people quotes

A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head. The
green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that
grew in the ears themselvse, stuck out on either side like turn signals
indicating two directions at once. Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the
bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled
with disapproval and potato chip crumbs. In the shadow under the green visor
of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down
upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department
store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress. Several
of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be
properly considered offenses against taste and decency. Possession of
anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and
geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.
-- John Kennedy Toole, "Confederacy of Dunces"

Anyone can become 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

Be nice to people on the way up, because you'll meet them on your way down.
-- Wilson Mizner

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

So far as we are human, what we do must be either evil or good: so far
as we do evil or good, we are human: and it is better, in a paradoxical
way, to do evil than to do nothing: at least we exist.
-- T.S. Eliot, essay on Baudelaire

Laughter is the closest distance between two people.
-- Victor Borge

Don't try to have the last word -- you might get it.
-- Lazarus Long

Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.
-- Anonymous

Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free
with my breakfast cereal.
-- Zaphod Beeblebrox

The three questions of greatest concern are -- 1. Is it attractive?
2. Is it amusing? 3. Does it know its place?
-- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"

“A penny for your thoughts?”
"A dollar for your death."
-- The Odd Couple

She often gave herself very good advice (though she very seldom followed it).
-- Lewis Carroll

The correct way to punctuate a sentence that starts: "Of course it is none
of my business, but --" is to place a period after the word "but." Don't use
excessive force in supplying such a moron with a period. Cutting his throat
is only a momentary pleasure and is bound to get you talked about.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.
-- John Stuart Mill

To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn
old falsehoods.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love"

Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes
may not be the same.
-- George Bernard Shaw

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
-- Mae West

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
-- Oscar Wilde

This sad little lizard told me that he was a brontosaurus on his mother's
side. I did not laugh; people who boast of ancestry often have little
else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and adds happiness in
a world in which happiness is always in short supply.
-- Lazarus Long

Dorothy: But how can you talk without a brain?
Scarecrow: Well, I don't know... but some people without brains
do an awful lot of talking.
-- The Wizard of Oz

If we were meant to get up early, God would have created us with alarm clocks.

Only fools are quoted.
-- Anonymous

Delay is preferable to error.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon
to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
-- Oscar Wilde

That's always the way when you discover something new; everyone thinks
you're crazy.
-- Evelyn E. Smith

The full potentialities of human fury cannot be reached until a friend
of both parties tactfully interferes.
-- G.K. Chesterton

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
-- Will Rogers

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to
get themselves filed.
-- Clifton Fadiman

The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.
-- Fred Allen