Quotes I Love
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Toby (age 3 or 4) doing a shape puzzle:
"This is a circle. This is a triangle. This is a rectangle."
(*** long pause ***)
"I don't know what this is."
Trevor: "That's a rhombus."
[longer pause]
Toby: "I can't say rhombus."
"I am a man of fixed and unbending principles: the first is to be flexible at all times."
~ U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen (1896-1969)
Amira (5): "When I grow up, I'm going to be a doctor."
Mia (4): Not me. When I grow up, I'm going to be a big bunny."
"Argue like you're right and listen like you're wrong."
~ Adam Grant, organizational psychologist
Corey (5): "Hey! There's a cop on a bicycle. (pause) He'll never catch any speeders!"
"I've finally found a way to end a sentence with five preposition
s. A boy is going to bed, and his father brings him a book from downstairs to read to him, but it's the wrong book. The boy says, 'What did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to out of up for?'"
~ E.B. White
“It's a dangerous thing to mistake speaking without thought for speaking the truth.”
~ Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc in "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery"
"Say anything you like about me, but spell my name right."
~ Phineas T. Barnum
"Do or do not. There is no try."
~ Yoda
"My tastes are simple: I like only the best."
~ Mark Twain
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."
~ Mark Twain
"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door."
~ Milton Berle
"Once you get to know me, I'm still just like this."
~ a button I wear
"Knowledge may have its purposes, but guessing is always more fun than knowing"
~ W.H. Auden
"'Well,' said Owl, 'the customary procedure in such cases is as follows.'
'What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?' said Pooh. 'For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words bother me.'
'It means the thing to do.'"
~ A.A. Milne in Winnie-the-Pooh
"Who was your servant last year?"
~ my Mom
[at the dinner table]
"Let good food stop your noise."
~ my Pop
[also at the dinner table]
"How can you miss such a big hole?"
~ my big brother Ross
"Well... when I say three, I mean four."
~ Dave Roscoe
[Explanation: In college, I helped prep a weekly community meal. Dave's crew always did a roast beef dinner. When attendance got to a certain number, he'd tell the crew to put more roasts in the ovens. The full quote is: "Better put three more roasts in, John. Well... when I say three, I mean four." I've used this quote ever since when people don't quite say what they actually mean or when what they mean to say suddenly changes while they're saying it.]
"Trees are good."
~ Artie (on a radio show)
"You impudent piece of crockery!"
~ Merlin the Magician
"Make the good and true choice and all these will be added for you."
~ The Bible, I Kings 3:11-13
"If you want to win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend."
~ Abraham Lincoln
~ Toni Vernelli
"In a marriage of one man with one wife, sharing real married love, the wife becomes more and more a wife and the husband more and more a husband. Real married love joins two more and more into one person. And a wife becomes a wife by conjunction with her husband and according to it. The same goes for a husband's conjunction with his wife. And love of marriage goes on to eternity. So consequently a wife becomes more and more a wife and a husband more and more a husband. The reason for this is precisely that in a marriage with real married love, both become more and more inwardly human. For that love opens the deeper parts of their minds, and a person becomes more and more human as these are opened. To become more human for a wife is to become more a wife, and for a husband it is to become more a husband.
I have heard from angels that a wife becomes more and more a wife at the rate that her husband becomes more and more a husband but not vice versa. For
a chaste wife loves her husband — this is rarely if ever missing — but love from a husband in return does fail. It is missing if his wisdom is not being raised up. Wisdom is the only thing that receives a wife's love."
~ Emanuel Swedenborg, Love in Marriage ¶ 200
"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person."
~ Mignon McLaughlin
"Heaven isn't a reward for being good; heaven is how it feels to be good."
~ Rev. Dr. George F. Dole
"People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway."
~ Mother Teresa
~ Rev. Paul Martin
"The most powerful thing you can do to change the world is to change your own beliefs about the nature of life, people, and reality to something more positive... and begin to act accordingly."
~ Shakti Gawain
[When his wife asks if he feels resentment towards their harassers, Frank replies:]
"You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day, all the time. You have to keep remembering the bad things. It's too much work."
~ Frank Roennfeldt, character in M.L. Stedman's The Light Between Two Oceans
"If every single person who has liked you in your lifetime were to light up on a map, it would create the most glitteringly beautiful network you could imagine. Throw in the strangers you've been kind to, the people you've made laugh or inspired along the way, and that star-bright network of you would be an impressive sight to behold. You're so much more than you think you are. You have done so much more than you realize. You're trailing a bright pathway that you don't even know about. What a thing. What a thing indeed."
~ Donna Ashworth
"... a number of flawed individuals can often add up to a brilliant social unit."
~ Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities vol. 1
"All my life, the one thing I feared the most was mediocrity."
~ Errol Flynn
"For me, a person, as distinguished from an average anybody, is one who has a distinctive style. He has reflected on his style. He can describe himself as others see him. He knows himself. Moreover, after reflection, he has chosen to be as he is. He has a position. He takes a stand. He is unique, an individual. When I understand him, his style, his stand, his whole world is of one piece. It makes sense. He is not just a messy copy of others' opinions and ways. Such a person is interesting, like a 
complex drama with one rich thread of meaning running through it. Self-reflection forges of this kind of individuality."
~ Wilson Van Dusen in The Natural Depth in Man
"'What a curious feeling!' said Alice. 'I must be shutting up like a telescope.'
And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought she was now the right size for going through the little door into that lovely garden. First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; 'for it might end, you know,' said Alice to herself, 'in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?' And she tried to 
fancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing."
~ Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland
"'Anne? What's so special about the way that lad kisses?'
Anne looked dreamy, then dimpled.'You should have tried it.'
'I'm too old to change. But I'm interested in everything about the boy. Is this something different?'
Anne pondered it. 'Yes.'
'How?'
'Mike gives a kiss his whole attention.'
'Oh, rats! I do myself. Or did.'
Anne shook her head. 'No. I've been kissed by men who did a very good job. But they didn't give kissing their whole attention. They can't. No matter how hard they try, parts of their minds are on something else: missing the last bus, or their chances for making the gal, or their own techniques in kissing, or maybe worry about jobs, or money, or will husband or papa or the neighbors catch on. Mike doesn't have technique... but when Mike kisses you, he isn't doing anything else. You're his whole universe... and the moment is eternal because he doesn't have any plans and isn't going anywhere. Just kissing you.' She shivered. 'It's overwhelming.'"
~ Robert A. Heinlein in Stranger in a Strange Land
"Freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep."
~ Isaiah Berlin
"Had [my memory] been faithful to me, I should have deafened all my friends with my chatter, the subjects arousing in me the little faculty I possess for handling and employing them, drawing out and warming my eloquence. That would be a pity, as I have experienced in the case of some of my intimate friends: according as their memory supplies them with a full and present view of their subject matter, they carry their narrative so far back, and stuff it with so many needless details that, if the story be good, they stifle its goodness; if it is not good, you begin t
o curse either their good fortune in having such a memory, or their misfortune in having such a poor judgement. And when, once you are on the high road of a narrative, it is difficult to stop and cut it short. There is nothing in which a horse's power is better seen than in a neat and dead stop."
~ Michel Eyquem de Montaigne in his essay On Liars
"'I always say, you can't expect to know about a boy till you're married, not really,' she said.
'I suppose not,' said Jane.
'Of course, it's the same for them,' added Ivy. 'My old Dad used often to say he'd never have married Mom, not if he'd known how she snored. And she said herself, 'No, Dad, that you wouldn't!'
'That's rather different, I suppose,' said Jane.
'Well, what I say is, if it wasn't one thing it'd be something else. That's how I look at it. And it isn't as if they hadn't a lot to put up with, too, because they've sort of got to get married if they're the right sort, poor things, but, whatever we say, Jane, a woman takes a lot of living with. I don't mean what you'd call a bad woman. I remember one day --- it was before you came --- Mother Dimble was saying something to the Doctor; and there he was sitting reading something, you know the way he does, with his fingers under some of the pages and a pencil in his hand --- not the way you or I read --- and he just said, 'Yes, dear,' and we both of us knew he hadn't been listening. And I said, 'There you are, Mother Dimble,' said I, 'that's how they treat us once they're married. And do you know what she said? 'Ivy Maggs,' said she, 'did it ever come into your mind to ask whether anyone could listen to all we say?' Those were her very words. Of course I wasn't going to give in to it, not before him, so I said, 'Yes, they could.'
But it was a fair knockout. You know, often I've been talking to my
husband for a long time and he's looked up and asked me what I've been saying, and do you know? I haven't been able to remember myself!"
~ C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength
"'There are no servants here,' said Mother Dimble, 'and we all do the work. The women do it one day and the men the next. What? No, it's a very sensible arrangement. The Director's idea is that men and women can't do housework together without quarreling. There's something in it. Of course, it doesn't do to look at the cups too closely on the men's day, but on the whole we got along pretty well.'
'But why should they quarrel?' asked Jane.
'Different methods, my dear. Men can't help in a job, you know. They can be induced to do it: not to help while you're doing it. At least, it makes them grumpy.'
'The cardinal difficulty,' said MacPhee, 'in collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of work, one will say to the other, "put this bowl inside the bigger bowl which you'll find on the top shelf of the green cupboard." The female for this is, "Put that in the other one in there." And then if you ask them, "in where?" they say, "in there, of course." There is consequently a phatic hiatus.' He pronounced this so as to rhyme with "get at us."
'There's your tea now,' said Ivy Maggs, 'and I'll go and get you a piece of cake, which is more than you deserve. And when you've had it you can go upstairs and talk about nouns for the rest of the evening.'
'Not about nouns: by means of nouns,' said MacPhee, but Mrs. Maggs had already left the room."
~ C.S. Lewis in That Hideous Strength
"I don't know what it is you're mad at, lady, but you're yelling at a friend."
~ Robert Mitchum as Johnny Thompson in "Thompson's Last Run"
"I, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzo Galilei, Florentine, aged seventy years, arraigned personally before this tribunal and kneeling before you, Most Eminent and Reverend Lord Cardinals Inquisitors-General against heretical pravity throughout the entire Christian commonwealth, having before my eyes and touching with my hands the Holy Gospels, swear that I have always believed, do believe, and by God's help will in the future believe all that is help, preached, and taught by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. But, whereas --- after an injunction had been judicially intimated to me by this holy Office to the effect that I must altogether abandon the false opinion that the Sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the Earth is not the center of the world and moves and that I must not hold, defend, or teach in an way whatsoever, verbally or in writing, the said false doctrine, and after it had been notified to me that the said doctrine was contrary to Holy Scripture --- I wrote and printed a book in which I discuss this new doctrine already condemned and adduce arguments of great cogency in its favor without presenting any solution of these, I have been pronounced by the Holy Office to be vehemently suspected of heresy, that is to say, of having held and believed that the Sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the Earth is not the center and moves:
Therefore, desiring to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of all faithful Christians, this vehement suspicion justly conceived against me, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies and generally every other error, heresy, and sect whatsoever contrary to the Holy Church, and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me; but, should I know any heretic or person suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office or to the Inquisitor or Ordinary of myself to all the pains and penalties imposed and promulgated in the sacred canons and other the place where I may be. Further, I swear and promise to fulfill and observe in their integrity all penances that have been, or that shall be, imposed upon me by this Holy Office. And, in the event of my contravening (which God forbid!) any of these my promises and oaths, I submit constitutions, general and particular, against such delinquents. 
So help me God and these His Holy Gospels, which I touch with my hands."
~ Galileo
"But it does move!"
~ attributed to Galileo immediately after the above forced recant in 1633
"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much."
~ Helen Keller
"The Seven Blunders of the World:
Wealth without work
Pleasure without conscience
Knowledge without character
Commerce without morality
Science without humanity
Worship without sacrifice
Politics without principles"
~ Mahatma Ghandi
"Our family was at an outdoor fair watching a caricature artist at work when a 50-something woman stopped to watch as well. When she saw the the artist charged $15 for a caricature, she gasped, 'Fifteen dollars— just to have someone draw my wrinkles!' The artist turned slowly and studied her face for a moment before replying, 'I don't see any wrinkles.' She immediately sat down and had her portrait done."
~ a magazine clipping from years ago, most likely from Readers' Digest
"The bouncer is a sumo wrestler cream-puff Casper Milquetoast,
And the owner is a mental midget with the I.Q. of a fence post."
~ Tom Waits in his song "The Piano Has Been Drinking"
"We have both kinds of music: country and western."
~ Claire, wife of Bob at Bob's Country Corral, "The Blues Brothers"
"The comedian had a few jokes about the unemployed, but none of them worked."
~ unknown
[desperately explaining why he missed his wedding:]
"You betrayed me."
"No I didn't. Honest. I ran out of gas. I had a flat tire. I didn't have 
enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. It wasn't my fault. I swear to God!"
~ John Belushi as Joliet Jake in "The Blues Brothers"
Chapter 10
"He found himself in the neighborhood of the asteroids 325, 326, 327, 328, 329, and 330. He began, therefore, by visiting them, in order to add to his knowledge.
The first of them was inhabited by a king. Clad in royal purple and ermine, he was seated upon a throne which was at the some time both simple and majestic.
'Ah! Here is a subject,' exclaimed the king, when he saw the little prince coming.
And the little prince asked himself: 'How could he recognize me when he had never seen me before?'
He did not know how the world is simplified for kings. To them, all men are subjects.
'Approach, so that I may see you better,' said the king, who felt consumingly proud of being at last a king over somebody.
The little prince looked everywhere to find a place to sit down; but the entire planet was crammed and obstructed by the king's magnificent ermine robe. So he remained standing upright, and, since he was tired, he yawned.
'It is contrary to etiquette to yawn in the presence of a king,' the monarch said to him. 'I forbid you to do so.'
'I can't help it. I can't stop myself,' replied the little prince, thoroughly embarrassed. 'I have come on a long journey, and I have had no sleep...'
'Ah, then,' the king said. 'I order you to yawn. It is years since I have seen anyone yawning. Yawns, to me, are objects of curiosity. Come, now! Yawn again! It is an order.'
'That frightens me... I cannot, any more...' murmured the little prince, now completely abashed.
'Hum! Hum!' replied the king. 'Then I... I order you sometimes to yawn and sometimes to...' He sputtered a little, and seemed vexed.
For what the king fundamentally insisted upon was that his authority should be respected. He tolerated no disobedience. He was an absolute morarch. But, because he was a very good man, he made his orders reasonable.
'If I ordered a general,' he would say, by way of example, 'if I ordered a general to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not obey me, that would not be the fault of the general. It would be my fault.'
'May I sit down?' came now a timid inquiry from the little prince.
'I order you to do so,' the king answered him, and majestically gathered in a fold of his ermine mantle.
But the little prince was wondering... The planet was tiny. Over what could this king really rule?
'Sire,' he said to him, 'I beg that you will excuse my asking you a question—'
'I order you to ask me a question,' the king hastened to assure him.
'Sir --- over what do you rule?'
'Over everything,' said the king, with magnificent simplicity.
'Over everything?'
The king made a gesture, which took in his planet, the other planets, and all the stars.
'Over all that?' asked the little prince.
'Over all that,' the king answered. For his rule was not only absolute: it was also universal.
'And the stars obey you?'
'Certainly they do,' the king said. 'They obey instantly. I do not permit insubordination.'
Such power was a thing for the little prince to marvel at. If he had been master of such complete authority, he would have been able to watch the sunset, not forty-four times in one day, but seventy-two, or even a hundred, or even two hundred times, without ever having to move his chair. And because he felt a bit sad as he remembered his little planet which he had forsaken, he plucked up his courage to ask the king a favor: 'I should like to see a sunset... Do me that kindness... Order the sun to set...'
'If I ordered a general to fly from one flower to another like a butterfly, or to write a tragic drama, or to change himself into a sea bird, and if the general did not carry out the order that he had received, which one of us would be in the wrong?' the king demanded. 'The general, or myself?'
'You,' said the little prince firmly.
'Exactly. One must require from each one the duty which each one can perform,' the king went on. 'Accepted authority rests first of all on reason. If you ordered your people to go and throw themselves into the sea, they would rise up in revolution. I have the right to require obedience because my orders are reasonable.'
'Then my sunset?' the little prince reminded him: for he never forgot a question once he had asked it.
'You shall have your sunset. I shall command it. But according to my science of government, I shall wait until the conditions are favorable.'
'When will that be?' inquired the little prince.
'Hum! Hum!' replied the king; and before saying anything else he consulted a bulky almanac. 'Hum! Hum! That will be about... about... that will be this evening about twenty minutes to eight. And you will see how well I am obeyed!'
The little prince yawned. He was regretting his lost sunset. And then, too, he was already beginning to be a little bored.
'I have nothing more to do here,' he said to the king. 'So I shall set out on my way again.'
'Do not go,' said the king, who was very proud of having a subject. 'Do not go. I will make you a Minister!'
'Minister of what?'
'Minister... of Justice!'
'But there is nobody here to judge!'
'We do not know that,' the king said to him. 'I have not yet made a complete tour of my kingdom. I am very old. There is no room here for a carriage. And it tires me to walk.'
'Oh, but I have looked already!' said the little prince, turning around to give one more glance to the other side of the planet. On that side, as on this, there was nobody at all...
'Then you shall judge yourself,' the king answered. 'That is the most difficult thing of all. It is much more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself rightly, then you are indeed a man of true wisdom.'
'Yes,' said the little prince, 'but I can judge myself anywhere. I do not need to live on this planet.'
'Hum! Hum! said the king. 'I have good reason to believe that somewhere on my planet there is an old rat. I hear him at night. You can judge this old rat. From time to time you will condemn him to death. Thus his life will depend on your justice. But you will pardon him on each occasion; for he must be treated thriftily. He is the only one we have.'
'I,' replied the little prince, 'do not like to condemn anyone to death. And now I think I will go on my way.'
'No,' said the king.
But the little prince, having now completed his preparations for departure, had no wish to grieve the old monarch.
'If Your Majesty wishes to be promptly obeyed,' he said, 'he should be able to give me a reasonable order. He should be able, for example, to order me to be gone by the end of one minute. It seems to me that conditions are favorable...'
As the king made no answer, the little prince hesitated a momen
t. then, with a sigh, he took his leave.
'I make you my Ambassador,' the king called out, hastily.
He had a magnificent air of authority.
'The grown-up are very strange,' the little prince said to himself, as he continued on his journey.'"
~ Antoine de Saint Exupery in The Little Prince
[When asked if she remembered a wrong done to her some time in the past, Clara Barton replied:]
"No, I distinctly remember forgetting that."
~ Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross
"Pardner, it's been my experience that there ain't nothin' more ruthless and treacherous than a genuine good woman."
~ Lee Marvin as Ben Rumson in "Paint Your Wagon"
"Beware of polite jerks."
~ Rob Brezsny, FreeWillAstrology
"Don't rush to attribute to deviousness that which can be explained by incompetence."
~ Mark Evanier
[Dr G and his girlfriend both
have announcements. He goes first saying, among other things, that
because of all the bad stuff in the world it would be a "colossally bad
idea" to have babies. Hers, of course, is that she's pregnant. She goes
on to ask him if he really meant what he'd said about having children.]
Dr G: I meant it at the time."
His girlfriend "At the time??? You said it 7-1/2 seconds ago!!"
Dr G: Well, gosh... [looooong pause] a lot has happened since then."
~ Nicholas Cage as Dr. Stanley Goodspeed in "The Rock"
[to her friend Addison]
"Hey! You wanna meet my friend Gramma?!"
~ Chloe Snyder (age 4)
"[L]ittle children... are in peace because they are in innocence, and
because they are in peace are, in their whole nature, full of play.”
~ Emanuel Swedenborg in Heaven and Hell ¶288.jpg)
"If it's dollarable, it's not safe."
~John Muir
"Once social change begins, it can't be reversed."
~ Cesar Chavez
"Personally, I'd never want to be a member of any group where you either have to wear a hat or you can't wear a hat."
~ George Carlin
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that
we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be
brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to
be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same."
~Marianne Williamson
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"The best thing to hold onto in life is each other."
~Audrey Hepburn
"If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased"
~Audrey Hepburn
"On the stock market today: helium was up, feathers were down, paper was stationary, fluorescent tubes were down in light trading, knives were up sharply, pencils were down a few points, elevators were up and down, escalators experienced a light decline, mining equipment hit rock bottom, sun peaked at midday, the market for raisins dried up, there was no movement for artists' models, vacuum cleaners picked up, caravans were trailing, socks were unchanged, balloon prices were inflated, and the bottom fell out of disposable diapers."
~ The Mammoth Book of Humor
"People who can't distinguish between entomology and etymology bug me in a way I just can't put into words."
~ unknown
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"We have to conclude, therefore, that civilization is, in its earliest phases, played. It does not come from play, like a babe detaching itself from the womb: it arises in and as play, and never leaves it."
~ Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: a Study of the Play Element in Culture
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by Richard Lovelace
"Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is, ironically, the fear of long words"
~ unknown
"I decided to procrastinate once, but then I never got around to it."
~ unknown
"When I count my blessings, I find you in every one.
~ Richelle E. Goodrich
"There is nothing more beautiful than finding your course as you believe you bob aimlessly in the current. Your path was there all along, waiting for you to knock, waiting for you to become."
~ Jodie Foster
"We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because
we quit playing. "
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
YOU WILL BE 100% SATISFIED AND
YOUR GROUP WILL HAVE A WHOLE LOT OF FUN...
OR IT'S FREE!