|
|
|
||||||||
U
Nobody grows old
merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years
may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Samuel Ullman
At
times to be silent is to lie.
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1864-1936) Spanish philosopher and writer
Those
who believe that they believe in God, but without passion in their hearts,
without anguish in mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element
of despair even in their consolation, believe only in the God idea, not God
Himself.
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1864-1936) Spanish philosopher and writer
To
say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from
the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for
those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.
John Updike (b. 1932) American writer
Life
is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague
memories of having read the reviews.
John Updike (b. 1932) American writer
In
Peter Ustinov (b. 1921) English actor, author, director
I
am rather unfriendly toward the Marxists, as I am towards those who persecute
them, simply because they regard the unit by which one judges
human behavior as the mass, and I really believe the individual is much more
important than the mass. In fact, the mass is really composed of individuals
that have momentarily lost their voice, which is a sad state of affairs.
Peter Ustinov (b. 1921) English actor, author, director Spartacus,
interview for Criterion Edition release
Love is an act of endless
forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
Peter Ustnow (?)
V
Love is not an
emotion, love is a behavior. Children know the truth.
Andrew Vachss
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get
eight cats to pull a sled through snow.
Jeff Valdez
The
best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him
any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.
Abigail Van
Buren (b. 1918) American columnist [a.k.a.
"Dear Abby"]
The
canal system of this country is being threatened by the spread of a new form of
transportation known as 'railroads.' ... As you may
well know, railroad carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per
hour by engines, which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers,
roar and snort their way through the countryside. The Almighty certainly never
intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed.
Martin Van
Buren (1782-1862) US President,
1837-41 Letter to the President
(while Governor of
We must not judge God from
this world. It's just a study that didn't come off. It's only a master who could
make such a blunder.
Vincent Van
Gogh
I would feel more attraction
for, and would rather come into contact with, one who was ugly or poor or in
some way unhappy, but who, through experience and sorrow, had gained a mind and
a soul.
Vincent Van
Gogh
Diplomacy
is the art of letting someone have your own way.
Danielle Vare (1880-1956)
Italian diplomat and author
It is impossible to keep a straight face in the presence
of one or more kittens.
Cynthia E. Varnado
A
three-year-old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a $300 set
of swings as it does out of finding a small green caterpillar.
Bill Vaughan (1915-1977) American journalist, author
One trouble with growing
older is that it gets progressively tougher to find a famous historical figure who didn't amount to much when he was your age.
Bill Vaughan (1915-1977)
American journalist, author
If
there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another
nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.
Bill Vaughan (1915-1977) American journalist, author
When
we feel that we lack whatever is needed to secure someone else's esteem, we are
very close to hating him.
Luc, Marquis
de Vauvenargues (1715-1747) French soldier and moralist Réflexions et maximes (c. 1747)
Great
events make me quiet and calm; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.
Queen
Superstition
is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational -- but how much does it cost you
to knock on wood?
Judith Viorst (b. 1931)
American writer
Infatuation is
when you think that 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 Conners, as funny as Ralph Nader,
as athletic as Henry Kissinger, and nothing like Robert Redford--but you’ll
take him anyway.
Judith Viorst (b. 1931)
American writer
Death
twitches my ear. "Live," he says. "I am coming."
Virgil (70-19 BC) Roman poet [Vergil] Minor
Poems, "Copa," l. 38
Many
risks fail because they were not taken in time. Too many risks are postponed
until unnecessarily elaborate preparations are made. This does not mean that
one should say, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" That is
foolish and self-destructive. ... But don't sit back waiting for the perfect
moment. It almost never comes.
David S. Viscott (b. 1928)
American psychologist, writer, radio personality
If
I had all the money I've spent on drink, I'd spend it on drink.
Stanshall Vivian (1943-1995) British comic
Sir Henry at Rawlinson
End (1978)
We
rarely know who our ancestors were. Who can even remember the names of their
great-grandparents? They have vanished into the dim and distant past.
Dmitri Volkogonov Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy
Anything
that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. for
François-Marie Arouet]
God
is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. for
François-Marie Arouet]
If
God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated.
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. for
François-Marie Arouet]
It
is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. for
François-Marie Arouet]
It
is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. for
François-Marie Arouet]
The
best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional
assassination.
Voltaire (1694-1778) French writer [pseud. for
François-Marie Arouet]
If
we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.
Immanuel Hermass von Fichte (1796-1879) German philosopher
I want to
stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see
all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr
There is no
reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a
matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they
are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
Kurt Vonnegut,
The Sirens of Titan
If you really
want to hurt your parents and you don’t have enough nerve to be homosexual, the
least you can do is go into the arts.
Kurt Vonnegut
W
Charles Wadsworth
It is not true that nice guys finish last.
Nice guys are winners before the game even starts.
Addison
Walker
No person is your friend who demands your
silence, or denies your right to grow.
Alice Walker (b. 1944) American writer
The most common way
people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.
Alice Walker (b. 1944) American writer
I think it pisses God
off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it.
Alice Walker (b. 1944) American
writer The Color Purple (1982)
This world is a comedy to those that think, a
tragedy to those that feel.
Horace Walpole (1717-1797)
English novelist, letter writer
Letter (
The most wonderful of all things in life,
I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one’s relationship
has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner
progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it
cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a
sort of Divine accident.
Sir
Hugh Walpole
Of all
the plagues a lover bears,
Sure rivals are the worst.
I can endure my own despair,
But not another’s hope.
William
Walsh
What's great about this country is that
Andy Warhol (1928-1987) American artist,
author The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and
Back Again
You can't hold a man
down without staying down with him.
Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
American educator, writer
“Think about it: We went into slavery pagans; we came
out Christians. We went into slavery pieces of property; we came out American
citizens. We went into slavery with chains clanking about our wrists; we came
out with American ballots in our hands. ... When we rid ourselves of prejudice,
or racial feeling, and look the facts in the face, we must acknowledge, notwithstanding
the cruelty and moral wrong of slavery, we are in a stronger and more hopeful
position, materially, intellectually, morally, and religiously, than is true of
an equal number of black people in any other portion of the globe.”
Booker T. Washington
(1856-1915) American educator, writer
There is a rank due to the
George Washington (1717-1799)
I think everybody likes to see the fat girl get the
hot guy and win.
John Waters, on the stage version of Hairspray
Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a hard
battle.
John Waton (1850-1907) Scottish writer,
preacher [pseud. Ian Maclaren]
CALVIN (walking through snowy field): You know, Hobbes, it seems the only time
most people go outside is to walk their cars. We have houses, electricity,
plumbing, heat .... Maybe we're so sheltered and
comfortable that we’ve lost touch with the natural world and forgotten our
place in it. Maybe we've lost our awe of nature. That's why I want to ask
*you*, as a tiger, a wild animal close to nature, what do you think we're put
on Earth to do. What's our purpose in life? Why are we here?
HOBBES: We're here to devour each other alive.
CALVIN (in the house): Turn on the lights! Turn up the heat!
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes (
CALVIN: It’s
not denial. I’m just selective about the reality I accept.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN: Well, Hobbes, I guess there's a moral to all this.
HOBBES: What's that?
CALVIN: "Snow goons are bad news."
HOBBES: *That* lesson certainly ought to be inapplicable
elsewhere in life.
CALVIN: I like maxims that don't encourage behavior
modification.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes (
CALVIN:
A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a
battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN: It seems like once people grow up, they have no idea what’s cool.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN: I say, if your knees aren’t green by
the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
Dad, how do people make babies?
DAD: Most people just go to Sears, buy the kit, and follow
the assembly instructions.
CALVIN: I came from Sears??
DAD: No, you were a Blue Light Special at K Mart. Almost as
good, and a lot cheaper.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
Do you believe our destinies are determined by the stars?
HOBBES: Nah.
CALVIN: Oh, I do.
HOBBES: Really? How come?
CALVIN: Life's a lot more fun when you're not responsible for
your actions.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
I don't know which is worse, ... that everyone has his
price, or that the price is always so low.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
I must obey the inscrutable exhortations of my soul.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
I think life should be more like TV. I think all of life's problems ought to be
solved in thirty minutes with simple homilies, don't you? I think weight and
oral hygiene ought to be our biggest concerns. I think we should all have
powerful, high-paying jobs, and everyone should drive fancy sports cars. All
our desires should be instantly gratified. Women should always wear tight
clothes, and men should carry powerful handguns. Life overall should be more
glamorous, thrill-packed, and filled with applause, don't you think?
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
In the
long term it would make me happy to go to school and be successful, in the
short term it would make me happy to go out and have fun, but in the VERY long
term, I know which one will make better memories.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN: I’m learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of
my life...procrastinating and rationalizing.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN: I imagine bugs and girls have a
dim perception that nature played a cruel trick on them, but they lack the
intelligence to really comprehend the magnitude of it.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
I'm a simple man, Hobbes.
HOBBES: You?? Yesterday you wanted a nuclear powered car that
could turn into a jet with laser-guided heat-seeking missiles!
CALVIN: I'm a simple man with complex tastes.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change. But pretty soon,
everything is different.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how
hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
Reality continues to ruin my life.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
There's no problem so awful that you can't add some guilt to it and make it
even worse!
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
When I grow up, I'm not going to read the newspaper and I'm not going to follow
complex issues and I'm not going to vote. That way I can complain when the
government doesn't represent me. Then, when everything goes down the tubes, I
can say the system doesn't work and justify my further lack of participation.
HOBBES: An ingeniously self-fulfilling plan.
CALVIN: It's a lot more fun to blame things than to fix them.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
You can't just turn on creativity like a faucet. You have to be in the right
mood.
HOBBES: What mood is that?
CALVIN: Last minute panic.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN:
You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship
underpants don't help.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin
& Hobbes
CALVIN:
I'm a genius, but I'm a misunderstood genius.
HOBBES: What's misunderstood about you?
CALVIN: Nobody thinks I'm a genius.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
DAD:
The world isn't fair, Calvin.
CALVIN: I know, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
CALVIN: I
asked mom if I was a gifted child. She said they certainly wouldn't have paid
for me. You can relate this little story when the reporters ask how I went bad.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes Scientific Progress Goes Boink
HOBBES:
A new decade is coming up.
CALVIN: Yeah, big deal! Hmph. Where are the flying cars? Where are the Moon colonies?
Where are the personal robots and the zero gravity
boots, huh? You call this a new decade?! You call this the future?? Ha! Where are the rocket packs? Where are the disintegration rays?
Where are the floating cities?
HOBBES: Frankly, I'm not sure people have the brains to
manage the technology they've got.
CALVIN: I mean, look at this! We still have the weather?!
Give me a break!
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
HOBBES:
First, your heart falls into your stomach and splashes your innards. All the
moisture makes you sweat profusely. This condensation shorts the circuits to
your brain, and you get all woozy. When your brain burns out altogether, your
mouth disengages and you babble like a cretin until she leaves.
CALVIN: That's love?!?
HOBBES: Medically speaking.
CALVIN: Heck, that happened to me once, but I figured it was
cooties!
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes
I'd say that crossed the
line from Ironic Coincidence to Evil Omen.
Bill Watterson (b. 1958)
American cartoonist Calvin & Hobbes (
This is more or less what I would do if I had
the power to dream every night of anything I wanted. Some months I would
probably fulfill all the more obvious wishes. There might be palaces and
banquets, players and dancing girls, fabulous bouts of love, and sunlit gardens
beside lakes, with mountains beyond. There would next be long conversations
with sages, contemplation of supreme works of art, hearing and playing music,
voyages to foreign lands, flying out into space to see the galaxies, and
delving into the atom to watch the wiggling wavicles.
But the night would come when I might want to add a little spice of adventure
-- perhaps a dream of dangerous mountain climbing, of rescuing a princess from
a dragon, or, better, an unpredictable dream in which I do not know what will
happen. Once this has started, I might get still more daring. I would wish to
dream whole lifetimes, packing seventy years into a single night. I would dream
that I am not dreaming at all, that I will neve
Alan Watts (1915-1973) Anglo-American
philosopher, writer The Book
All battles are fought by scared men who would
have rather have been somewhere else.
John Wayne (1907-1979) American actor,
director [b. Marion Michael Morrison]
Imagination and fiction make up more than three
quarters of our real life.
Simone
Weil, (1909 – 1943)
What a country calls its vital economic interests are
not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable
it to make war. Petrol is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of
international conflict.
Simone
Weil, (1909 – 1943)
In the beginning, there
was nothing. And God said, ‘Let there be Light.’ And there was still nothing.
But, you could see it.
Dave
Weinstein
Closing his eyes
tightly so he wouldn’t see anything Horrible he might accidentally conjure up, Tas thrust the ring over his
thumb. (At the last moment he opened his eyes, so that he wouldn’t miss
seeing anything Horrible he might conjure up.)
Margaret
Weis & Tracy Hickman,
Time of the Twins
If people would just label their
belongings things like this wouldn’t happen.
Margaret
Weis & Tracy Hickman
(spoken by Tasslehoff Burrfoot)
ANTIMODES: A mage’s soul is
forged in the crucible of magic. You choose to go voluntarily into the
fire. The blaze might well destroy you. But if you survive, every
blow of the hammer will serve to shape your being. Every drop of water
wrung from you will temper and strengthen your soul.
Margaret
Weis & Tracy Hickman, Soulforge
But somewhere, sometime, someone must trust enough to
reach out his hand to the enemy, though he knows the hand could be cut off at
the wrist.
Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
All my life I've been my own person. The choices I
made, I made of my own free will. I was never held in thrall by anyone or
anything... Bow to others in reverence and respect, but never in slavery.
Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
We pity him.
We hate him. We fear him – all because there is a little of him in each
of us, though we admit it to ourselves only in the darkest part of the night.
Margaret
Weis & Tracy Hickman,
Time of the Twins (spoken by Justarius of Raistlin)
The kender sat quiet and subdued, so unhappy that he actually
returned Sturm’s money pouch. He returned it to Caramon,
but the thought was there.
Margaret
Weis Soulforge
In
Orson Welles (1915-1985) American writer,
director, actor The
Third Man
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.
Herbert George Wells (1866-1946)
British writer
No passion in the world is