SHORT quotes? for sig lines
Don Olivier
A few years ago I posted a big collection; at the risk of boring some
old-timers, I'll repost:
Subject: Re: One-liners
BinneBrook wrote:
> I'm putting together a collection of one-line admonitions, remonstrances,
> wisecracks, and pearls. If you all have a favorite, maybe you could help?
I went to my file and pulled out all the one-line quotes; it's a
fascinating exercise, which I recommend. Not all of them fit the
request, but they're (necessarily) among the pithiest in the archive.
I've appended an unsystematically chosen selection below.
> Extra points for wisdom garbed in silliness, free-floating non sequiturs.
I don't have as many as I'd like, but this one surely deserves several
points (I'm not quite sure in what category).
I discovered ... that once having given a pig an enema there is no turning back.
-- E. B. White, _Death of a Pig_
Also,
Lif is too short.
-- Bart Gold
A simile is like a metaphor.
-- ?
Obviously, the answer to oil spills is to paper-train the tankers.
-- Ralph Nader
It is a very daycent class of fellatio you meet traveling Aer Cunnilingus.
-- Brigid Brophy
Who is the bell tolling for? Don't ask...
-- Priscilla Crockett, Kalamazoo, Mich.
______
One must ... forgive one's enemies-- but not before they have been hanged.
-- Heinrich Heine
Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.
-- Karl Kraus
Life is an effort that deserves a better cause.
-- Karl Kraus
Writing is hard work and bad for the health.
-- E. B. White
The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.
-- Alexander Jablokov, _The Place of No Shadows_
When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes.
-- Henry Miller
Everything I did in my life that was worthwhile I caught hell for.
-- Earl Warren
Always be smarter than the people who hire you.
-- Lena Horne
Toughness doesn't have to come in a pinstripe suit.
-- Dianne Feinstein, _Time Magazine_ 18 Jun 1990
[Football is] nothing but beastlie furie and extreme violence.
-- Sir Thomas Elyot, _Boke of Governour_ (1531)
Good taste and humour ... are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.
-- Malcolm Muggeridge
One should always be a little improbable.
-- Oscar Wilde
I hate money, but it soothes my nerves.
-- Joe Louis
Money can't buy friends, but you do get a better class of enemy.
-- Senator Somers White
People who say money can't buy happiness don't know where to shop.
-- ?
While money doesn't buy love, it puts you in a great bargaining position.
-- ?
Money can't buy happiness; it can, however, rent it.
-- ?
An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.
-- Victor Hugo, 1874
First secure an independent income, then practice virtue.
-- Greek saying
I cannot be bought ... but I can be rented.
-- Don O'Shaughnessy
I don't necessarily agree with everything I say.
-- Marshall McLuhan
I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
-- Bertrand Russell
Love thy neighbor as yourself, but choose your neighborhood.
-- Louise Beal
Most things, except agriculture, can wait.
-- Jawaharlal Nehru
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
-- Nick Diamos
Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.
-- Albert Einstein
Of those who say nothing, few are silent.
-- Thomas Neill
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
-- Albert Einstein
The earth laughs in flowers.
-- E. E. Cummings
The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well.
-- Joe Ancis
We adore chaos because we love to produce order.
-- M. C. Escher
You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners.
-- Rita Mae Brown
One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.
-- H. L. Mencken, ``The Iconoclast''
Abandon learning, and you will be free from trouble and distress.
-- Lao Zi
A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.
-- Roald Dahl, _Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator_
Good nonsense is good sense in disguise.
-- Josh Billings [Henry Wheeler Shaw]
If you done it, it ain't braggin'.
-- Will Rogers
There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.
-- Albert Schweitzer
Be what you is, 'cause if you be what you ain't, then you ain't what you is.
-- Satchel Paige
Hot lead can be almost as effective coming from a linotype as from a firearm.
-- John O'Hara
I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.
--Ashleigh Brilliant
I always have a quotation for everything-- it saves original thinking.
-- Dorothy Sayers, 1932
Poetry is devil's wine.
-- St. Augustine
If money could talk, it would say goodbye.
-- ?
Words, as is well known, are great foes of reality.
-- Joseph Conrad
If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don't need an enemy.
-- Kurt Vonnegut
Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride.
-- Claude Bernard, Bull N Y Acad Science, 64 (1928)
Beer is proof that God loves us.
-- Benjamin Franklin
Without deviation, progress is not possible.
-- Frank Zappa
All our rights and freedoms are more or less based on adequate financing.
-- Frank Zappa
When the heroes go off stage, the clowns come on.
-- Heinrich Heine
When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.
-- Charles Evans Hughes, Opinion, June 17, 1925
To think is to differ.
-- Clarence Darrow, speech at the Scopes trial, Dayton, Tennessee, 1925
We live in a rainbow of chaos.
-- Paul Cezanne
I have nothing to say and I am saying it.
-- John Cage
There is no sun without shadow and it is essential to know the night.
-- Albert Camus
It's hard to be funny when you have to be clean.
-- Mae West
No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up.
-- Lily Tomlin
If ever I utter an oath again may my soul be blasted to eternal damnation.
-- G. B. Shaw
Religions change; beer and wine remain.
-- Hervey Allen
Fine art and pizza delivery, what we do falls neatly in between!
-- David Letterman
I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.
-- E. B. White
The road to hell is paved.
-- Paul Ramsey
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.
-- Charles Peguy
After ecstasy, the laundry.
-- Zen saying
Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.
-- Max Eastman
Of my own spirit let me be in sole though feeble mastery.
-- Sara Teasdale
Hear reason, or she'll make you feel her.
-- Benjamin Franklin
It is the mark of an inexperienced man not to believe in luck.
-- Joseph Conrad
Programming is an unnatural act.
-- Alan J. Perlis
The road to hell is thick with taxicabs.
-- Don Herold
Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.
-- Clarence Darrow
To die for an idea is to place a pretty high price on conjectures.
-- Anatole France
That so few now dare to be eccentric, marks the chief danger of the time.
-- John Stuart Mill
The future will be better tomorrow.
-- Dan Quayle
Save a boyfriend for a rainy day-- and another, in case it doesn't rain.
-- Mae West
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
-- Mark Twain
The older I get, the better I used to be.
-- ?
Irony is the hygiene of the mind.
-- Elizabeth Bibesco
Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
-- Will Durant
Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Not only is life a bitch, but it is always having puppies.
-- Adrienne Gusoff
Nothing is absolute. But nothing else is.
-- Mac Norton
Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
-- Hermann Hesse
Love thy neighbor, but pull not down thy hedge.
-- John Ray
The more I see of men, the better I like my dog.
-- Pascal
I wish my butt did not go sideways, but I guess I have to face that.
-- Christie Brinkley
Sex is dirty. Save it for someone you love.
-- Sol Gordon
I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken.
-- Oliver Cromwell
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant
There's no hope, but I may be wrong.
-- Bumper sticker
Sanity is for the masses who don't know how to handle insanity.
-- Tim Sailer
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
-- Goethe
Eternity is a terrible thought. I mean, where's it going to end?
-- Tom Stoppard
A watched clock never boils.
-- ?
As far as I can tell, moral relativism is a fact of life.
-- Bruce Sterling
If your lover doesn't like garlic, get a new lover.
-- Jeff Smith
Don't let your mouth write no check that your ass can't cash.
-- Bo Diddley
Computers are the most fun you can have with anything that isn't breathing.
-- Bruce Walker
The woman of my dreams knows how to break into systems.
-- Doug Tygar
To the Puritan all things are impure.
-- D. H. Lawrence
Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure.
-- Byron
One man with courage makes a majority.
-- Andrew Jackson
There is not money in poetry, but then there is not poetry in money, either.
-- Robert Graves
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
-- Timothy Leary
Words are loaded pistols.
-- Jean-Paul Sartre
You're never too old to become younger.
-- Mae West
The mome rath isn't born that could outgrabe me.
-- Nicol Williamson
Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
-- Don Marquis
Neckties strangle clear thinking.
-- Lin Yutang
If you don't go to other men's funerals they won't go to yours.
-- Clarence Day
If you cannot convince them, confuse them.
-- Harry S Truman
Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
-- Ogden Nash
Dare to be naive.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller
As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error.
-- Weisert
A University without students is like an ointment without a fly.
-- Ed Nather
``A power so great, it can only be used for Good or Evil!''
-- Firesign Theatre
A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.
-- Gloria Steinem
A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
-- Adlai Stevenson
A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.
-- Carl Sandburg
Hail ye small sweet courtesies of life.
-- Laurence Sterne
No animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness-- or so good as drink.
-- G. K. Chesterton
Impropriety is the soul of wit.
-- Somerset Maugham
The process of invention conflicts with prudent business strategy.
-- Arthur Kornberg
Anyone can hate. It costs to love.
-- John Williamson
It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.
-- Seneca
A country can be judged by the quality of its proverbs.
-- German Proverb
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
-- John Kenneth Galbraith
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
-- Albert Einstein
Grace is given of God, but knowledge is bought in the market.
-- Arthur Hugh Clough
The cure for loneliness is solitude.
-- Marianne Moore
One should always have one's boots on, and be ready to leave.
-- Montaigne
There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.
-- Winston Churchill
In politics while there is death there is hope.
-- Harold Laski
In creating the human brain, evolution has wildly overshot the mark.
-- Arthur Koestler
I've married a few people I shouldn't have, but haven't we all?
-- Mamie Van Doren
It is possible that blondes also prefer gentlemen.
-- Mamie Van Doren
To iterate is human, to recurse divine.
-- L. Peter Deutsch
Observe things as they are and don't pay attention to other people.
-- Huang Po
It is sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.
-- H. L. Mencken
You're only young once, but you can always be immature.
-- Chuck Shepard
One day, an army of gray-haired women may quietly take over the earth.
-- Gloria Steinem
As far as I'm concerned, being any gender is a drag.
-- Patti Smith
The older I grow, the more I listen to people who don't talk much.
-- Germain G. Glidden
NOTICE. In case of emergency stop, wait for a moment quietly, please.
-- Sign in a cablecar at Miyajima, near Hiroshima
Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.
-- Deuteronomy 25:4
I just love the smell of rats, because it is the spoor of exciting adventure.
-- Richard Feynman, on the Challenger investigation
If you ask me anything I don't know, I'm not going to answer.
-- Yogi Berra
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
-- G. K. Chesterton
In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact.
-- Marlene Dietrich
Boy Meets Girl, So What?
-- Bertolt Brecht
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
-- James Thurber
Beauty will save the world.
-- Dostoievski
Slavery, and the only slavery, is service without love.
-- E. E. Cummings
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
-- ``Shaw's Principle''
In art, truth that is boring is not true.
-- Isaac Bashevis Singer
Walking on water wasn't built in a day.
-- Jack Kerouac
Literature was the software of the print era.
-- Alan Kay
By and large, witches have the best parties of any religious group going.
-- The Covenant of the Goddess
Good is better than evil because it's _nicer_.
-- Li'l Abner (Al Capp)
A practical man is a man who practises the errors of his forefathers.
-- Lord Beaconsfield
To have good ideas, you have to have a lot of ideas.
-- Linus Pauling
Woman's virtue is man's greatest invention.
-- Cornelia Otis Skinner
Man is a dog's ideal of what God should be.
-- Holbrook Jackson
Freedom begets wit, and wit begets freedom.
-- Jean-Paul Richter
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
-- Thoreau
In life there is nothing more foolish than inventing.
-- James Watt
No man should be allowed to be president who doesn't understand hogs.
-- Harry S Truman
I've been broke, but I've never been poor.
-- Mike Todd
Literature is news that STAYS news.
-- Ezra Pound
Water fills the drain with _raison d'e\^tre_...
-- Heather McHugh
The present is pregnant with the future.
-- Leibniz
Trust everybody, but cut the cards.
-- Finley Peter Dunne
I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature.
-- Abigail Adams
The man who is master of his passion is Reason's slave.
-- Cyril Connolly
We are all fallen creatures and all very hard to live with.
-- C. S. Lewis
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
-- George Bernard Shaw
The most certain sign of Wisdom is a constant cheerfulness.
-- Montaigne
Life is too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
-- Oscar Wilde
There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
-- Heisenberg
There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.
-- Niels Bohr
Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.
-- Brendan Gill
Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.
-- Karl Barth
All Nature wears one universal grin.
-- Henry Fielding
A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.
-- Clive James
Finally, in conclusion, let me say just this.
-- Peter Sellers
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Don Olivier ** Harvard School of Public Health ** d...@hsph.harvard.edu