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Quotes
Jun 27, 2011 1:40:25 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Jun 27, 2011 1:40:25 GMT
"Get off this land." "Why should I?" "Because it's mine." "Where did you get it from?" "From my father." "Where did he get it from?" "From his father." "Where did he get it from?" "From his father." "Where did he get it from?" "He fought for it." "Well, I'll fight you for it."
Quoted in Robert Ferguson, The Hammer and the Cross: A New History of the Vikings
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Quotes
Jun 27, 2011 15:05:11 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Jun 27, 2011 15:05:11 GMT
When smashing monuments, save the pedestals. They always come in handy.
The mob shouts with one big mouth and eats with a thousand small ones.
"I'll just wag my finger at him," he said, putting it on the trigger.
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.
Suppose you succeed in breaking the wall with your head -- what will you do in the next cell?
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
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Quotes
Jun 30, 2011 19:59:46 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Jun 30, 2011 19:59:46 GMT
Prostitutes and journalists share the ability to numb themselves. Prostitutes have the added ability not to numb themselves.
Social policy is the desperate surgical decision to remove corns from a cancer patient.
Liberalism serves dishwater as an elixir vitae.
Solitude would be an ideal state if you could choose which people to avoid.
All that matters in love is not appearing more of a fool than you have been made.
Karl Kraus
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Quotes
Jul 9, 2011 14:15:21 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Jul 9, 2011 14:15:21 GMT
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
Kurt Vonnegut
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Quotes
Jul 14, 2011 19:09:57 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Jul 14, 2011 19:09:57 GMT
INTERVIEWER: Dove va l'umanità? MAO: Boh! Subtitled version:INTERVIEWER: Whither Humanity? MAO: Boh! Quoted in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Uccellacci e Uccellini (Hawks and Sparrows)
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Quotes
Jul 19, 2011 23:34:16 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Jul 19, 2011 23:34:16 GMT
"We'll have a Reign of Terror to begin with. We'll start with a few murders. Murders of great men. Murders of little men. Just to show we make no distinction." The Invisible Man
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Quotes
Jul 27, 2011 20:40:23 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Jul 27, 2011 20:40:23 GMT
I regard hair as I regard husbands: as long as one is seen together in public one's private divergences don't matter.
"The man is a common murderer." "A common murderer possibly, but a very uncommon cook."
We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart.
Her father lives in West Kensington, but I believe he is sane on most other subjects.
"I believe I take precedence," he said coldly; "you are merely the club Bore - I am the club Liar."
"I meant that it was the first time she'd thought about getting married; the other times she did it without thinking."
Saki
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Quotes
Jul 29, 2011 22:52:47 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Jul 29, 2011 22:52:47 GMT
As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
Trust a nitwit society like this one to think that there are only two categories - fag and straight.
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
In a disastrous fire at the Reagan library, both books were lost - including the one the President had not finished coloring.
In almost every case [where the United States has fought wars] our overwhelming commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights has required us to support those regimes that would deny freedom, democracy and human rights to their own people.
Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
'Liberal' comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see why that word had to be erased from our political lexicon.
Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.
The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
Gore Vidal
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Quotes
Aug 8, 2011 21:05:21 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Aug 8, 2011 21:05:21 GMT
I have just been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it.
The sound of a harpsichord - two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm.
In the first movement alone, I took note of six pregnancies and at least four miscarriages. (of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony)
The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.
A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it.
Her singing reminds me of a cart coming downhill with the brake on.
We cannot expect you to be with us all the time, but perhaps you could be good enough to keep in touch now and again. (to a musician during rehearsal)
All the arts in America are a gigantic racket run by unscrupulous men for unhealthy women.
Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands and all you can do is scratch it. (to a female cellist)
There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.
What can you do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about. (of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony)
Sir Thomas Beecham
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Quotes
Aug 12, 2011 20:45:23 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Aug 12, 2011 20:45:23 GMT
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.
I've never been a millionaire but I just know I'd be darling at it.
I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of those who-do-things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails. But I don't even do that anymore.
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives' tales about the way men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock around a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I had never seen this happen.
I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound - if I can remember any of the damn things.
Dorothy Parker
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Quotes
Aug 14, 2011 21:08:17 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Aug 14, 2011 21:08:17 GMT
Everybody has a heart. Except some people.
If you've never been hated by your child, you've never been a parent.
I'd marry again if I found a man who had fifteen million dollars, would sign over half to me, and guarantee that he'd be dead within a year.
Old age is no place for sissies.
Why am I so good at playing bitches? I think it's because I'm not a bitch. Maybe that's why Miss Crawford always plays ladies.
With the newspaper strike on, I wouldn't consider dying.
Bette Davis
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Quotes
Aug 18, 2011 21:41:48 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Aug 18, 2011 21:41:48 GMT
A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.
Golf may be played on Sunday, not being a game within the view of the law, but being a form of moral effort.
There are two things in ordinary conversation which ordinary people dislike - information and wit.
The landlady of a boarding-house is a parallelogram - that is, an oblong angular figure, which cannot be described, but which is equal to anything.
In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.
Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.
Stephen Leacock
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Quotes
Aug 20, 2011 21:32:09 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Aug 20, 2011 21:32:09 GMT
A Judge having sentenced a Malefactor to the penitentiary was proceeding to point out to him the disadvantages of crime and the profit of reformation.
"Your Honour," said the Malefactor, interrupting, "would you be kind enough to alter my punishment to ten years in the penitentiary and nothing else?"
"Why," said the Judge, surprised, "I have given you only three years!"
"Yes, I know," assented the Malefactor - "three years' imprisonment and the preaching. If you please, I should like to commute the preaching."
Ambrose Bierce, Fantastic Fables
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Quotes
Aug 24, 2011 19:07:07 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Aug 24, 2011 19:07:07 GMT
It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.
From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.
Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.
There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.
Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the man's nirvana. And if some poor nasty minded person comes along and says you look like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a television set.
I used my knee on his face. It hurt my knee. He didn't tell me whether it hurt his face.
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled.
He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before. (of Dashiell Hammett)
Her smile was now hanging by its teeth and nails and wondering what it would hit when it dropped.
When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it stays split.
Raymond Chandler
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Quotes
Aug 25, 2011 0:11:51 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Aug 25, 2011 0:11:51 GMT
I don't think President Bush is doing anything at all about Aids. In fact, I'm not sure he even knows how to spell Aids.
My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born, but when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked.
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
It is strange that the years teach us patience; that the shorter our time, the greater our capacity for waiting.
Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.
Elizabeth Taylor
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Quotes
Aug 26, 2011 23:14:36 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Aug 26, 2011 23:14:36 GMT
If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer.
I think our police are excellent, probably because I have not done anything that has occasioned being beaten up by these good men.
I used to ask women to come upstairs and have sex, but now it has to be one or the other.
The Inland Revenue decide to audit Cyril, summon him to their office for an appointment with their most thorough auditor, who is not surprised when Cyril arrives with his solicitor. The auditor says: "Sir, you cannot deny that you have an extravagant lifestyle, no full-time employment, and pay no taxes on the grounds of your contention that you win money gambling. I have to tell you that Her Majesty's Customs and Excise finds that explanation difficult to believe." "I am a great gambler and can prove it," says Cyril. "Would you like a demonstration?" The auditor considers this for a moment and agrees. Cyril says: "I bet you a thousand pounds I can bite my own eye." The auditor thinks for a while, finally says: "It's a bet." Cyril removes his glass eye and bites it. The auditor looks sick. "I'll bet you two thousand pounds that I can bite my other eye," says Cyril. The auditor can tell Cyril isn't blind, so he accepts the bet. Cyril removes his false teeth and bites the good eye. The stunned auditor now realises he has bet and lost £3000, with Cyril's solicitor as a witness; he gets very nervous. "Double or nothing?" Cyril says. "I'll bet you six thousand pounds that I can stand on the righthand side of your desk and piss into the bin on the far side without getting one drop anywhere between." The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now but examines the proposal carefully. Cyril is not a tall man, the desk is eight foot wide; he decides there is simply no way Cyril could do that, so he agrees again. Cyril stands at the side of the desk, unzips his trousers, strains for all he is worth but cannot make the stream reach the bin on the far side, and finishes up having urinated pretty well all over the auditor's desk. The auditor leaps with joy, realising that he has just turned a major loss into a sizeable win, then notices that Cyril's solicitor is moaning, with his head in his hands. "Are you okay?" asks the auditor. "Not really," says the solicitor. "This morning, when Cyril told me he had been summoned to this audit, he bet me £20,000 that he could come in here, piss all over your desk and you would be happy about it. And I took the bet."
Clement Freud
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Quotes
Sept 17, 2011 12:58:25 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Sept 17, 2011 12:58:25 GMT
a politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man e e cummings
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Quotes
Oct 1, 2011 23:07:09 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Oct 1, 2011 23:07:09 GMT
The reason most folk-songs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people.
It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for five years.
The usual jokes about the army aside, what you have to admire is the way in which the army has taken the American democratic ideal to its logical conclusion, in that not only do they prohibit discrimination on the grounds of race, colour and creed, but also on the grounds of ability.
I feel that if a person has problems communicating, the very least he can do is shut up.
Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
Plagiarise, plagiarise, plagiarise - only be sure always to call it research.
Tom Lehrer
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Quotes
Oct 19, 2011 22:57:37 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Oct 19, 2011 22:57:37 GMT
A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
Jonathan Swift
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Quotes
Nov 12, 2011 3:02:17 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Nov 12, 2011 3:02:17 GMT
If the Romans had been obliged to learn Latin, they would never have found time to conquer the world.
Experience is a good school, but the fees are high.
I fell asleep reading a dull book and dreamed I kept on reading, so I awoke from sheer boredom.
Christ rode on an ass, but now asses ride on Christ.
Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.
The fundamental evil of the world arose from the fact that the good Lord has not created money enough.
The men of action are, after all, only the unconscious instruments of the men of thought.
You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.
Your body's love I still desire, For it is young and fair. Your soul can go and hang itself; I've soul enough to spare.
When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on.
Heinrich Heine
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Quotes
Dec 3, 2011 21:29:17 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Dec 3, 2011 21:29:17 GMT
Franklin Fletcher dreamed of luxury in the form of tiger skins and beautiful women. He was prepared, at a pinch, to forgo the tiger skins.
Out flowed a prodigious quantity of greasy smoke, which immediately solidified into the figure of a gross and fleshy Oriental, six feet six in height, with rolls of fat, a hook nose, a wicked white to his eye, vast double chins, altogether like a film producer, only larger.
The world cannot utter its gross libidinous sneers at a girl who lives chastely with her Lee-Enfield, her Ballard, her light Winchester.
In Hell, as in other places we know of, conditions are damnably disagreeable.
Suddenly, just as the shadows were falling thick in the vast apartment, there was a knock at the door. She opened. It was the abominable Fenshawe-Fanshawe.
I can't marry him because he's stuffed. Oh, I knew it would be no good.
He at once shot out of his chair, and began to leap, writhe, stagger, spin, curvet, gyrate, loop and flounder all over the room. Simultaneously he was seized with giddiness, nausea, spots before the eyes, palpitations, convulsions, flatulence, and other symptoms too hideous to mention. "What on earth is the matter, darling?" said his wife. "Are you feeling unwell?"
Alice and Irwin were as simple and happy as any young couple in a family-style motion picture. In fact, they were even happier, for people were not looking at them all the time and their joys were not restricted by the censorship code.
There are certain people who do not come into full flower until they are well over fifty. Among these are all males named Murchison.
It was on the second floor landing that they found the shoe, with the man's foot still in it, like that last morsel of a mouse which sometimes falls unnoticed from the jaws of the cat.
John Collier
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Quotes
Dec 8, 2011 10:34:11 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Dec 8, 2011 10:34:11 GMT
Oh! he is mad, is he? Then I wish he would bite some other of my generals.
King George II on General James Wolfe
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Quotes
Dec 9, 2011 18:21:34 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Dec 9, 2011 18:21:34 GMT
If there is a God, Richelieu will have much to answer for; if not, he has done very well. Pope Urban VIII
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Quotes
Dec 12, 2011 23:56:10 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Dec 12, 2011 23:56:10 GMT
If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.
Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much.
The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.
I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our duty is to furnish it well.
Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information.
Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them.
A diplomat these days is nothing but a head waiter who is allowed to sit down occasionally.
I have three daughters and I find as a result I played King Lear almost without rehearsal.
To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.
Peter Ustinov
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Quotes
Dec 23, 2011 19:38:49 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Dec 23, 2011 19:38:49 GMT
While most people are opening their presents, some are opening their wrists. Gremlins
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Jan 2, 2012 21:54:10 GMT
Post by pchallinor on Jan 2, 2012 21:54:10 GMT
Don't run after poetry. It penetrates unaided through the cracks. Robert Bresson
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