people quotes

Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the
victims he intends to eat until he eats them.
-- Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Youth is a disease from which we all recover.
-- Dorothy Fuldheim

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-- George Santayana

"Richard, in being so fierce toward my vampire, you were doing
what you wanted to do, even though you thought it was going to hurt
somebody else. He even told you he'd be hurt if..."
"He was going to suck my blood!"
"Which is what we do to anyone when we tell them we'll be hurt
if they don't live our way."
...
"The thing that puzzles you," he said, "is an accepted saying that
happens to be impossible. The phrase is hurt somebody else. We choose,
ourselves, to be hurt or not to be hurt, no matter what. Us who decides.
Nobody else. My vampire told you he'd be hurt if you didn't let him? That's
his decision to be hurt, that's his choice. What you do about it is your
decision, your choice: give him blood; ignore him; tie him up; drive a stake
through his heart. If he doesn't want the holly stake, he's free to resist,
in whatever way he wants. It goes on and on, choices, choices."
"When you look at it that way..."
"Listen," he said, "it's important. We are all. Free. To do.
Whatever. We want. To do."
-- Richard Bach, "Illusions"

Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind; it is a temper of
the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions, a predominance
of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease.
Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow
old only by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up
enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear, and despair
-- these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit
back to dust.
Whether seventy or sixteen, there is in every being's heart the love
of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the starlike things and
thoughts, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite
for what next, and the joy and the game of life.
You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your
self-confidence, as old as your fear, as young as your hope, as old as your
despair.
So long as your heart receives messages of beauty, cheer, courage,
grandeur and power from the earth, from man, and from the Infinite, so long
you are young.
-- Samuel Ullman

Success is relative: It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things.
-- T.S. Eliot, "The Family Reunion"

After all, what is your hosts' purpose in having a party? Surely not for
you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply
sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
-- P.J. O'Rourke

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't --
till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'"
"But glory doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice
objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful
tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean
so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master --
that's all."
-- Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"

Nothing shortens a journey so pleasantly as an account of misfortunes at
which the hearer is permitted to laugh.
-- Quentin Crisp

My philosophy is: Don't think.
-- Charles Manson

Something better...

1 (obvious): Excuse me. Is that your nose or did a bus park on your face?
2 (meteorological): Everybody take cover. She's going to blow.
3 (fashionable): You know, you could de-emphasize your nose if you wore
something larger. Like ... Wyoming.
4 (personal): Well, here we are. Just the three of us.
5 (punctual): Alright gentlemen. Your nose was on time but you were fifteen
minutes late.
6 (envious): Oooo, I wish I were you. Gosh. To be able to smell your
own ear.
7 (naughty): Pardon me, Sir. Some of the ladies have asked if you wouldn't
mind putting that thing away.
8 (philosophical): You know. It's not the size of a nose that's important.
It's what's in it that matters.
9 (humorous): Laugh and the world laughs with you. Sneeze and it's goodbye,
Seattle.
10 (commercial): Hi, I'm Earl Schibe and I can paint that nose for $39.95.
11 (polite): Ah. Would you mind not bobbing your head. The orchestra keeps
changing tempo.
12 (melodic): Everybody! "He's got the whole world in his nose."
-- Steve Martin, "Roxanne"

When a man you like switches from what he said a year ago, or four years
ago, he is a broad-minded man who has courage enough to change his mind
with changing conditions. When a man you don't like does it, he is a
liar who has broken his promises.
-- Franklin Adams

If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have
schizophrenia.
-- Thomas Szasz

Most of our lives are about proving something, either to ourselves or to
someone else.

Against stupidity the very gods Themselves contend in vain.
-- Friedrich von Schiller, "The Maid of Orleans", III, 6

Style may not be the answer, but at least it's a workable alternative.

The important thing is not to stop questioning.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for
you in your private heart is true for all men -- that is genius.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

People who think they know everything greatly annoy those of us who do.

When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.