Sleep

Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.
Noam Chomsky (1928-)

Consciousness is the annoying time between naps.

Sleep faster; we need the pillows.

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Society

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.
Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Outer space is no place for a person of breeding.
Lady Violet Bonham Carter

The upper crust is just a lot of crumbs sticking together.

There are more of them than us.
Herb Caen

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

We live in an age where pizza gets to your home before the police.

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Statistics

A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and he will say that on the average he feels fine.

A statistician is a person who draws a mathematically precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion.

Half the people in the world are below average.

Numbers are like people; torture them enough and they'll tell you anything.

Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, what they conceal is vital.
Aaron Levenstein

Statistics are to be used as a drunk man uses lamp posts: for support rather than illumination.

The Lottery is a tax on people who don't understand statistics.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

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Streaking

Streakers beware: your end is in sight.

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Suicide

It's not the fall that kills you but the sudden stop at the end.

Suicide is belated acquiescence in the opinion of one's wife's relatives.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

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Talking

He hasn't got much to say, but at least he doesn't try to say anything else.
Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

Of those who say nothing, few are silent.

The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.
Fran Lebowitz

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
Epictetus (55-135)

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Tattoos

The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who have tattoos, and those who are afraid of people with tattoos.

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Television

Chewing gum for the eyes.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)

Television has changed a child from an irresistible force to an immovable object.
Laurence J. Peter (1919-)

Television is a medium in that it is neither rare nor well done.
Ernie Kovacs

Television is not something you watch; it's something you appear on.
Noël Coward (1899-1973)

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Temptation

Yield to temptation; it may not pass your way again.

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Deep Thoughts

A conclusion is simply the place where someone got tired of thinking.

A day without sunshine is like night.

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
Lao-tzu (c.500BC)

All that is gold does not glitter; nor all those that wander are lost.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973)

As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.
Hughes Mearns (1875-1965)

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Confusion never reigns but it pours.

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Geography is everywhere.

How can you know what you think until you open your mouth and hear what you say?

I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

If you try to fail and succeed, which have you achieved?

I'm pink, therefore I'm Spam.

Information is not knowledge; knowledge is not wisdom; wisdom is not truth; truth is not beauty; beauty is not love.

I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.

I used to be conceited, but now I'm absolutely perfect.

I used to think I was indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.

If the human brain were simple enough to understand, we'd be so simple we couldn't.

Ignorance is the mother of admiration.
George Chapman (1559?-1634)

In each of us there is a little of all of us.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

In the beginning was the word. And the word was 'Aardvark'.

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.

It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.
Steven Wright (1955-)

It was such a lovely day I thought it was a pity to get up.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)

Lazy people have no spare time.

Never trust anybody who says "trust me".

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.
ee cummings (1894-1962)

Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.
Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

One hundred thousand lemmings can't be wrong.

Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible.

'Onomatopoeia' is spelled the way it sounds.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Sick yaks leave light tracks.

So near and yet so what?

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

The more you run over a dead cat, the flatter it gets.

The only reason people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
Paul Fix

The superfluous is very necessary.
Voltaire (1694-1778)

There are things that are so serious that you can only joke about them.
Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976)

Whither atrophy?

Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?
La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

Why is there is only one Monopolies Commission?

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Time

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use.
Wendell Johnson

Constipation is timeless, but diarrhoea waits for no man.

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
Napoléon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

How long a minute is depends upon which side of the bathroom door you're on.

In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.

It doesn't necessarily happen in chronological order.
Douglas Adams (1952-)

Let others praise ancient times; I am glad I was born in these.
Ovid (43BC-AD17)

Men talk of killing time, while time quietly kills them.
Dion Boucicault (1820-1890)

Monday is an awful way to spend one seventh of your life.

Most things, except agriculture, can wait.
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964)

The speed of time is one second per second.

There is a time and a place for everything unless you're trying to park a car.

There is never enough time, unless you're serving it.
Malcolm Forbes (1919-1990)

There is no future in time travel.

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.

We drift down time clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?
Tom Stoppard (1937-)

We exchange time for objects, in hopes of gaining something that will endure.

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Torture

Some tortures are physical
And some are mental,
But the one that is both
Is dental.
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

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Trains

The only sure way of catching a train is to miss the one before it.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

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Translations

Translations (like wives) are seldom faithful if they are in the least attractive.
Roy Campbell (1901-1957)

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Travel

If it's tourist season, why can't we shoot them?

The world is a great big book, of which those who never travel read only one page.
St. Augustine (?-605)

Tourists are terrorists with cameras. Terrorists are tourists with guns.

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Trespassers

Trespassers will be shot; survivors will be prosecuted.
Mitch Million (1960-)

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The Truth

A good storyteller never lets the facts get in the way.

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
André Gide (1869-1951)

He said true things, but called them by the wrong names.
Robert Browning (1812-1889)

I have seen the truth and it makes no sense.

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

It infuriates me to be wrong when I know I'm right.
Molière (1622-1673)

Like all dreamers, I confused disenchantment with truth.
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth. Invariably, he will pick himself up and carry on.

The secret of success is sincerity. Once you can fake that you've got it made.
Jean Giraudoux (1882-1944)

The truth is the best lie.

Truth and credibility are usually incompatible.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

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Vices & Virtues

All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
Alexander Wolcott

Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels so good.

I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

My smoking might be bothering you, but it's killing me.

My virtue's still far too small, I don't trot it out and about yet.
Colette (1873-1954)

Never practice two vices at once.
Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968)

Once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.

Temptation laughs at the fool who takes it seriously.

Vice is its own reward.
Quentin Crisp (1931-)

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Virtue is its own revenge.
E.Y. Harburg

While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several.

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The Weather

Weather forecast for tonight: dark.

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Wisdom

All true wisdom is found on T-shirts.

Be the first to say what is self-evident, and you are immortal.
Marie Ebner-Eschenbach (1830-1916)

It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
Aeschylus (525BC-456BC)

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
James Thurber (1894-1961)

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Some folk are wise; and some are otherwise.
Tobias Smollett (1721-1771)

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

The road to excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
William Blake (1752-1827)

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them.
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881)

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Wit

Someone who thinks of himself as a wit is usually half right.

Wit is educated insolence.
Aristotle (384BC-322BC)

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Work

A team effort is a lot of people doing what I say.
Michael Winner (1935-)

Buses stop at bus stations, trains at train stations, and my desk has a workstation.

Doing nothing is tiring because you can't stop to rest.

Even a mosquito doesn't get a slap on the back until it starts to work.

I always arrive late to work, but I make up for it by leaving early.

I do most of my work sitting down. That's where I shine.
Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

I like work, I can sit and watch it for hours.

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
John Cleese (1939-)

People who do the world's real work don't usually wear ties.

People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)

The only person who got his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group, there is less competition.
Indira Gandhi (1917-1984)

Too many people are ready to carry the stool when the piano needs to be moved.

We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.

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Youth

Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.
Herbert Hoover (1874-1964)

Do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery?

'Heartless Cynics' the young men shout,
Blind to the world of Fact without;
'Silly Dreamers' the old men grin,
Deaf to the Purpose within.
W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

The folly of youth is wasted on the young.

Youth is such a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

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First Page

Compiled and edited by
Luis de Avendaño
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Updated on Sunday, 24 January 2010

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