George Bernard Shaw - "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by."

Reporter: Do you know to what extent the U.S. and Columbia are in fact cooperating militarily now, in terms of interdiction efforts?
George H W Bush: Well, I - Yes, I know that.
Reporter: Can you share that with us?
Bush: No.
Reporter: Why not, sir?
Bush: Because I don't feel like it.

Chick Accuses Some of Her Male Colleagues of Sexism

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left behind by those who hustle.

We have had triumphs, we have made mistakes, we have had sex.

Isn't that a little like calling Moe the most intelligent of the Three Stooges?

Not one woman is elected to a political party position without the explanation being heard that she really got the post because she slept with so-and-so or so-and-so. Unfortunately, that is still where we are.

Behind every so-so candidate is a smart woman who makes him look good because he was savvy enough to marry her.

Now, like, I'm President. It would be pretty hard for some drug guy to come into the White House and start offering it up, you know? . . . I bet if they did, I hope I would say, "Hey, get lost. We don't want any of that."

We should abolish January and February. If we then divided the 59 extra days between July and August, we will cut out energy needs by about one-third through eliminating the coldest days of the year. Cold is largely a psychological matter. If people look at the calander and see that it is July, they will be quite happy to turn the heat down.

Someone who is making anywhere from $300,000 to $750,000, that's middle class.

Why are they always blaming everything on the rappers? Don't blame the youth. Blame the wicked culture. Every Sunday night on TV, Angela Lansbury taught these kids violence on "Murder, She Wrote" . . . blame the reruns of "Have Gun, Will Travel" and "Gunsmoke."

Other

Newspapers

Beethoven had ten children and practiced on a spinster in the attic.

New Yorkers are Busy, But Not Too Busy To Ignore The Problems And Social Needs Of Foreign Guests

Divorces are Fewer among Single People, Chicago Figures Show

Health department says death certificates are to be ordered one week in advance of death.

Cold Weather Causes Temperature to Drop

Mr. and Mrs. A.P. Hageman are rejoicing over the arrival of a mafwyp cmfwyp emfwypy cmfpwpp doing nicely.

The [hydrogen] bomb's brilliant gleam reminds me of the brilliant shine Gleam gives to floors. It's a science marvel.

Under the anti-socialist capitalist, the great mass of the people are victims of every kind of weather freak . . . the heat parches them and saps their energy and health. Only in the Soviet Union, where there is Socialism, are the rest, leisure and living conditions of the people fully provided for - these rights are written into the Stalin Constitution.

Huh?

Caution: Blade is extremely sharp. Keep out of Children!

Most fires are caused by some igniting source coming into contact with combustible material.

You are currently due to expire 11/86.

Don't squat when waiting for a bus or a person. Don't spit in public. Don't point at people with your fingers. Don't make noise. Don't laugh loudly. Don't yell or call to people from a distance. Don't pick your teeth, pick your nose, pick at your ears, rub your eyes, or rub dirt off your skin. Don't scratch, take off your shoes, burp, stretch or hum.

Caution: Cape does not enable user to fly.

If people get a kick out of running down pedestrians, you have to let them do it.

Two vehicles which are passing each other in opposite directions shall have the right of way.

For the purpose of this part of the schedule a person over pensionable age, not being an insured person, shall be treated as an employed person if he would be an insured person were he under pensionable age and would be an employed person were he an insured person.

Harry Cohn, movie mogul: I want a speech that every person in the audience will recognize immediately.
Screenwriter of Spartacus: You mean like Hamlet's soliloquy?
Cohn: No! No! I mean something like "To be or not to be."

Aphra Benn was the first English woman to make her living "by her pen," as we used to say. Now nobody makes her - or his - living by the phallic and virile pen. Linguistic and cultural structures no longer combine in exhibiting the exciting transgression, the impudent androgyny, of the man-woman who picks up her pen to write, for the she-writer, like the he-writer, will feed symbols through the word-processor, a brooding matrix-box far more uterine than penile.

[The Air Force is pleased with the performance of the C-5A cargo plane, although] having the wings fall off at 8,000 hours is a problem.

We don't necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people.

Traffic Cop: Your driver's license says you wear glasses. Why aren't you wearing them?
Phil Linz, ballplayer: I got contacts.
Traffic Cop: I don't care who you know, you still have to wear glasses when you drive.

I would catagorize them more as gifts.

Passive activity income does not include the following: income for a activity that is not a passive activity

I didn't know "Onward Christian Soldiers" was a Christian song.

I'm so naive about finances. Once when my mother mentioned an amount and I realized I didn't understand, she had to explain: "That's like three Mercedes." Then I understood.

Reporter: Did you visit the Parthenon during your trip to Greece?
Shaquille O'Neal: I can't remember the names of the clubs that we went to.

. . . hazards are one of the main causes of accidents.

This is the greatest country in America.

He got me by the throat so that I could not speak and I asked him several times to let me go.

I don't know. They were wearing a paper bag over their head.

Beware! To touch these wires is instant death. Anyone found doing so will be persecuted.

Emergency shelter for families: an emergency shelter which shelters families.

To aid and guide you on your pathway to learning, the following assignments will help you to activate vehemently your newly acquired aim, "Enthusiasm."
1. A vocabulary test will be given the day you return to school.
2. Oral book reports will be given the first week of school.

NOTICE: This garment meets the general wearing apparel requirements of the Flammable Fabrics Act; however, it is flammable and should not be worn near sources of fire.

The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning.

It has been asserted that by cutting down the beanstalk, Jack castrates either his father or else himself in order to escape the pursuing Oedipal hostility of the giant. To quote Richard Farson, surely the best writer on international folklore today, "the analysts do agree that the beanstalk is a penis: the question is, whose?"

Proven ability to track down and correct erors.

[I hope] my child will be a good Catholic like me.

People would have to cut their lifestyle and they'd live like penny-pinchers.

What would happen if you melted? You know, you never really hear this talked about that much, but spontaneous combustion? It exists! . . . [People] burn from within. . . . Sometimes they'll be in a wooden chair and the chair won't burn, but there'll be nothing left of the person. Except sometimes the teeth. Or the heart. No one speaks about this - but it's for real.

What is Alzheimer's?
     Imported beer.

What is apartheid?
     A building in Athens.

Who was Louis Armstrong?
     The first man on the moon.

Who was Count Basie?
     A vampire.

[Secondhand smoke is not a problem.] If children don't like to be in a smoky room, they'll leave. [As for infants,] . . . at some point, they'll crawl.

Murphy's Law

From the 2000 calendar

If anything can go wrong, it will.

To learn from your mistakes, you first must realize that you are making mistakes.

Everything takes longer than you think.

There are three kinds of people: those who can count and those who can't.

If you can breathe the air but can't drink the water, you're in an underdeveloped country. If you can drink the water but can't breathe the air, you're in a developed country.

Nobody can leave well enough alone.

No matter how foolish the cause, there will be a famous actor or actress acting as spokesperson for it.

You don't have to explain something you never said.

You can't get ahead while getting even.

The harder one tries to be elegant and sophisticated, the less so one appears.

When you reach the end of the rainbow, you will find that the pot of gold is at the other end.

If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.

A 60-minute doctor's appointment will result in seeing the doctor for 10 minutes.

Only the lead dog gets a change of scenery.

Never mistake endurance for hospitality.

You have taken yourself too seriously.

The least desirable man in the room is the one who hits on you first.

If there are two shows worth watching, they will be on at the same time.

You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.

People will accept any bad news if the magnitude of the disaster is revealed gradually.

...and the rest

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably why so few people engage in it.

The secret to happiness is high expectations and your own bag of chips.

The grand essentials of happiness are: Something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

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

It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out.

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.

The question is not whether or not it's a joke. The question is how many people it will fuck.

Every truth has two sides; it is well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.

Integrity is one of several paths; it distinguishes itself from the others because it is the right path, and the only one upon which you will never get lost.

Chance makes a plaything of a man's life.

This quote is linked to the one from "Strange Luck" in Movies and Television because in "SL", D.B. Sweeney plays Chance Harper, who experienced either extremely good luck or extremely bad luck. He would, in the course of the show, get other people involved in his luck, thereby making others' lives his "plaything." This quote comes from Fire in the Sky, a movie about alien abduction, where D.B. Sweeney plays the abductee (I'm sorry, I don't remember the name, just the quote.) Coincidence? I think not! Okay, maybe it was.

One must not tie the ship to a single anchor, nor life to a single hope.

Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens.

Common sense is the prejudices acquired by age 18.

Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.

Tomorrow is the most important day of your life.

Be good to remember that your morals are only your habits.

Do not compute the totality of your poultry population until all of the manifestations of incubation have been entirely completed.

A kiss on the nose does much toward turning aside anger.

You must learn from the mistakes of others - you can't possibly live long enough to make them yourself.

Ambiguity - the devil's volleyball

Life is lived forwards, but understood backwards.

They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--.

Whatever I do or think as a black can never be more than a variant of what all people do and think. . . . All races are composed of human beings.

The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.

Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.

I cannot imagine any condition which could cause this ship to flounder. I cannot coneive of any vital disaster happening to the vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.

There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash.

Royal College of Physicians' Conference on the medical effects of alcohol - program schedule:
9:20: Effects of alcohol on the heart
9:50: Alcohol and the heart
10:20: Alcohol and the nervous system
11:20: Effects of alcohol on the gastrointestinal system
12:10: Nutrition and alcohol
12:40: Bar open

When I have stress, I stage a mock pro-westling bout with my husband. My favorite technique is to kick him in the groin. When I get a good kick in, I really feel happy that I am married.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

Laughter is contagious... start an epidemic.

The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts life.

One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it's all right not to know anything... That to me is far more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet.

It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy's edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create "one world." Instead of one world, we have "star wars," and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet's dead.

Rules of Courtly Love (12th Century)
1. Marriage is no real excuse for not loving.
2. He who is jealous cannot love.
3. No one can be bound by a double love.
4. It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing.
5. Boys do not love until the age of maturity.
6. When one lover dies, a widowhood of two years is required of the survivor.
7. No one should be deprived of love without the very best reasons.
8. No one can love unless he is impelled by the persuasion of love.
9. Love is always a stranger to the home of avarice.
10. It is not proper to love any woman whom thou wouldst be ashamed to marry.
11. When made public, love rarely endures.
12. The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized.
13. Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
14. When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved, his heart palpitates.
15. A new love puts flight to an old one.
16. Good character alone makes any man worthy of love.
17. If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives.
18. A man in love is always apprehensive.
19. Real jealousy always increases the felling of love.
20. He whom the thought of love vexes eats and sleeps very little.
21. Every act of a lover ends in the thought of his beloved.
22. A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks please his beloved.
23. Love can deny nothing to love.
24. A lover can never have enough of the solaces of his beloved.
25. A man who is vexed by too much passion usually does not love.
26. A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved.
27. Nothing forbids one woman being loved by two men, or one man by two women.

They are able because they think they are able.

Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself, and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that.

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.

Experience is a comb that life gives you after you lose your hair.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.

If we were supposed to talk more than we listen, we would have two mouths and one ear.

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

With a sweet tongue and kindness, you can drag an elephant by a hair.

It's a small world. So you gotta use your elbows a lot.

The United States will collapse by 1980.

My dear, what is time?

One special form of contact, which consists of mutual approximation of the mucous membranes of the lips in a kiss, has received a sexual value among the civilized nations, though the parts of the body do not belong to the sexual apparatus and merely form the entrance to the digestive tract.

It is better to die for an idea that will live than to live for an idea that will die.

--Steven Biko

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it.

Acting is the egotist's way of giving back.

If I thing can be done, why do it?

When a man kisses a woman against her will, she is fully entitled to bite off his nose if she so pleases.

I've always thought any sane woman would be a lover of women because loving men is such a mess. I have always wished I'd fall in love with a woman. Damn.

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?

I'm just a normal everyday kind of goddess.

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

Sex appeal is what 50 percent what you've got and 50 percent what people think you've got.

Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.

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

You can be young only once, but you can be immature forever.

You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.

Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.

There's no time like the present for postponing what you don't want to do.

Last updated: November 5, 2006