"When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is."
Ayn Rand
"People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say."
Kurt Vonnegut
DIE, n.
The singular of "dice." We seldom hear the word, because there is a prohibitory proverb, "Never say die." At long intervals, however, some one says: "The die is cast," which is not true, for it is cut. The word is found in an immortal couplet by that eminent poet and domestic economist, Senator Depew:
A cube of cheese no larger than a die
May bait the trap to catch a nibbling mie.
* * *
"Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret."
* * *
"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher."
Ambrose Bierce
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you
Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
Kahlil Gibran, "The Prophet"
"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I read somewhere that 77 per cent of all the mentally ill live in poverty. Actually, I'm more intrigued by the 23 per cent who are apparently doing quite well for themselves."
Emo Philips
"I got kicked out of Riverdance for using my arms."
Gary Valentine
"My cousin just died. He was only 19. He got stung by a bee - the natural enemy of a tightrope walker."
Emo Philips
(On going to war over religion)
"You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend."
Rich Jeni
"And God said: 'Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on Me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan.'"
John Wing
A lady came up to me on the street and pointed to my suede jacket. "You know a cow was murdered for that jacket," she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, "I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too."
Jake Johanson
"Je veux tomber ta chemise! Non.....DESHABILLEZ-VOUS et laissez les bons temps rouler, mes amis."
Jessica and Eve
"Naked time!"
Dana Carvey
"Let all the children boogie."
David Bowie
"Besides, if I don't spend four hours a day cutting all the arms and legs out of the department-store sale flyers, Satan will give me cancer."
theOnion.com
"In all the stories, the farmer always comes on top of everyone."
Prof. Mutzi, missing an important "out" between "comes" and "on"
"I should have worn spandex or something today."
"Human beings aren't meant to spend EVERY DAY in the weight room."
The ever-memorable Victor Coonin
"If God had meant me to make sense, he would have given me a purple hangover."
Eve on making sense
"Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love."
Charlie Brown
"Love is like pi -- natural, irrational, and very important."
Lisa Hoffman
"in terms of touchy-feely-ness, i vary wildly between tickle-me-elmo and a porcupine."
Eve to Ryan
"Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway."
Judith Viorst
"A lot of fellows nowadays have a B.A., M.D., or Ph.D. Unfortunately, they don't have a J.O.B."
Fats Domino
"Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances."
Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina
"And another thing -- Hanson blows."
Donald Trump
New phrase borrowed from Betty Friedan: Male Chauvinist Piglet
"But that's what being an artist is -- feeling crummy before everyone else feels crummy."
The New Yorker
"Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults do in adultery?"
Anonymous
"I either want less corruption, or more chance to participate in it."
Ashleigh Brilliant
"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."
Thomas De Quincey
Dilbert: I've never seen a pierced brain before.
Pierced Brain Guy: I think I'll call you "Mister Conservative."
"Try not to have a good time . . . this is supposed to be educational."
Charles Schultz
"The purpose of a liberal education is to make you philosophical enough to accept the fact that you will never make much money."
Anonymous
"You only get Good Friday off, and if they hadn't stuck Christ on a cross you wouldn't get that either."
Alfredo, "Cinema Paradiso"
(During Friday night's Trivial Pursuit game:)
Jonathan: Who checked out on March 31st, 1968?
Eve: (completely clueless) I don't know . . . Bobby Kennedy?
Gravity: It isn't just a good idea--it's the law!
"I feel like a fugitive from the law of averages."
William Mauldin
"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."
Carl Jung
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."
Anonymous
"Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we
can think."
Werner Karl Heisenberg
The words of Ignatius Reilley, pedantic Boethian protagonist of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces:
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"Canned food is a perversion," Ignatius said. "I suspect that it is ultimately very damaging to the soul."
* * *
"Please go away!" Ignatius screamed. "You're shattering my religious ecstasy."
* * *
"Someday the authorities of our society will no doubt apprehend her for simply being herself."
* * *
"Only degenerates go touring."
* * *
"I assure you that I have been the very soul of cleanliness. My intimate habits are above reproach. Carrying no social diseases, I don't see what I could possibly transmit to your hot dogs that they do not already have. Look at these fingernails."
* * *
"The [French] Quarter is not unlike, I would imagine, Soho and certain sections of North Africa."
Finally, a perceptive judgement on Ignatius by a street urchin:
"You could tell by the way that he talked, though, that he had gone to school a long time. That was probably what was wrong with him."
"Some people on this planet just need to be tickled until they bawl. If you meet such a person on your daily meanderings, you have my permission to put this theory into practice."
* * *
Hey, kids, cliques suck. They suck ass. And unconsciously you may be in one. I would like to promote friendship, peace, and the death of quarrels among people. We should be busy living life, letting go of our problems, being more considerate of one another, thinking about everything, thinking about nothing, laughing--and not always at someone else's expense: there is laughter inherent in joy. Give your old friends a call and see what's up; they may appreciate it more than you know. Don't assume that the habits you've made are totally unchangeable--you had the power to get out of an old routine, you can get into a new one just as easily. Life is fluid and restless, but it is also beautiful, and fun, and very damn short. Do something different. Do something nice for someone else. Do something for yourself. Hang out with someone new. Talk about something new with an old friend. Never forget where you came from. And don't ever become too solitary to give someone else a hug.
Eve's plan file musings.
"The ultimate result of protecting men from the results of their own folly is to fill the world with fools."
Herbert Spencer
"Outside of a dog, a book is Man's best friend. And inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
Groucho Marx
"A wise man hears one word and understands two."
Yiddish Proverb
"We promise you'll experience a multiple sarcasm."
Brazen Hussies
"...the right-hand, still untasted part of the novel, which, during our
delectable reading, we would lightly feel, mechanically testing whether there were still plenty left (and our fingers were always gladdened by the placid, faithful thickness) has suddenly, for no reason at all, become quite meager: a few minutes of quick reading, already downhill, and--O horrible!"
Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading
"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
"Absence diminishes little passions
And increases great ones,
As wind extinguishes candles
And fans a fire."
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
"Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time... It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other."
Leo F. Buscaglia
"Philosophers draw distinctions ad infinitum to the point of exhaustion."
* * *
"We have the map of human genes--but how do we fold it?"
* * *
"We can't say pragmatism is totally true; that wouldn't be . . . pragmatic."
Professor Llewellyn
"What's your crime?"
"Stampeding cattle."
"That's not much."
"Through the Vatican?"
" . . . Kinky."
"Blazing Saddles"
"Are there 'philosopher queens'?"
JM
Professor Shade: The man, the myth, the references to Eurodance
On Sensory Experience:
"Next week [to teach you about it] I'll be drawing frogs and trees and things, and all will become clear."
-
In Frustration With Aristotle's Writing Style:
"No, that's a horrible-ass sentence!"
"Don't read Aristotle while lying down."
-
On Sex:
"Bunnies do it all the time!"
"It's mom and dad doing what mom and dad do--the nasty."
-
And Taken Completely Out of Context:
"Animals S&M, don't they?"
"I refuse to conjugate foreign verbs in the company of so many
of my fellow students. It makes me feel dirty."
Eve on her refusal to do homework in the computer labs