All My Quotes

Robert Heckendorn

Search My Quotes

In the form below you can search through all of my quotes for quotes containing a given string. It is best not to enter a long string into the form because: a) You might not remember the string correctly b) I might not have the quote correct c) You or I might misspell something. For example:

If you enter: "A greater hive of scum and villainy"
you get: nothing.
If you enter: "hive"
you get: "Mos Eisley Spaceport. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy."

Complete List of Quotes

"The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just the way Hitler's mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe. But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness."

-- Ishmael by Danial Quinn p146

"You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children -- that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, the spit upon themselves.

This we know. The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself ..."

-- Chief Seatle

"Here I am, safely returned over those peaks from a journey far more beautiful and strange than anything I hoped for or imagined. How is it that this safe return brings such regret?"

--Peter Matthiessen

"It is here that I can concentrate my mind upon the Remembered Earth. It is here that I am most conscious of being, here that wonder comes upon my blood, here I want to live forever; and it is no matter that I must die."

-- N. Scott Momaday (from the movie Remembered Earth)

"The character of the landscape changes from hour to hour, day to day, season to season. Nothing of the earth can be taken for granted; you feel that Creation is going on in your sight. You see things in the high air that you do not see farther down in the lowlands. In the high country all objects bear upon you, and you touch hard upon the earth. From my home I can see the huge, billowing clouds; they draw close upon me and merge with my life."

-- N. Scott Momaday (from the movie Remembered Earth)

"Once in our lives we ought to concentrate our minds upon the Remembered Earth. We ought to give ourselves up to a particular landscape in our experience, to look at it from as many angles as we can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. We ought to imagine that we touch it with our hands at every season and listen to the sounds that are made upon it. We ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. We ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk."

-- N. Scott Momaday (from the movie Remembered Earth)

"I am interested in the way that we look at a given landscape and take possession of it in our blood and brain. None of us lives apart from the land entirely; such an isolation is unimaginable. If we are to realize and maintain our humanity, we must come to a moral comprehension of earth and air as it is perceived in the long turn of seasons and of years."

-- N. Scott Momaday (from the movie Remembered Earth)

"The one thing that does not abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

-- Harper Lee

"The future is made of the same stuff as the present."

-- Simone Weil

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

... It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

-- Oriah Mountain Dreamer from the book "The Invitation"

By the time it came to the edge of the Forest, the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day."

-- Benjamin Hoff, "The Tao Of Pooh"

"Never underestimate the importance of having fun. I'm dying and I'm having fun. And I'm going to keep having fun every day because there's no other way to play it."

-- Randy Pausch in his "Last Lecture"

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."

-- Randy Pausch in his "Last Lecture"

"No one is pure evil. Find the best in everybody. Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you."

-- Randy Pausch in his "Last Lecture"

"Brick walls are there for a reason. They are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. The brick walls are there to stop people who don't want it badly enough."

-- Randy Pausch in his "Last Lecture"

"It is not about achieving your dreams but living your life. If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself. The dreams will come to you."

-- Randy Pausch in his "Last Lecture"

"We can't change the cards we're dealt, just how we play the hand. If I'm not as depressed as you think I should be, I'm sorry to disappoint you."

-- Randy Pausch in his "Last Lecture"

"To have striven, to have made an effort, to have been true to certain ideals -- this alone is worth the struggle. We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, life."

-- Sir William Osler, 1849-1919 Canadian Physician, Medical Historian

"If you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains; If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains."

-- Cicero

"Voila! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V."

-- V from the movie "V is for Vendetta"

'"Come to the edge," he said.
They said, "We are afraid."
"Come to the edge," he said.
They came.
He pushed them....
And they flew.'

--Guillaume Apollinaire

"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."

--Thucydies (B.C. 460-400)

"Happiness is a direction and not a place."

-- Sydney J. Harris

"Most people are afraid of freedom. They are conditioned to be afraid of it."

-- Herbert Marcuse

"Let your life speak!"

-- Quaker Saying

"Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus"
(Never tickle a sleeping dragon)

-- Hogwarts School Motto (from the Harry Potter series of books)

"A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service."

-- Georges Pompidou

"Real talent is a mystery, and people who've got it, know it."

-- George Cukor, director

'In the heating and air conditioning trade, the point on the thermostat in which neither being nor cooling must operate-- around 72 degrees -- is called "The Comfort Zone." It is also known as "The Dead Zone."'

--Russell Bishop

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your mind off your goals."

--anon

"You can only make a certain amount with your hands, but with your mind, it's unlimited."

--Kal Seinfeld's advice to his son, Jerry

"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything."

--George Lois

"Habit is an outsider who supplants reason in us."

-- Sully Prudhomme (aka Rene-Francois-Armand Prudhomme)

"I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered."

-- Jean Ingelow

"Success to the strongest, who are always, at last, the wisest and best."

--Emerson

"Why do strong arms fatigue themselves with frivolous dumbbells? To dig a vinyard is worthier exercise."

-- Marcus Valius Martialis (40 AD-102 AD)

"The purpose of a wilderness journey is not to get from one end of the trail to the other, but to enjoy the landscape, and adapt to its ever-changing moods."

--Bill Mason

"A short life is better for mankind, for a long life would deprive man of hi soptimism."

-- Karel Capek

"Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose."

-- Zora Neale Huston

"This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."

-- Elmer Davis

"It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I am right."

-- Moliere

"The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit."

-- Moliere

"Always give them the old fire, even when you feel like a squashed cake of ice."

-- Ethel Merman

"There is nothing new in art except talent."

-- Anton Chekhov

"Nothing is too small to know, and nothing is too big to attempt."

-- William Van Horne

"A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes."

-- Gotthold Lessing

"television, a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done."

-- Ernie Kovacs

"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."

-- Archilochus, Greek poet

"Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it."

-- Robert Motherwell

"By annihilating desires, you annihilate the mind."

-- Claude-Adrien Helvetius

"Every successful revoution puts on in time the robe of the tyrant it has deposed."

-- Barbara Tuchman

"If you torture data sufficiently, it will confess to almost anything."

-- Fred Menger

"The biggest human temptation is ... to settle for too little."

-- Thomas Merton

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers."

-- Thomas Pynchon

"...lack of foresight and an almost childlike decision not to worry about the future seem to be human characteristics that are timeless. Ultimately, these psychological weaknesses may be more responsible for why civilizations have failed than resouce shortages alone."

-- Stephen Leeb

"An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question."

-- John Tukey

"If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no one dares criticize it."

-- Pierre Gallois

"You can build a throne out of bayonets, but you can't sit on them long."

-- Boris Yeltsin

"No matter what side of an argument you're on, you always find some people on your side that you wish were on the other side."

-- Jascha Heifetz

"Modern Man has lost the option of silence."

-- William Burroughs

"There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo."

-- Beryl Markham

"I felt exhilarated. It was like thinking that all there is to your family are your parents, brothers and sisters, and then you realize there's a whole stretch of history that is an extension of who you are."

-- Loreena McKennitt on how her travels have influenced her

"You can't get there from here if you don't know where here and there are."

-- Thom Hogan (photographer)

"A brave heart is a powerful weapon."

-- anon

"The heart wants what it wants."

-- From the TV show "Life is Wild"

"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it."

-- anon

"The trouble with life is, that you're halfway through it before you realize that it's a 'do it yourself' thing.

-- anon

"God made the desert so that man could find his soul."

-- anon

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood."

-- Marie Curie

"Our own life is the instrument with which we experiment with truth."

-- Thich Nhat Hanh

"All your base are belong to us.
You are on the way to destruction
You have no chance to survive.
make your time.

-- mistranslation of threat of an opponent in a video game

"Life is a verb."

-- anon

"The Heisenberg uncertainty principle does not limit what we can know about reality; it describes that reality."

-- Barbara Burke Hubbard

"God created the integers, all else is the work of man."

-- Kronecker speaking in opposition to Cantor's use of sets as the foundation of mathematics

"If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem."

-- Krishnamurti

"Everyone knows what a curve is, until he has studied enough mathematics to become confused through the countless number of possible exceptions."

-- Felix Klein

"Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical, but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them."

-- Mark Haddon, "The Curious Incident of the Dog and the Night-time"

"Tired and full of mathematical ideas, happy from the consciousness that we had found out something which one cannot find in books, we would return in the evening to Moscow."

-- B V Gnedenko, commenting on outings to Kolmogorov's house

"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea."

-- Emile-Auguste Chartier

Calvera: If God hadn't meant for them to be sheared, he wouldn't have made them sheep.

-- from the movie "The Magnificent Seven"

Chris: Job for six men, watching over a village, south of the border.
O'Reilly: How big's the opposition?
Chris: Thirty guns.
O'Reilly: I admire your notion of fair odds, mister.

-- from the movie "The Magnificent Seven"

Vin: Reminds me of that fellow back home that fell off a ten story building.
Chris: What about him?
Vin: Well, as he was falling people on each floor kept hearing him say, "So far, so good. Tch...So far, so good!"

-- from the movie "The Magnificent Seven"

Calvera has just captured the Seven.]
Calvera: What I don't understand is why a man like you took the job in the first place, hum? Why, heh?
Chris: I wonder myself.
Calvera: No, come on, tell me why.
Vin: It's like this fellow I knew in El Paso. One day, he just took all his clothes off and jumped in a mess of cactus. I asked him that same question, Why?"
Calvera: And?
Vin: He said, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."

-- from the movie "The Magnificent Seven"

Village Boy 2: We're ashamed to live here. Our fathers are cowards.
O'Reilly: Don't you ever say that again about your fathers, because they are not cowards. You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there's nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery.

-- from the movie "The Magnificent Seven"

Chris: The old man was right. Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose.

-- from the movie "The Magnificent Seven"

[The Villagers tell Chris they collected everything of value in their village to hire gunmen]
Chris Adams: I have been paid a lot for my work, but never everything.

-- from the movie "The Magnificent Seven"

"If you truely enjoy your work then you will never have to work again."

-- proverb

"The world steps aside for those who know where they are going."

-- proverb

"The older we get, the better we was."

-- proverb

"It's better to be hated for who you are than to be loved for who you're not."

-- proverb

"Idleness is the holiday of fools."

-- proverb

"Do not seek after the sages of the past. Seek what they sought."

-- Basho

"The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time."

-- James Taylor (from a song)

"A man's gotta know his limitations."

-- Dirty Harry (from the movie Magnum Force)

"I know what you're thinking. 'Did he fire six shots or only five?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?"

-- Dirty Harry (from the movie Dirty Harry)

"I freely give all sights and sounds of nature I have known to those who have the grace to enjoy not man-made materialism but God-made beauty.

The magnificent Arizona sunsets I have watched from my enclosure, I bequeath to all who see not only with their eyes, but with their hearts. To humans who are tired, worried or discouraged, I bequeath the silence, majestry and peace of our great American desert. To those who walk the trails, I bequeath the early morning voices of the birds and the glory of the flowering desert in the springtime. To the children who have enjoyed seeing me, hearing me purr, and watching me turn my somersaults, I offer the precious gift of laughter and joy. The world so needs these things. And lastly, I bequeath my own happy spirit, and affection for others, to all who may remember me and my museum where for three years, I did my best to show people that I truly liked them."

-- Epataph for George L. Mountain Lion (Feb 1952 - Mar 1955) Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson, AZ

"Morning has broken, like the first morning,
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird"

-- Cat Stevens

"If I had words to make a day for you,
I'd sing you a morning golden and new.
I would make this day last for all time,
Give you a night deep with moonshine."

-- annon, sung by farmer Hoggett in the movie Babe, suspected folk song

"Adults are obsolete children and the hell with them."

-- Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

"Believe me, every man has his secret sorrows, which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana."

-- Groucho Marx

"Sometimes life's so beautiful it catches you off guard."

-- anon

"Beauty.. is merciless. You do not look at it; it looks at you and does not forgive."

-- Nikos Kazantzakis, the author of "Zorba the Greek"

"The morning is such a lovely time of day. It's a shame it's so early."

-- Debra Applin

"Life is tough but, it's even tougher if you're stupid."

-- anonymous hospital emergency room staffer

"The morning is the rudder of the day."

-- anon

"Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Play with abandon. Listen well. Choose without regret. Do what you love. Appreciate your friends. Act as if this is all there is."

-- J.N.Kemsley

"Must we have 'hooter cancer survivors'?"

-- a user angry with America Online's censorship policies

"We may not be the only species on the planet but we sure do act like it."

-- anon

"Beware the beast man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport or lust or greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him, for he is the harbinger of death."

-- Dr. Zaius, Minister of Science and Chief Defender of the Faith (From the movie Planet of the Apes)

"All programmers are playwrights and all computers are lousy actors."

-- Anonymous

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."

-- last line of "Notes on the van Emde Boas construction of priority deques: An instructive use of recursion," a personal communication to Peter van Emde Boas by Donald Knuth

"A supercomputer is a device for converting a CPU-bound problem into an I/O bound problem."

-- Ken Batcher

"A supercomputer is one that is only one generation behind what you really need."

-- Neil Lincoln

"All generalizations are false."

-- anon

"Lottery: A tax on people who are bad at math."

-- anon

"Time is what keeps everything from happening at once."

-- anon

"Out of my mind. Back in five minutes."

-- anon

"Sometimes I wake up grumpy; Other times I let him sleep."

-- anon

"Numquam magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit."
Latin for "There has never been a great spirit without a touch of insanity."

-- anon

"I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it."

-- anon

"Time is a great teacher; unfortunately it kills all its pupils."

-- Hector Berlioz

"Warning: Dates in Calendar are closer than they appear."

-- anon

"Give me ambiguity or give me something else."

-- anon

"Always remember you're unique, just like everyone else."

-- anon

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

-- anon

"There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't."

-- anon

"May you live in interesting times"

-- chinese curse

Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain?"
Brain: "The same thing we do every night, Pinky... try and take over the world!"

-- From Pinky and the Brain

"Winter is good for reading the classics, for one's mind is more collected. Summer is good for reading history, for one has plenty of time. The autumn is good for reading ancient philosophers, because of the great diversity of thought and ideas. Finally, spring is suitable for reading modern authors, for in spring one's spirit expands."

-- Chang Chan

October in my own land....
I know what glory fills
The mountains of New Hampshire
And Massachusetts hills.

I know what hues of opal
Rhode Island breezes fan,
And how Connecticut puts on
Colors of Hindustan.

-- anon

"To talk with a learned friend is like reading a remarkable book; with a romantic friend, like reading good prose and poetry; with an upright friend, like reading the classics; with a humorous friend, like reading fiction."

-- Chang Chan

"Hoyle and Wickramasinghe gave up on spontaeous generation [of life], since the likelihood of the event was comparable to the chances that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."

-- Stuart Kaufman in "At Home in the Universe"

"The orange dump truck's wheels turned orange."

-- from elementary school poem

"To infinity and beyond!"

-- Buzz Lightyear

"You open it with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension. A dimension of sound. A dimension of sight. A dimension of mind. You are moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone."

-- Intro to the Twilight Zone

"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

-- Sherlock Holmes in "The Sign of Four"

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

-- anon

"I learn so as to be contented."

--inscription on the stone wash-basin in Ryoanji temple

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

-- The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Faint heart never won fair lady."

-- proverb

"As he thinketh in his heart, so is he."

-- Proverbs 23:7, Bible

"Two souls but with a single thought;
Two hearts that beat as one."

-- Von Munch Bellinghausen

"The only way to pass any test is to take the test. It is inevitable."

-- Elder Regal Black Swan

"I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn't give this game of life everything he's got."

-- Walter Cronkite

"Only after the last tree has been cut down. Only after the last river has been poisoned. Only after the last fish has been caught. Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten."

-- Cree Indian Prophecy

"Born empty handed, Die empty handed. I witnessed life at its fullest, Empty handed."

-- Marlo Morgan

Vicomte de Valvert: Ah... your nose... hem! Your nose is rather large!

Cyrano (gravely): Rather.

Valvert (simpering): Oh well--

Cyrano (coolly): Is that all?

Valvert (turns away with a shrug): Well of course--

Cyrano: Ah no, young sir! You are too simple. Why, you might have said -- Oh a great many things! Mon dieu, why waste your opportunity? For example, thus:
AGGRESSIVE: I, sir, if that nose were mine, I'd have it amputated - on the spot!
FRIENDLY: How do you drink with such a nose? You ought to have a cup made specially.
DESCRIPTIVE: 'Tis a rock - a crag - a cape - A cape? say rather a peninsula!
INQUISITIVE: What is that receptacle - A razor-case or a portfolio?
KINDLY: Ah, do you love the little birds so much that they come and sing to you, you give them this to perch on?
INSOLENT: Sir, when you smoke, the neighbours must suppose your chimney is on fire.
CAUTIOUS: Take care-- A weight like that might make you topheary.
THOUGHTFUL: Somebody fech my parasol-- Those delicate colors fade so in the sun!
PEDANTIC: Does not Aristophanes mention a mythologic monster called hippocampelephantocamelos? Surely we have here the original!
FAMILIAR: Well, old torchlight! Hang your hat over that chandelier-- it hurts my eyes.
ELOQUENT: When it blows, the typhoon howls, and the clouds darken.
DRAMATIC: When it bleeds-- the Red Sea!
ENTERPRISING: What a sign for some perfumer!
LYRIC: Hark-- the horn of Roland calls to summon Charlemagne!--
SIMPLE: When do they unveil the monument?
RESPECTFUL: Sir, I recongnize in you a man of many parts, a man of prominence--
RUSTIC: Hey? What? Call that a nose? Na na-- I be no fool like what you think I be--That there's a blue cucumber!
MILITARY: Point against cavalry!
PRACTICAL: Why not a lottery with this for the grand prize? Or -- parodying Faustus in the play-- "Was this the nose that launched a thousand ships and burned the topless towers of Ilium?"

These, my dear sir, are things you might have said had you some tinge of letters, or of wit to color your discourse.

-- Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (Brian Hooker translator)

Roxanne: I have never loved but one man in my life,
And I have lost him-- twice...

-- Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand (Brian Hooker translator)

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

-- Margaret Mead

"There are no straight lines in nature."

-- A person searching for the wreckage of EgyptAir 990 using sonar

"For time changes the nature of the whole world, and all things must pass from one condition to another, nothing remains like itself."

--Lucretis 99 B.C. - 55 B.C.

"It is not half so important to know as it is to feel."

--Rachel Carson

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

--Indian Proverb

"Everybody wants to get to heaven, but nobody wants to die."

--Joe lewis

"If people don't want to come out to the park, nobody's going to stop them."

--Yogi Berra

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

-- Yogi Berra

"Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel."

-- Yogi Berra

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

-- Yogi Berra

"We're lost, but we're making good time!"

-- Yogi Berra

"Pair up in threes."

-- Yogi Berra

"Congratulations. I knew the record would stand until it was broken."

-- Yogi Berra

"You can observe a lot by watching."

-- Yogi Berra

"A man in the house is worth two in the street."

--Mae West in Belle of the Nineties

"When choosing between two evils I always like to take the one I've never tried before."

-- Mae West

"It pays to be good -- but it doesn't pay much''

-- Mae West

"My brain is open."

--Paul Erdös

"A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems."

--Paul Erdös

"Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after."

-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work."

--John Von Neumann

"All models are wrong. Some are useful."

-- George E. P. Box

"The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living."

--Henri Poincare

"It is not order only, but unexpected order, that has value."

--Henri Poincare

"Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin."

--John Von Neumann 1951

"3 Billion B.C.: The Earth is a swirling ball of flaming gases. Fishing is extremely poor, especially in August."

--Cliff Hauptman in The Complete History of Fishing

"One of the toughest battles in intelligence is combating conventional wisdom."

-- Robert Gates, former CIA director on why they failed to predict the soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian revolution, Nuclear tests in India, ...

"History repeats itself. That's one of the things wrong with history."

-- Clarence Darrow

"Nice guys finish last."

--Leo Durocher

"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on."

--Samuel Goldwyn

"Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and canticles, those watery varieties of sounds and silences, terrifying, mysterious, whirling and sometimes gestating and gentle must somehow be felt in the pulse, ebb, and flow of the music that sings in me. My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God."

-- Hildegard von Bingen (12 c.)

"Those voices you hear are like the voice of a multitude, which lifts its sound on high; for jubilant praises, offered in simple harmony and charity, lead the faithful to that consonance in which is no discord, and make those who still live on earth sign with heart and voice for the heavenly reward."

-- Hildegard von Bingen (12 c.)

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature."

-- Henry David Thoreau

"To affect the quality of the day, is the highest of the arts."

-- Henry David Thoreau

"Better to die like a lion than to live like sheep"

-- proverb

"Depend on it: there is nothing so unnatural as the commonplace."

-- Sherlock Holmes "The Case of Identity"

"It is natural for the ordinary American when he sees something wrong to feel not only that there should be a law against it but, also that an organization should be formed to combat it."

-- Gunner Myrdal

"First get your facts; and then you can distort them ay your leisure."

-- Mark Twain

"Thunder is good, thunder is impressive, but it is the lightning that does the work."

-- Mark Twain

"Facts are like stuffed animals in a glass case, only remotely suggesting the wild uncertain environment in which they had their beginning."

-- Michael Hawkins

"Science and art have in common intense seeing, the wide-eyed observing that generates empirical information."

-- Edward R. Tufte

"Treat a virus with antibiotics and you get better in 7 days. Do nothing and you are better in a week."

-- anon

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

-- Sherlock Holmes "A Scandal in Bohemia"

"The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things-- but the oddest part of it was that, whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty, though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold."

-- Through the Looking Glass

'... The name of the song is called "HADDOCKS' EYES."'

`Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?' Alice said, trying to feel interested.

`No, you don't understand,' the Knight said, looking a little vexed. `That's what the name is CALLED. The name really IS "THE AGED AGED MAN."'

`Then I ought to have said "That's what the SONG is called"?' Alice corrected herself.

`No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The SONG is called "WAYS AND MEANS": but that's only what it's CALLED, you know!'

`Well, what IS the song, then?' said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.

`I was coming to that,' the Knight said. `The song really IS "A-SITTING ON A GATE": and the tune's my own invention.'

-- Through the Looking Glass

"I am only one, but still I am one.
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something;
and because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to do something I can do."

-- Edward Everett Hale

"I'm just singing for the women who think they can't speak out. Can't a man alive mistreat me, 'cause I know who I am."

-- Alberta Hunter, blues singer

"I do not wish [women] to have power over men, but over themselves."

-- Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your
one wild and precious life?"

-- Mary Oliver

"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

-- Walter Bagehot

"Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Home, man feels once more happy."

-- Richard Burton (explorer)

"Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen."

-- Benjamin Disraeli

"A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving."

-- Lao Tsu

"In the pursuit of learning,
everyday something is acquired.
In the pursuit of the Way,
everyday something is dropped."

-- Lao Tzu

"The reverse side also has a reverse side."

-- Japanese proverb

"What you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I hate quotations."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"This is the mark of a perfect character - to pass through each day as though it were the last, without agitation, without torpor, and without pretense."

-- Marcus Aurelius

"We do not learn by experience, but by our capacity for experience."

-- Buddha

"The truth of a thing is the feel of it, not the think of it."

-- Stanley Kubrick

"Behold, my son, with what little wisdom the world is ruled."

-- Count Axel Oxenstierna

"The world belongs to the enthusiast who keeps his cool."

-- William McFee

"The world is ruled by letting things take their course."

-- Lao-Tzu

"A wise man never loses anything if he has himself."

-- Montaigne

"`Well, in OUR country,' said Alice, still panting a little, `you'd generally get to somewhere else -- if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing.'

"`A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. `Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!'"

-- Lewis Carroll

"... The name of the song is called "HADDOCKS' EYES."'

'Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?' Alice said, trying to feel interested.

'No, you don't understand,' the Knight said, looking a little vexed. 'That's what the name is CALLED. The name really IS "THE AGED AGED MAN."'

'Then I ought to have said "That's what the SONG is called"?' Alice corrected herself.

'No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The SONG is called "WAYS AND MEANS": but that's only what it's CALLED, you know!'

'Well, what IS the song, then?' said Alice, who was by this time completely bewildered.

'I was coming to that,' the Knight said. 'The song really IS "A-SITTING ON A GATE": and the tune's my own invention.'"

-- Lewis Carroll

"Alice laughed. `There's not use trying,' she said: `one CAN'T believe impossible things.'

"`I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!'"

-- Lewis Carroll

"I cannot tell if what the world considers "happiness" is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness."

-- Chuang-Tzu

"The best laid shemes o' mice and men gang aft a-gley"

-- Robert Burns

"If I should bow my head, let it be to a high mountain."

-- Maori Proverb

"Water is good, it benefits all things and does not compete with them."

-- Lao Tsu

"It is better to wear out than to rust out"

-- George Whitefield

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

"If you have nothing good to say about anyone, come sit next to me."

-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth (daughter of Teddy Roosevelt)

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

"In my time it was different. When I knew the wind was strong, I attacked myself to make the race as hard as possible."

-- Eddy Merckx

"It never gets easier, you just go faster."

-- Greg LeMond

"Pain is a big fat creature riding on your back. The farther you pedal, the heavier he feels. The harder you push, the tighter he squeezes your chest. The steeper the climb, the deeper he digs his jagged, sharp claws into your muscles." Scott Martin

-- Scott Martin

"To be a cyclist is to be a student of pain....at cycling's core lies pain, hard and bitter as the pit inside a juicy peach. It doesn't matter if you're sprinting for an Olympic medal, a town sign, a trailhead, or the rest stop with the homemade brownies. If you never confront pain, you're missing the essence of the sport. Without pain, there's no adversity. Without adversity, no challenge. Without challenge, no improvement. No improvement, no sense of accomplishment and no deep-down joy. Might as well be playing Tiddly-Winks."

-- Scott Martin

"The Ventoux is a god of Evil, to which sacrifices must be made. It never forgives weakness and extracts an unfair tribute of suffering."

-- Roland Barthes talking of Mont Ventoux climb in the Tour de France

"There are too many factors you have to take into account that you have no control over...The most important factor you can keep in your own hands is yourself. I always placed the greatest emphasis on that."

-- Eddy Merckx

"Beware any place where they have a name for the wind."

-- Dr. Jane Kelly, The Anchorage Daily News in July 1998

"I take nothing for granted. Now I have only good days or great days."

-- Lance Armstrong, cyclist who had cancer and went on to win the Tour de France

"Lake Wobegone, where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average"

-- Garrison Kiellor in "A Parire Home Companion"

"You can't scare me. I have children."

-- anon

"Don't think you're on the right road just because it's a well-beaten path."

-- anon

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

-- Thomas Edison

"Adversity introduces man to himself"

-- anon.

"When you play for more than you can afford to lose, then you will really know the game."

-- Winston Churchill

"We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising."

-- Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

"I could compass my kingdom in a walnut shell and be content, were it not for dreams."

-- James Foster misremembering Hamlet

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible."

-- T. E. Lawrence, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom"

"Don't ever name your dog Nipper or your horse Buck!"

-- Linda Taylor (on Corgi-L mailing list)

"Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, is the immediate jewel of their souls. Who steals my purse, steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands: but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him, and makes me poor indeed.

-- Iago from Othello by Shakespeare, act 3 scene 3

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember'd."

-- Shakespeare, Hamlet

This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

-- Henry V from Henry V by Shakespeare, act 4 scene 3

"O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,--
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue--
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial."

-- Antony from Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, act 3 scene 1

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard. It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come."

-- Caesar from Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, act 2 scene 2

"Your wisdom is consumed in confidence."

-- Calpurnia from Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, act 2 scene 2

Petruchio: ...
Good morrow, Kate; for that's your name, I hear.

Katharina: Well have you heard, but something hard of hearing:
They call me Katharina that do talk of me.

Petruchio: You lie, in faith; for you are call'd plain Kate,
And bonny Kate and sometimes Kate the curst;
But Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom
Kate of Kate Hall, my super-dainty Kate,
For dainties are all Kates, and therefore, Kate,
Take this of me, Kate of my consolation;
Hearing thy mildness praised in every town,
Thy virtues spoke of, and thy beauty sounded,
Yet not so deeply as to thee belongs,
Myself am moved to woo thee for my wife.

Katharina: Moved! in good time: let him that moved you hither
Remove you hence: ...

-- from Taming of the Screw by Shakespeare, act 1 scene 1

"Why, there's a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate."

-- Petruchio from Taming of the Screw by Shakespeare

"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

-- from Twelfth Night by Shakespeare, act 2 scene 5

ROMEO:[To a Servingman] What lady is that, which doth
enrich the hand
Of yonder knight?
SERVANT: I know not, sir.
ROMEO: O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.

-- Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, act 1 scene 5

"But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
It is my lady, O, it is my love!
O, that she knew she were!
She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!

-- Romeo from Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, act 2 scene 2

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

-- Juliet from Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, act 2 scene 2

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,...

-- Jaques in As You Like it by Shakespeare, act 2 scene 7

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

-- Touchstone, As You Like It, Act V, Scene I.

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

-- Macbeth from Macbeth by Shakespeare Act V scene 5

"Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care"

-- Macbeth from Macbeth by Shakespeare Act II scene 2

Number 6: Where am I?
Voice: The Village.
Number 6: What do you want?
Voice: Information.
Number 6: Whose side are you on?
Voice: Now that would be telling. We want information.
Number 6: You won't get it.
Voice: By hook or crook we will.
Number 6: Who are you?
Voice: The new number 2.
Number 6: Who is number 1?
Voice: You are number 6.
Number 6: I am not a number. I am a free man!

-- from the TV show "The Prisoner"

"Revenge is a dish best served cold."

-- Klingon proverb

"By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!"

-- Second Witch from Macbeth by Shakespeare Act IV scene 1

ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch: Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Third Witch: Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

ALL: Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch: Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

-- Witches from Macbeth by Shakespeare Act IV scene 1

"The rose does not have a why; it blossums without reason, forgetful of self and oblivious to our vision."

-- Angelus Silesius "The Cherubinic Wanderer"

"Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a Rose"

-- Gertrude Stein

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

-- Hamlet by Shakespeare, act 2 scene 2

See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

-- Hamlet by Shakespeare, Polonius to Laertes, Act I Scene III

"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature."

-- Hamlet by Shakespeare

"The time is out of joint; O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"

-- Hamlet by Shakespeare, act 1 scene 5

"I do not understand the white man. He does not seem to know where the center of the earth is."

-- from the movie Little Big Man

"By The Abyss, I'd forgotten how GOOD it feels to conquer a universe!"

-- The Dread Dormammu, Doctor Strange #3

"Things are more like the way they are now than they have ever been before!"

-- Dwight Eisenhower, sometime in the 50s

"In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

-- Dwight Eisenhower

"It is this sense of heightened awareness and perception of beauty, of being alive, of physical accomplishment, that raises adventure, despite its inevitable periods of grinding effort and agonising discomfort, from being an exercise in masochism to a much broader, richer experience."

-- Chris Bonnington

"If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having."

-- Henry Miller

"Out of time we cut 'days' and 'nights', 'summers' and 'winters.' We say what, each part of the sensible continuum is, and all these abstract whats are concepts.

The intelletual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the persceptual order in which his experience originally comes."

-- "The World We Live In" by William James

If Dogs Made the Rules

If I like it, it's mine.

If it's in my mouth, it's mine.

If I can take it from you, it's mine.

If I had it a little while ago, it's mine.

If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.

If I'm chewing something, all the pieces are mine.

If it looks just like mine, it is mine.

If I saw it first, it's mine.

If you are playing with something and you put it down, it automatically becomes mine.

-- anon

"Her life was okay. Sometimes she wished she were sleeping with the right man instead of with her dog, but she never felt she was sleeping with the wrong dog."

-- Judith Collas in "Change of Life"

"He is your friend, your defender, your dog.
You are his life, his love, his leader.
He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart.
You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion"

-- anon

In order to keep a true perspective of one's importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him.

-- Dereke Bruce

Mullroy: You've seen a ship with black sails that's crewed by the damned, and captained by a man so evil that Hell itself spat him back out?
Murtogg: No.
Mullroy: No.
Murtogg: But I have seen a ship with black sails. [Jack quietly slips passed them unnoticed]
Mullroy: Oh, and no ship that's not crewed by the damned and captained by a man so evil that Hell itself spat him back out could possibly have black sails, therefore couldn't possibly be any other ship than the Black Pearl. Is that what you're telling me?
Murtogg: No.
Mullroy: Like I said, there's no real ship as can match the Interceptor.

-- from the movie "The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"

Barbossa: First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement, so I must do nothin'. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the Pirate's Code to apply, and you're not. And thirdly, the Code is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner.

-- from the movie "The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"

Murtogg:...But there's no ship as can match the Interceptor for speed.
Jack Sparrow: I've heard of one, supposed to be very fast, nigh uncatchable: The Black Pearl.

-- from the movie "The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"

The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.

-- Andrew A. Rooney

And now to all the good dogs--
the special ones you loved best,
those of ours we still miss --
good-bye,
until, on some brighter day,
in some fairer place,
they run out again to greet us.

-- George Papshvily

"A faithful friend is the medicine of life."

-- anon

"Push on and faith will catch up with you."

-- Jean d'Alembert (1717 - 1783) (mathematician)

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words"

-- anon

"Words can destroy. What we call each other ultimately becomes what we think of each other, and it matters."

-- Jeane Jordon Kirkpatrick

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar limbs.

-- Wallace Stevens

"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, norgloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

-- Herodotus, Greek historian 5c. BC also on the facade of the NYC post office

"Citius, Altus, Fortuis" (swifter, higher, stronger)

-- Motto of the Olympics

"...the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle."

-- Part of the Olympic Creed

"The dog has got more fun out of man than man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstratable reason that man is the more laughable of the two animals. The dog has long been bemused by the singular activites and the curious practices of men, cocking his head inquiringly to one side, intently watching and listening to the strangest goings-on in the world. He has seen men sing together and fight one another in the same evening. He has watched them go to bed when it is time to get up, and get up when it is time to go to bed. He has observed them destroying the soil in vast areas, and nurturing it in small patches. He has stood by while men built strong and solid houses for rest and quiet and then filled them with lights and bells and machinery. His sensitive nose, which can detect what's cooking in the next township, has caught at one and the same time the bewildering smells of the hospital and the munitions factory. He has seen men raise up great cities to heaven and then blow them to hell."

-- James Thurber

"'Sensitivity Testing' is testing in which an increasing percentage of items fail, explode, or die as the serverity of the test is increased."

-- From "Statistics Manual" by Crow, Davis and Maxfield

"Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible stupidity can usually be traced to an organization."

-- anon

"You are Elastigirl! Show him you remember that he is Mr. lncredible, and you will remind him who you are! Well, you know where he is. Go! Confront the problem! Fight! Win!"

-- Edna in the movie "The Incredibles"

"The bitterest words ever said over graves are for deeds undone and words left unsaid."

-- H. B. Stowe

"Man will occasionally stumble across the truth, but will usually pick himself up and carry on."

-- Winston Churchill

"Success is when you try to achieve your inward vision externally and have it come off the way you see it. Then YOU feel successful about it; that's how success is measured."

-- George Lucas

"Every man has his price, they say -- but some hold bargin sales."

-- Camden County Georgia Tribune

"Save one life and you are a hero.
Save 100 lives and you are a nurse."

-- anon

"Pride Lasts Longer Than Pain"

-- Seen on the back of a cycling jersey

"Live to ride.
Ride to live."

-- Motto seen on Harley Davidson motorcyle

"If we don't have it, you don't need it."

-- Motto of McGuckin's Hardware in Boulder, CO

"To be even a marginal cyclist you must make pain your closest of friends."

-- Unknown cyclist

"A powerful programming language is more than just a means for instructing a computer to perform tasks. The language also serves as a framework within which we organize our ideas about processes."

-- Abelson and Sussman from "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs"

"An idean, in the highest sense of the word, cannot be conveyed buy by a symbol."

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery."

-- Samuel Taylor Coleridge first stanza of poem Kubla Khan

"When you speak a new language you must see if you can translate all of the poetry of your old language into the new one."

-- Dana Scott

"The power of any language is the power to organize thought."

-- Robert Heckendorn

"There has never been a tool made that couldn't be misused for good."

-- Robert Heckendorn

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

-- J. E. E. Dalberg Acton

"Human beings...are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. ...The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group."

-- Edward Sapir, 1929; in Mandelbaum, 1958, p. 162

"... as young and as ancient as spring ..."

-- JRR Tolkien (Fellowship of the Ring)

"No language can prevent the bad programmer from writing bad programs unless it prevents him from writing any at all."

-- David Moon

"The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity."

-- E.W.Dijkstra

"The question of whether computers can think is just like the question of whether submarines can swim."

-- E.W.Dijkstra

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

-- E. W. Dijkstra

"The traditional mathematician recognizes and appreciates mathematical elegance when he sees it. I propose to go one step further, and to consider elegance an essential ingredient of mathematics: if it's clumsy, it's not mathematics".

-- E.W.Dijkstra

"For me, the first challenge for Computer Science is to discover how to maintain order in a finite, but very large, discrete universe that is intricately intertwined. And a second, but not less important challenge is how to mould what you have achieved in solving the first problem, into a teachable discipline: it does not suffice to hone your own intellect (that will join you in your grave), you must teach others how to hone theirs. The more you concentrate on those two challenges, the more you will see that they are only two sides of the same coin: teaching yourself is discovering what is teachable".

-- E.W.Dijkstra

"We must organize the computation in such a way that our limited powers are sufficient to guarantee that the computation will establish the desired effect."

-- E.W.Dijkstra

"Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not. A Sense of Humor was provided to console him for what he is."

-- Horace Walpole, Man of Letters (or was it Francis Bacon?)

"The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that the warrior takes everything as a challenge while the ordinary man takes everything either as a blessing or a curse."

-- Carlos Castaneda, Anthropologist

"My compassion for someone is not limited by my estimation of their intelligence."

-- from the movie "Star Trek IV"

"Ultimately time is all you have and the idea isn't to save it, but to savor it"

-- Ellen Goodman

"Time is the fire in which we burn."

-- from the poem "For Rhoda" by Delmore Schwartz quoted in the movie "Star Trek: Generations"

"Give a man a hammer, and he will begin to see the world as a collection of nails"

-- anon.

"We see what we know."

-- proverb

"The canyon country does not always inspire love. To many it appears barren, hostile, repellent - a fearsome mostly waterless land of rock and heat, sand dunes and quicksand, cactus, thornbrush, scorpion, rattlesnake, and agaraphobic distances. To those who see our land in that manner, the best reply is, yes, you are right, it is a dangerous and terrible place. Enter at your own risk. Carry water. Avoid the noonday sun. Try to ignore the vultures. Pray frequently."

-- Edward Abbey, "The Journey Home", 1977

"And crawling on the planet's face some insects called the human race... Lost in time and lost in space... and meaning."

-- Narrator in "Rocky Horror Picture Show"

"Science fiction double feature
Doctor X will build a creature.
See androids fighting. Brad and Janet.
Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet.
Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh
At the late night double feature,
picture show.
"

-- Chorus to the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" Song

"One sunny Wednesday afternoon [Mother] took me to Peel Park. We sat on a high esplanade and looked far over the countless chimneys of northern Manchester to the horizon. On the skyline, green and aloof, the Pennines rose like the ramparts of paradise. "There!", she said, pointing. "Mountains!" I stared, lost for words."

-- Robert Robert, "A Ragged Schooling"

"Give me books, fruit, french wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by somebody I do not know."

-- Keats

"The first step to knowledge is a confession of ignorance."

-- old Chinese saying

"If ignorance is bliss, why aren't there more happy people?"

-- anon

"How wealthy the gods would be if we remembered the promises we made when we were in danger."

-- Jean de La Fontaine

"When I see the wildlife, even the lions and the leopards, I feel healthy."

-- an African native whose tribe was put in charge of wildlife protection

"Every morning in Africa, a Gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a Lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest Gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a Lion or a Gazelle... when the sun comes up, you'd better be running."

-- anon

"You're less likely to die while sitting home in your armchair. Also less likely to live."

-- anon

"When asked why he doesn't believe in astrology, the logician Raymond Smullyan responds that he's a Gemini and Geminis never believe in astrology."

-- John Allen Paulos

"All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in this world is for enough good men to do nothing."

-- Edmund Burke

"If you were born where they were born, and you were taught what they were taught, you'd believe what they believe."

-- anon

"The Anglo-Saxon conscience doesn't keep you from doing what you shouldn't; it just keeps you from enjoying it."

-- Salvador de Madariaga.

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality"

-- T.S.Eliot

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

-- Philip K. Dick

"Ultimately, however, conflict lies not in objective reality, but in people's heads. Truth is simple one argument - perhaps a good one, perhaps not - for dealing with the difference. The difference itself exists because it exists in their thinking."

-- Martin Luther

"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all."

-- Emily Dickinson

"To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else."

-- Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

-- Emily Dickinson

"Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence
Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance
Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence
Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance."

-- Yoko Ono, Season of Glass

"Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter."

-- Rachel Carson

"I have a dream, that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

-- Dr Martin Luther King Jr

"Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much . . . in the grey twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."

-- Theodore Roosevelt

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

-- Theodore Roosevelt

"I'm afraid I'm not personally qualified to confuse cats."

-- Graham Chapman

"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do."

-- Andrew Carnegie

"As we grow old the beauty steals inward."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative."

-- Maurice Chevalier

"The ones who love you expect the most of you."

-- anon

"How bold one gets when one is sure of being loved."

-- Sigmund Freud

"There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable."

-- Jeffery Goldberg

Roy: Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near Tanhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.

Deckard:I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments, he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life, anybody's life, my life. All he'd wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? All I could do was sit there and watch him die.

-- from the movie Blade Runner

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face and a gray dawn breaking

-- John Masefield

"Nothing can be said about the sea."

-- Mr Selvam, Akkrapattai, India 2004

"The law of the Creator, which invests every human being with an inalienable title to freedom, cannot be repealed by any interior law which asserts that man is property."

-- Salmon P. Chase

"Evil: I am evil. I existed before God. When I have the map I will be free and the world will be different. I have understanding.

Robert: Understanding of what master?

Evil: Digital watches. And soon I will have understanding of video cassette recorders. And when I have understanding of them, I shall have understanding of computers. And when I have understanding of computers, I shall be the Supreme Being. God isn't interested in technology. He knows nothing of the potential of the micro chip or the silicon revolution. Look how he spends his time. Forty-three species of parrots! Nipples for men!

Robert: Slugs.

Evil: Slugs! He created slugs. They can't hear. They can't speak. They can't operate heavy machinery. If I were creating a world, I wouldn't mess around with butterflies and daffodils. I would've started with lasers 8 o'clock day one!"

-- From the movie "Time Bandits"

Evil: Robert, we must plan a new world together. This time we'll start it properly. Tell me about computers.

-- From the movie "Time Bandits"

"A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure."

-- Segal's Law

"If a man is crossing the river and an empty boat collides with his skiff, even though he is a bad tempered man he will not become very angry. But if he sees a man in the other boat he will scream and shout and curse at the man to steer clear. If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world, no one will oppose you, no one will seek to harm you. Thus is the perfect man -- his boat is empty."

-- Chuang-Tzu

"Come what may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day."

-- Macbeth from Macbeth by Shakespeare Act I scene 3

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."

-- Alfred North Whitehead

"To see what is general in what is particular and what is permanent in what is transitory is the aim of scientific thought."

-- Alfred North Whitehead

"We were two men in a land of stone, and we walked toward the same star. I was happy to be on the Drus, but here as elsewhere, my happiness was to lead a companion. What would a guide be without someone to lead? Good weather, bad weather, easy, difficult, I needed to sing the same tune as he. That was the best gift of our mountains. Climbing to the summit, one man does his job, another is on vacation and the luxury of their efforts is friendship."

-- Gaston

"There are two ways to become rich: earn more or want less."

-- Sherpa proverb

"When life gets tangled there something so reassuring about climbing a mountain. The challenge is unambiguous."

-- Stacy Allison

"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked, and decnounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and endangering country. If works the same in every country."

-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg Trials

"Common sense is merely unaided intuition, and unaided intuition is reasoning performed in the absense of instruments and the tested knowledge of science. Common sense tells us that massive satellites cannot hang suspended 36,000 kilometers above the one point on the earth's surface, but they do..."

-- E. O. Wilson

"In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught."

-- Baba Dioum, a Senegalese ecologist

"The beginning of wisdom, as the Chinese say, is calling things by their right names."

-- E. O. Wilson, in The Diversity of Life

"What I saw so clearly when I started climbing was adventure. Difficulty was only an ingredient. I never thought to wonder about grades, just as I never thought to wonder what Tarzan might bench press. I found the closer I moved to sport, the closer I felt to science -- and the closer I moved to adventure, the closer I felt to greatness."

-- Peter Croft

"Lying on my back, staring up at the massive corners and overhangs, I wondered if we would succeed. But not knowing was our greatest pleasure."

-- Scott Cosgrove

"When life gets tangled there's something so reassuring about climbing a mountain. The challenge is unambiguous."

-- Stacy Allison

"The best poets, after all, exhibit only a tame and civil side of nature. They have not seen the west side of any mountain."

-- Henry David Thoreau

"Faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death. "

-- H.S. Thompson

"Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down."

-- A.E. Newman

"If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything."

-- Maxwell Smart

"Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."

-- Friedrich Nietzche

"That which does not kill us makes us strong."

-- Friedrich Nietzche

"Madness is the exception in individuals, but the rule in groups."

-- a paraphrase of Friedrich Nietzche by Irving Janis

"Its amazing to me how few oil people really understand that you only find oil and gas when you drill wells!"

-- anon

"So you think that you're a failure do you? Well, you probably are. What's wrong with that? In the first place, if you've any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs and we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure. Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free"

-- Tom Robbins

"...the most dangerous shortsightedness consists in underestimating the mediocre."

-- Georges Bernanos

"Nowadays people die of a sort of a creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."

-- Oscar Wilde

"I didn't recognize you. I've changed a lot."

-- Oscar Wilde

"The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple."

-- Oscar Wilde

"If you don't fail on a regular basis, you are not trying hard enough."

-- attr. to Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard

"The only ones who truly fail are those that never try."

-- anon

"For eternally and always there is only one now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end."

-- Erwin Schrodinger

"Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world."

-- Schopenhauer, Further Psychological Observations, 1851

"It's kinda fun to do the impossible"

-- Walt Disney

"The little things in life are as interesting as the big ones."

-- Henry David Thoreau

"It is not the same thing to talk of bulls as to be in the bullring."

-- Spanish proverb

"O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there. O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

-- the first verse of the national anthem of the USA

"Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity."

-- Lao-tzu

"What is subversive today, will almost certainly be patriotic tomorrow."

-- Lucius Beebe

Work like you don't need the money,
Love like you have never been hurt,
Dance like no one is watching.

-- anonymous

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

-- Jack Kornfield

A monk asked," What is the fact of my nature?". Chao-chou said, "Shake the tree and birds take to the air, startle the fish and water becomes muddy."

-- Chao-chou

With every gust of wind, the butterfly changes its place on the willow

-- Basho

Practice has to be a process of endless disappointment. We have to see that everything we demand (and even get) eventually disappoints us. This discovery is our teacher.

-- Charlotte Joko Beck

Where does a wise man kick a pebble? On the beach. Where does a wise man hide a leaf? In the forest.

-- G.K. Chesterton

I saw people coming towards me But all were the same man, All were myself.

-- Sokei-an

"I have seen the future and it's like the present, only longer."

-- Dan Quisenberry

"We can hold back neither the coming of the flowers nor the downward rush of the stream; sooner or later, everything comes to its fruition."

-- Loy Ching-Yuen

"We never remember days, only moments."

-- Cesare Pavese

"As evening draws near, you regret that you did not practice early in the morning. The worldly pleasure which you enjoy now becomes suffering in the future. Why then are you attached to this pleasure? One moment of practice becomes lasting pleasure. Why then do you not practice?"

-- Won Hyo

"Seize today, and put as little trust as you can in the morrow."

-- Horace

"I know what the greatest cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may be in unison with the great part of the world."

-- Henry Miller

"See into life. Don't just look at it."

-- Anne Baxter

"So when you try hard to make your own way, you will help others...before you make your own way you cannot help anyone, and no one can help you."

-- Shunryu Suzuki

"If you don't know how to fix it, please, stop breaking it."

-- Severn Cullis-Suzuki (12 year-old who spoke for the children a the 1992 Rio Earth summit in Brazil)

"You become what you think about all day long."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Most people are so worried about their security that they are afraid to take the risks that let them really enjoy living."

-- Paul Krapf

"René Char wrote somewhere, à propos poetry, that there are those who create and those who discover; they are too completely different worlds. Photograph also has two sides to it and thank goodness, I am only intersted in those who discover; I feel a certain solidarity with those who set out in a spirit of discovery; I think there is much more risk invovled in this than in trying to create images; and in the end, reality is more important."

-- Heri Cartier-

"The painter constructs, the photographer discloses."

-- Susan Sontag

"Progress always involves risk. You can't steal second with your foot on first."

-- anon

"You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind."

-- Henry David Thoreau

"The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer."

-- Slogan of the United States Army Service Forces

"All things are difficult before they are easy."

-- Thomas Fuller

"All right, so it's impossible--how long will it take?"

-- J. J. Adams, Commander of United Planets Cruiser C57D
From the movie "Forbidden Planet"

Shadowless dusk
growing colder -
steaming teakettle

-- Mike Garofalo, Cuttings

My object all sublime
I shall achieve in time--
To let the punishment fit the crime--
The punishment fit the crime;
And make each prisoner pent
Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment!
Of innocent merriment

- The Mikado, Gilbert and Sullivan

Two birds disputed about a kernel, when a third swooped down and carried it off.

-- Proverb from the Congo

A crow
Perched on a withered tree
In the autumn evening.

-- Basho

Sweet bird! thy bow'r is ever green, Thy sky is ever clear; thou has't no sorrow in thy song, No winter in thy year.

-- John Logan

"A garden is evidence of faith. It links us with all the misty figures of the past who also planted and were nourished by the fruits of their planting."

--Gladys Taber

"Seek in the garden shades a seat,
Far from the playground din;
The sun is warm, the air is sweet:
Stay till I call you in."

A long and pleasant afternoon
I passed in those green bowers,
All silent, tranquil, and alone
With birds, and bees, and flowers.

Yet when my master's voice I heard
Call, from the window, "Jane!"
I entered, joyful, at the word,
The busy house again.

--Charlotte Bronte (from The Professor)

"An apple never falls far from the tree."

-- anon

"A weed is but an unloved flower."

-- anon

"In the depths of winter I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

-- Albert Camus

"I think that no matter how old or infirm I may become, I will always plant a large garden in the spring. Who can resist the feelings of hope and joy that one gets from participating in nature's rebirth?"

-- Edward Giobbi

"Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush."

-- Doug Larson

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

-- Albert Camus

"Listen! the wind is rising, and the air is wild with leaves, We have had our summer evenings, now for October eves!"

-- HumbeIt Wolfe

"But now in September the garden has cooled, and with it my possessiveness. The sun warms my back instead of beating on my head ...The harvest has dwindled, and I have grown apart from the intense midsummer relationship that brought it on. "

-- Robert Finch

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

-- George Eliot

"There is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been!"

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly nintey-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has-or rather had-a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concrened with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. "

-- the opeing to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Arthur DentIt's at times like this, when I'm stuck in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelegeuse about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was little

Ford PrefectWhy, what did she tell you?

Arthur DentI don't know, I didn't listen!

-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

"Life," said Marvin dolefully, "loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."

-- Marvin from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

"Oh God," muttered Ford, slumped against a bulkhead and started to count to ten. He was desperately worried that one day sentient life forms would forget how to do this. Only by counting could humans demonstrate their independence of computers.

-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Well, you're obviously being totally naive", Said the girl, "When you've been in marketing as long as I have, you know that before any new product can be developed it has to be properly researched. We've got to find out what people want from fire, how they relate to it, what sort of image it has for them."
"Stick it up your nose," Ford said.
"Which is precisely the sort of thing we need to know," insisted the girl. "Do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?"
"And the wheel," said the Captain, "what about this wheel thingy? It sounds a terribly interesting project."
"Ah," said the marketing girl, "well, we're having a little difficulty there."
"Difficulty?" exclaimed Ford. "Difficulty? What do you mean, difficulty? It's the single simplest machine in the entire Universe!"
The marketing girl soured him with a look. "All right Mr. Wiseguy," she said, "you're so clever, you tell us what color it should be."

-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

"Oh, the Paranoid Android," he said. "Yeah, we'll take him."

"But what are supposed to do with a manically depressed robot?"

"You think you've got problems," said Marvin as if he was addressing a newly occupied coffin, "what are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot? No, don't bother to answer that, I'm fifty thousand times more intelligent than you and even I don't know the answer. It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level."

-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With."

-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

-- "The Graduate" 1967

"Sorry, did I say something wrong?" said Marvin, dragging himself on regardless. "Pardon me for breathing, which I never do anyway so I don't know why I bother to say it, oh God I'm so depressed. Here's another of those self-satisfied doors. Life! Don't talk to me about life."

-- "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

"The fool. The meddling idiot! As though his ape's brain could contain the secrets of the Krell."

-- Dr. Morbius From the movie "Forbidden Planet"

"The Lord expects you to do some things for yourself."

-- Paul "Bear" Bryant

"Sometimes I feel that a more rational explanation for all that has happened during my lieftime is that I am still only thirteen years old, reading Jules Verne or H.G. Wells, and have fallen asleep."

--Stanislaw Ulam in "Adventures of a Mathematician"

"In many cases, mathematics is an escape from reality. The mathematician finds his own monastic niche and happiness in pursuits that are disconnected from external affairs. Some practice it as if using a drug. Chess sometimes plays a similar role. In their unhappiness over the events of this world, some immerse themselves in a kind of self-sufficiency in mathematics. (Some have engaged in it for this reason alone.)"

--Stanislaw Ulam in "Adventures of a Mathematician"

"Any good idea can be stated in fifty words or less."

--Stanislaw Ulam

"Anybody can get hit over the head."

-- Aristotle

"If you meet a swordsman on the road show him your sword. If you meet a man who is not a poet, don't read him your poem."

-- Lao Tsu

"To make use of your mind to think conceptually is to leave substance and attach yourself to form"

-- Huang Po

"From discrimination between this and that a host of demons spring forth"

-- Huang Po

"Don't be angry when the dancing elephant steps on your feet. Be happy that the elephant can dance at all."

-- W. L. Kennedy

"We live in a world lit by lightning. After the flash, we're blind again."

-- T-Bone Burnett

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing."

-- T.S. Elliott in "Four Quartets"

"I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it the right way, did not become more complicated."

-- Poul Anderson

"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space: everything else is opinion"

--Democritos of Adbera

"Men need some kind of external activity, because they are inactive within."

-- Schopenhauer, Further Psychological Observations, 1851

"Before enlightenment chop wood and carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water."

-- Wu Li

"Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success."

-- Swami Sivananda

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when the do it from religious conviction"

-- Blais Pascal

"I'm a virgin, I'm just not very good at it."

-- Valeria Golino, "Hot Shots"

"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm."

-- Colette

"To give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul."

-- Samuel Ullman

"The more we get out of the world the less we leave, and in the long run we shall have to pay for our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our own survival."

-- Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings

"One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an adviser to scientists is to discourage them from expecting too much from mathematics."

-- Norbert Wiener

"A professor is one who can speak on any subject -- for precisely fifty minutes."

-- Norbert Wiener

"The Advantage is that mathematics is a field in which one's blunders tend to show very clearly and can be corrected or erased with a stroke of the pencil. It is a field which has often been compared with chess, but differs from the latter in that it is only one's best moments that count and not one's worst. A single inattention may lose a chess game, whereas a single successful approach to a problem, among many which have been relegated to the wastebasket, will make a mathematician's reputation."

-- Norbert Wiener in Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth.

"The best material model of a cat is another, or preferably the same, cat."

-- Norbert Wiener and A Rosenblueth in Philosophy of Science 1945

"Scientific discovery consists in the interpretation for our own convenience of a system of existence which has been made with no eye to our convenience at all."

-- Norbert Wiener

"You can never step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are forever flowing upon you."

-- anon

"The tree in which the sap is stagnant remains fruitless."

-- Hosea Ballou

"When the student is truly ready to learn, a teacher will appear."

-- from Zen Philosophy

"Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved."

-- Western Zen Saying

"The higher the truth, the simpler it is."

-Abraham Isaac Kook

"Words are the fog one has to see through."

-- Zen Saying

"Sometimes the highest form of action is inaction."

-- Jerry Brown

"The Mind is the slayer of the Real."

-- The Voice of the Slience

"Think of Zen, of the Void, of Good and Evil, and you are bound hand and foot. Think only and entirely and completely of what you're doing at the moment and you are free as a bird."

-- R.H. Blyth

"I don't believe I can really do without teaching."

-- Richard Feynman

"Another thing I must point out is that you cannot prove a vague theory wrong."

-- Richard Feynman

"One truly understands only what one can create."

-- Giambattista Vico

"Science is a process for learning about nature in which competing ideas about how the world works are masured against observations."

-- Richard Feynman

"I've come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized."

-- Haim Ginott

"Raising a child is very much like building a skyscraper. If the first few stories are slightly out of line. no one will notice. But when the building is 18 or 20 stories high, everyone will see that it tilts."

-- Jim Bishop

The mediocre teacher tells,
The good teacher explains,
The superior teacher demonstrates,
The *great* teacher inspires.

-- William A. Ward

"If we expect students to be winners and expect them to do well, they will rise to the occasion."

-- Jaime Escalante

"We can talk all we want about awards and salary raises, but the real reward of teaching is teaching. The personal satisfaction you get when you do it effectively is just phenomenal."

-- David W. Pratt

"The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there."

-- Robert Pirsig

"Zen in the unsymbolization of the world."

-- R. H. Blyth

We dance around in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

-- Robert Frost from "The Secret Sits"

And those who say, "I'll try anything once," often try nothing twice, three times, arriving late at the gate of dreams worth dying for.

-- Carl Sandburg

"Write the bad things that are done to you in sand,
but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble."

-- Arab proverb

"Smooth seas do not make for good sailors."

-- proverb

?The crisis was over. What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities."

-- from the book "2010"

"Friendshipis the comfort, the inexpressable comfort of feeling safe with a person having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words but pouring all right out just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of comfort, blow the rest away."

-- anon

"Progress does not consist of replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is right. It consists of replacing a theory that is wrong with one that is more subtly wrong."

-- anon

"The only gift is a protion of thyself... therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer, corn; the miner, a gem; the sailer, coral and shells; the painter, his picture; the girl, a hankerchief of the own sewing."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"The Earth is our mother; our nine months are up."

-- anon

"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."

-- anon

"Remember, one treats others with courtesy and respect not because they are gentlemen or gentlewomen, but because you are."

-- Garth Henrichs

"Be excellent to each other!"

-- Bill and Ted

"Be usable to each other!"

-- Usability Man

"Alice: 'Where do I go from here?'

The Cheshire Cat: "That depends on where you want to get to."

-- Alice in Wonderland

"If I Had My Life to Live Over, I'd dare to make more mistakes. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones. You see, I'm one of those people who live sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had it to do over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have. If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies."

-- Nadine Stair, age 85

"I think the highest and lowest points are the important ones. All the points in between are, well, in between."

-- Jim Morrison

"If you understand, things are just as they are; you do not understand, things are just as they are."

-- Zen verse

"In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons."

-- Herodotus

"There never was a good war, or a bad peace."

-- Benjamin Franklin

"For want of a nail a shoe was lost, for want of a shoe a horse was lost, for want of a horse a rider was lost, for want of a rider a army was lost, for want of an army a battle was lost, for want of a battle the war was lost, for want of the war the kingdom was lost, and all for the want of a little horseshoe nail."

-- Benjamin Franklin

"The war [in Vietnam] which we can neither win, lose, nor drop is evidence of an instability of ideas."

-- Senator Scott ?, from the movie The Fog of War

"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left."

-- anon

"Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people."

-- Jawaharlal Nehru

"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."

-- Mother Teresa

"All we are saying is give peace a chance."

-- John Lennon

"The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith."

-- John Foster Dulles

"The perfect life: to live in a world of peace in a lake district where the magistrate is good and honest, and to have an understanding wife and bright children."

-- Chang Chao

"The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be."

-- Bruce Lee

"The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to performance in physical activities"

-- Bruce Lee

"When you are totally defeated you begin again to enjoy the small things around you.' Voytek later explained. 'Just going again to the mountains, not for victory or glory, but to enjoy nature or to enjoy fine people. If you always succeed you enjoy the admiration of many people. Being defeated means being limited to the basic existential choices of life. If you can enjoy the quiet evening hours it is beautiful; a hero who always succeeds may not have time to enjoy such things."

-- Wojtek Kurtyka, Polish high-altitude climber
from Climbing magazine, 8-9/89,
"Between the Hammer and the Anvil"

"There could be no honor in a sure success, but much might be wrested from a sure defeat."

-- TE Lawrence, "Revolt in the Desert" ch 19

"Authority never matches responsibility. That's one of the great myths and delusions of all times. Winning managers and individual performers at all levels know that effectiveness means building your own network and creating your own authority. Those who succeed always reach far beyond formal deputation, take initiatives, and take the heat when things go awry. That's true in the military in times of war, true for 200 person manufacturing firms, and true at giant automakers or software companies."

-- Tom Peters

"I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do."

-- HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey"

Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

-- HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey"

"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

-- Michael Sinz

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."

-- Aristotle

"The whole is more than the sum of its parts."

-- Aristotle (Metaphysica 330 BC)

"In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman."

-- Margaret Thatcher

"If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know."

-- Louis Armstrong

"Soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instict come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day... we become seekers."

-- Peter Matthiessen

"You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length."

-- Gauss

"Theory attracts practice as the magnet attracts iron."

-- attrib. Gauss

"I recognize the lion by his paw."

-- Jacob Bernoulli recognizing an anonymous solution by Newton

"If you can't solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can't solve: find it."

-- Pólya

"This sentence no verb"

-- Douglas Hofsteader

"I have a mind like a steel... uh... thingy."

-- Patrick Logan's weblog

"Hofsteader's law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofsteader's Law into account."

-- Douglas Hofsteader

"If Jesus comes out of his tomb on Easter and sees his shadow, do we have six more weeks of Lent?"

-- anon

"Television is about watching a life instead of having one."

-- Beth Mazur

"Not everyone can be a hero, someone has to sit on the sidewalk and clap as they go by"

-- Will Rogers

"I don' tmake jokes - I just watch the government and report the facts."

-- Will Rogers

"Suffering is inevitable. Misery is a choice."

-- anon

"Men always fear things which move by themselves."

-- The Ghola (Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert)

"Nothing is so eternally adhesive as the memory of power."

-- Isaac Asimov

"A man without a woman is like a kite without the wind."

-- Robert Heckendorn

"The flesh surrenders itself. Eternity takes back its own. Our bodies stirred these waters briefly, danced with a certain intoxication before the love of life and self, delt with a few strange ideas, then submitted to the instruments of time. What can we say of this? I occurred. I am not. Yet I occurred."

-- Maud 'Dib (Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert)

"He speaks of death because that's necessary, Stil. It's a tension by which the living know they're alive."

-- Ghanima (Children of Dune by Frank Herbert)

"Balance is what distinguishs a people from a mob."

-- Maud 'Dib (Dune Trilogy by Frank Herbert)

"The joy of living, its beauty, is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you."

-- Leto Atrides (Dune Trilogy by Frank Herbert)

"Most deadly errors occur from obsolete assumptions."

-- Bene Gesserit saying (Dune Trilogy by Frank Herbert)

"The life of man is but a succession of vain hopes and groundless fears."

-- Montequieu

"Communism is just one big telephone company."

-- Lenny Bruce

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."

-- Bill Cosby

"Nothing in the world is so powerful as an idea whose time has come."

-- Victor Hugo

"The cost of living is dying."

-- Seen on a T-shirt

"There is a thin line between courage and foolishness"

-- Robert Heckendorn

"A chicken is just one egg's way of making another egg."

-- anon

"A messy office is a happy office. This office is delerious."

-- anon

"There is only one true beast in the bull ring, the crowd."

-- anon

"He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.

-- Leonard Da Vinci

"Some people think the glass is half full. Others think it is half empty. I think the glass is too big."

-- George Carlin

"I keep six honest seving men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who."

-- "The Elephants Child", Rudyard Kipling [1865-1904]

"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race."

-- H.G. Wells

"Bicycling is a big part of the future...it has to be....there is something wrong with a society that drives a car to work out at a gym."

-- Bill Nye, the Science Guy

"... she will never know what it feels like to pump first over the crest of the hill with the others strung out behind her like the beads sliding off a broken necklace."

-- anon (about bike racing)

"Klaatu barada nikto!"

-- From the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still"

"If you ever get a second chance in life for something, go all the way."

-- Lance Armstrong who won the Tour de France