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TALKING & CONVERSATION
To
speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves.
- Will
Durant.
If
other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.
-
James McNeill Whistler.
A
prating barber asked Archelaus how he would be trimmed. He
answered, “In silence.”
-
Plutarch.
The
trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but
not the power of speech.
-
George Bernard Shaw.
She
had lost the art of conversation but not, unfortunately, the
power of speech.
-
George Bernard Shaw.
The
nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people
they think it's their fault.
-
Henry Kissinger.
Hubert
Humphrey talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to
read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages.
-
Barry Goldwater.
Never
hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in
the room.
-
Winston Churchill.
The
real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing in
the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the
tempting moment.
-
Dorothy Neville.
He has
occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation
perfectly delightful.
-
Sydney Smith (of Thomas Macaulay).
The
opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is
waiting.
- Fran
Lebowitz.
The
only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked
about.
-
Oscar Wilde.
‘….you
wouldn’t find me grousing if I were a male newt.’
‘But
if you were a male newt, Madeline Bisset wouldn’t look at you.
Not with the eye of love, I mean.’
‘She
would, if she were a female newt.’
‘But
she isn’t a female newt.’
‘No,
but suppose she was.’
‘Well,
if she was, you wouldn’t be in love with her.’
‘Yes,
I would, if I were a male newt.’
A
slight throbbing about the temples told me that this discussion
had reached saturation point.
- P.G.
Wodehouse, Carry on, Jeeves.
Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand.
A gossip is someone with a great sense of rumour.
The rule which forbids ending a sentence with a preposition is the kind of nonsense up with
which I will not put.
- Winston Churchill.
Don’t
talk unless you can improve the silence.
-
Vermont proverb.
A
closed mouth gathers no foot.
TATTOOS
Show
me a man with a tattoo and I'll show you a man with an
interesting past.
- Jack
London.
The
world is divided into two kinds of people: those who have
tattoos, and those who are afraid of people with tattoos.
TAXATION
Of
course the truth is that the congresspersons are too busy
raising campaign money to read the laws they pass. The laws are
written by staff tax nerds who can put pretty much any wording
they want in there. I bet that if you actually read the entire
vastness of the U.S. Tax Code, you'd find at least one sex scene
("'Yes, yes, YES!' moaned Vanessa as Lance, his taut body
dripping with moisture, again and again depreciated her adjusted
gross rate of annualized fiscal debenture").
- Dave
Barry.
Question: "I understand that Congress is considering a so-called
'flat' tax system. How would this work?"
Answer: "If Congress were to pass a 'flat' tax, you'd simply pay
a fixed percentage of your income, and you wouldn't have to fill
out any complicated forms, and there would be no loopholes for
politically connected groups, and normal people would actually
understand the tax laws, and giant talking broccoli stalks would
come around and mow your lawn for free, because Congress is NOT
going to pass a flat tax, you pathetic fool."
- Dave
Barry.
Congress shall also create a tax code weighing more than the
combined poundage of the largest member of the House and the
largest member of the Senate, plus a standard musk ox.
- Dave
Barry.
We'll
try to cooperate fully with the IRS, because, as citizens, we
feel a strong patriotic duty not to go to jail.
- Dave
Barry.
The
creed of the Inland Revenue is simple: "If we can bring one
little smile to one little face today, then somebody's slipped
up somewhere."
-
David Frost.
America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid
taxation.
-
Laurence J. Peter.
The
nation should have a tax system that looks like someone designed
it on purpose.
-
William Simon.
Be
wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors...
and miss.
-
Robert Heinlein.
The
avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still
carries any reward.
- John Maynard Keynes.
What
at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.
-
Thomas Paine.
Our
tax code is so long it makes War and Peace seem breezy.
-
Steven LaTourette.
Next
to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as
satisfying as an income tax refund.
- F.J.
Raymond.
There's nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming
taxpayers won't cure.
- Dan
Bennett.
Pothinus: "Is it possible that Caesar, the conqueror of the
world, has time to occupy himself with such a trifle as our
taxes?"
Caesar: "My friend, taxes are the chief business of a conqueror
of the world."
-
George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra.
The
more you earn, the less you keep,
And
now I lay me down to sleep.
I pray
the Lord my soul to take,
If the
tax-collector hasn't got it before I wake.
-
Ogden Nash.
I got
a letter from the IRS. Apparently I owe them $800. So I sent
them a letter back. I said, "If you'll remember, I fastened my
return with a paper clip, which according to your very own
latest government pentagon spending figures will more than make
up for the difference."
- Emo
Philips.
We
contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity
is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up
by the handles.
-
Winston Churchill.
Taxman: The position is that if I don’t have one thousand pounds
from you soon, you’re going to jail.
Businessman: Now you’re talking. Here’s one thousand pounds in
used notes.
Taxman: Let me give you a receipt.
Businessman: What, a thousand nicker in cash and you’re going to
put it through the books?
-
Guardian.
Why
does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a
substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?
- Peg
Bracken.
Taxes,
after all, are the dues that we pay for the privileges of
membership in an organised society.
-
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The
hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
-
Albert Einstein.
The
rich aren’t like us, they pay less taxes.
-
Peter de Fries.
Income
tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written
today.
-
Herman Wouk.
The
only thing worse than not paying income tax is not having to pay
income tax.
I
tried paying my taxes with a smile. They wanted money.
Did
you ever notice: When you put the two words "The" and IRS"
together it spells "THEIRS?"
People
who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men
and women.
What’s
the difference between cheating on your taxes and cheating on
your wife? If you cheat the government they still want to fuck
you.
Isn’t
calling the IRS a “service” a bit like calling a thief a
“supplier?”
TEA
Love
and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
-
Henry Fielding, Love in Several Masques.
I
always fear that creation will expire before teatime.
-
Sydney Smith.
Drinking a daily cup of tea will surely starve the apothecary.
-
Chinese Proverb.
We had
a kettle; we let it leak:
Our
not repairing made it worse.
We
haven't had any tea for a week...
The
bottom is out of the Universe.
-
Rudyard Kipling.
The
mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose.
-
George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft.
Never
trust a man who, when left alone in a room with a tea cozy,
doesn't try it on.
-
Billy Connolly.
Bread
and water can so easily be toast and tea.
Remember the tea kettle - it is always up to its neck in hot
water, yet it still sings!
TECHNOLOGY
Technology has brought meaning to the lives of many technicians.
- Ed
Bluestone.
It has
become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our
humanity.
-
Albert Einstein
Modern
technology
Owes
ecology
An
apology.
- Alan
M Eddison
Technological progress has merely provided us with more
efficient means for going backwards.
-
Aldous Huxley.
Do you
realize if it weren't for Edison we'd be watching TV by
candlelight?
- Al
Boliska.
The
drive toward complex technical achievement offers a clue to why
the U.S. is good at space gadgetry and bad at slum problems.
- John
Kenneth Galbraith.
Oh no.
We're in the hands of engineers!
-
Malcolm Ian in Jurassic Park.
Scientists are saying that in the future we will be able to have
sex with robots. I tried that once. It was horrible. Right in
the middle I had to call tech support.
-
David Letterman.
The
saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers
knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
-
Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature
Quotations.
I
think I should not go far wrong if I asserted that the amount of
genuine leisure available in a society is generally in inverse
proportion to the amount of labour-saving machinery it employs.
- E.F.
Schumacher.
It is
questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.
- John
Stuart Mill.
You
cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest
steam-roller will not plant flowers.
-
Walter Lippmann.
We've
arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements
profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also
arranged things so that almost no one understands science and
technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get
away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible
mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.
- Carl
Sagan.
For a list of all the
ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life,
please press three.
- Alice Kahn.
I like
my new telephone, my computer works just fine, my calculator is
perfect, but Lord, I miss my mind!
TEENAGERS
When
buying a used car, punch the buttons on the radio. If all the
stations are rock and roll, there's a good chance the
transmission is shot.
-
Larry Lujack.
The
young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at
the same time. They have now solved this by defying their
parents and copying one another.
-
Quentin Crisp.
If you
want to recapture your youth, just cut off his allowance.
- Al
Bernstein.
Few
things are more satisfying than seeing your children have
teenagers of their own.
- Doug
Larson.
There's nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming
taxpayers won't cure.
- Dan
Bennett.
When I
was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly
stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be
twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven
years.
- Mark
Twain, Old Times on the Mississippi.
Telling a teenager the facts of life is like giving a fish a
bath.
-
Arnold H. Glasow.
I have
seen my kid struggle into the kitchen in the morning with
outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.
- Erma
Bombeck.
The
troubles of adolescence eventually all go away - it's just like
a really long, bad cold.
- Dawn
Ruelas.
My
adolescence progressed normally: enough misery to keep the
death wish my usual state, an occasional high to keep me from
actually taking the gas-pipe.
- Faye
Moskowitz.
Little
children, headache; big children, heartache.
-
Italian Proverb.
Parents of teenagers know why animals eat their young.
TELEPHONES
The bathtub was invented
in 1850 and the telephone in 1875. In other words, if you had
been living in 1850, you could have sat in the bathtub for 25
years without having to answer the phone.
- Bill DeWitt.
A
woman is a person who reaches for a chair when she answers the
telephone.
-
Milton Wright.
I was
thinking about how a status symbol of today is those cell phones
that everyone has clipped on. I can't afford one. So, I'm
wearing my garage door opener.
There
are worse things than getting a call for a wrong number at 4 am.
It could be a right number.
Answering Machine Messages:
Hi!
John's answering machine is broken. This is his refrigerator.
Please speak very slowly, and I'll stick your message to myself
with one of these little magnets.
Please
leave a message. However, you have the right to remain silent.
Everything you say will be recorded and will be used by us.
'Ello.
My name ees Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Leave your name
and number, and prepare to die.
Greetings, you have reached the Sixth Sense Detective Agency. We
know who you are and what you want, so, at the sound of the
tone, please hang up.
I am
not available right now, but thank you for caring enough to
call. I am making some changes in my life. Please leave a
message after the beep. If I do not return your call, you are
one of the changes.
...If
you want to buy marijuana, press the hash key (###)...
Now I
lay me down to sleep;
Leave
a message at the beep.
If I
die before I wake,
Remember to erase the tape.
Hello,
this is Sid. I've got a puppy in one hand and a Smith & Wesson
.38 in the other. Leave a message or the puppy gets it.
Hi.
This is John. If you are the phone company, I already sent the
money. If you are my parents, please send money. If you are my
financial aid institution, you didn't lend me enough money. If
you are my friends, you owe me money. If you are a female, don't
worry, I have plenty of money.
There
Dale sits, reading a magazine. Suddenly the telephone rings! The
bathroom explodes into a veritable maelstrom of toilet paper,
with Dale in the middle of it, his arms windmilling at
incredible speeds! Will he make it in time? Alas, no, his
valiant effort is in vain.
Hi.
I'm probably home. I'm just avoiding someone I don't like. Leave
me a message, and if I don't call back, it's you.
My
wife and I can't come to the phone right now, but if you'll
leave your name and number, we'll get back to you as soon as
we're finished.
This
is not an answering machine -this is a telepathic
thought-recording device. After the tone, think about your name,
your reason for calling and a number where I can reach you, and
I'll think about returning your call.
If you
are a burglar, the we're probably at home cleaning our many
weapons right now and can't come to the phone. Otherwise, we
probably aren't home and it's safe to leave us a message.
Hello,
you've reached Jim and Sonya. We can't pick up the phone right
now, because we're doing something we really enjoy. Sonya likes
doing it up and down, and I like doing it left to right ....
real slowly. So leave a message, and when we're done brushing
our teeth we'll get back to you.
TELEVISION
Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we
should have people standing in the corners of our rooms.
- Alan
Coren.
I had
my television aerials removed. It’s the moral equivalent of a
prostrate operation.
-
Malcolm Muggeridge.
I hate
television, I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop
eating peanuts.
-
Orson Welles.
Millions of years ago, there was no such thing as the wheel. One
day, some primitive guys were watching their wives drag a dead
mastodon to the food & fire area. It was exhausting work; the
guys were getting tired just watching.
Then they noticed some large, smooth, rounded boulders and
they had a great idea! They could sit on top of the boulders and
get a better view of their wives working.
This was the first in a series of breakthroughs that
ultimately led to television...and later to the remote control.
- Dave
Barry.
The
nuclear generator of brain sludge is television.
- Dave
Barry.
Television – a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor
well done.
-
Ernie Kovacs.
Television is for appearing on – not for looking at.
- Noël
Coward.
Dealing with network executives is like being nibbled to death
by ducks.
- Eric
Sevareid.
It is
difficult to produce a television documentary that is both
incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is
interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet
paper.
- Rod
Serling.
TV
personality Speedy Alka-Seltzer came out of the medicine cabinet
this week and admitted that he was a Bi-carbonate. Fearful over
possible criticism, the beloved Speedy threw himself into a
bathtub and effervesced to death.
-
‘Weekend Update’, Saturday Night Live.
And
those quiz shows! A woman won a vacation and dropped dead from
the shock, but the sponsors kept their word. They sent her body
to Bermuda for two weeks.
-
Milton Berle.
Today,
watching television often means fighting, violence and foul
language - and that's just deciding who gets to hold the remote
control.
-
Donna Gephart.
The
publishers and others should quit worrying about losing
customers to TV. The guy who can sit through a trio of deodorant
commercials to look at Flashgun Casey or swallow a flock of beer
and loan-shark spiels in order to watch a couple of fourth-rate
club fighters rub noses on the ropes is not losing any time from
book reading.
-
Raymond Chandler.
Everything is for the eye these days - TV, Life, Look, the
movies. Nothing is just for the mind. The next generation will
have eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all.
- Fred
Allen.
Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information
about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.
-
Alfred Hitchcock.
If it
weren't for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so
far apart, some of us wouldn't get any exercise at all.
- Joey
Adams.
Television should be the last mass communication medium to be
naively designed and put into the world without a
surgeon-general's warning.
- Alan
Kay.
Every
time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new type
program comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb
was.
- Art
Buchwald, Adding Insult to Injury, Have I Ever Lied to You?
Seeing
a murder on television....can help work off one's antagonisms.
And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give
you some.
-
Alfred Hitchcock.
The
smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have
been presented in the entire history of television.
-
Andrew Ross.
Why
are sex and violence always linked? I'm afraid they'll blur
together in people's minds - sexandviolence - until we can't
tell them apart. I expect to hear a newscaster say, "The mob
became unruly and the police were forced to resort to sex."
- Dick
Cavett.
When
you're young, you look at television and think: There's a
conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But
when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The
networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.
That's a far more depressing thought.
-
Steve Jobs.
In
Beverley Hills, they don't throw their garbage away - they make
it into television shows.
-
Woody Allen.
There
are days when any electrical appliance in the house, including
the vacuum cleaner, seems to offer more entertainment
possibilities than the TV set.
-
Harriet van Horne.
I wish
there were a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's
a knob called "brightness," but that doesn't work.
Sex on
television can't hurt you unless you fall off.
Television has changed a child from an irresistible force to an
immovable object.
Theatre is life. Cinema is art. Television is furniture.
If God
had intended man to watch TV, he would have given him rabbit
ears.
TEMPTATION
All
men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken
down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right
spot.
-
Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit, 1887.
Those
who flee temptation generally leave a forwarding address.
- Lane
Olinghouse.
The
only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray.
There
are terrible temptations which it requires strength and courage
to yield to.
-
Oscar Wilde.
What
makes resisting temptation difficult for many people is they
don't want to discourage it completely.
-
Franklin P. Jones.
It's
all right letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself
back.
- Mick
Jagger.
Conscience whispers, but interest screams aloud.
- J.
Petit-Senn.
Don't worry about
avoiding temptation....as you grow older, it will avoid you.
- Winston Churchill.
The
trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come your way
again.
-
Korman's Law.
Most
people want to be delivered from temptation but would like it to
keep in touch.
-
Robert Orben.
Nothing makes it easier to resist temptation than a proper
bringing-up, a sound set of values - and witnesses.
-
Franklin P. Jones.
There
is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably
desirable.
- Mark
Twain.
Do not
bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook
beneath it.
-
Thomas Jefferson.
Opportunity may knock only once, but temptation leans on the
doorbell.
I can
resist anything but temptation.
MARGARET THATCHER
She
sounded like the Book of Revelations read out over a railway
station public address system by a headmistress of a certain age
wearing calico knickers.
-
Clive James, of Margaret Thatcher on television.
If I
were married to her, I’d be sure to have dinner ready when she
got home.
-
George Schultz, American Secretary of State.
Attila
the Hen.
-
Clement Freud, British liberal politician, on Margaret Thatcher.
THEORY & THEORIES
In
theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But,
in practice, there is.
- Jan
van de Snepscheut.
There
is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly
what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly
disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and
inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has
already happened.
-
Douglas Adams.
A
theory is something nobody believes, except the person who made
it. An experiment is something everybody believes, except the
person who made it.
-
Albert Einstein.
Chaos
Theory is a new theory invented by scientists panicked by the
thought that the public were beginning to understand the old
ones.
- Mike
Barfield.
In
theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In
practice there is.
- Yogi
Berra.
Your
theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.
-
Niels Bohr.
THINKING
Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
-
Edmund Burke.
No
matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life
within the confines of your head.
-
Terry Josephson.
Did
you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?
-
Winnie the Pooh.
Too
often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort
of thought.
- John
F. Kennedy.
Some
people get lost in thought because it's such unfamiliar
territory.
- G.
Behn.
Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man. But they don't bite
everybody.
-
Stanislaw Lec, Unkempt Thoughts.
I want
to be alone with my thought.
-
Homer Simpson.
The
world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be
changed without changing our thinking.
-
Albert Einstein.
Tell
your friends not to think aloud
Until
they swallow.
-
Nickelback, Leader of Men, The State.
Few
minds wear out; more rust out.
-
Christian N. Bovee.
If two men agree on
everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the
thinking.
- Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Some
people do not become thinkers simply because their memories are
too good.
-
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.
What
luck for rulers, that men do not think.
-
Adolph Hitler.
Thinking is what a great many people think they are doing when
they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
-
William James.
I
think…therefore I am obviously overqualified.
You
cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind.
TIME
The
years like great black oxen tread the world
And
God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.
-
William Butler Yeats, The Countess Cathleen.
Time
is the wisest counsellor of all.
-
Pericles.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
-
William Shakespeare, Macbeth.
Time
is what prevents everything from happening at once.
- John
Archibald Wheeler.
The
only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at
once.
-
Albert Einstein.
Time
is but the stream I go a-fishing in.
-
Henry David Thoreau.
Time
is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-
Louis Hector Berlioz.
I try
to take one day at a time - but sometimes several days attack me
at once.
- Jennifer Unlimited.
You
will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling
reason why we observe daylight savings time.
- Dave
Barry.
What
year did Jesus think it was?
-
George Carlin.
How
long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door
you're on.
-
Zall's Second Law.
Does
killing time damage eternity?
-
George Carlin.
There
is never enough time, unless you're serving it.
-
Malcolm Forbes.
The
days of the digital watch are numbered.
- Tom
Stoppard.
The
trouble with being punctual is that there’s nobody there to
appreciate it.
-
Franklin P. Jones.
So
little time, so little to do.
-
Oscar Levant.
When a
clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
Let
not the sands of time get in your lunch.
Time
may be a great healer but it's also a lousy beautician.
The
speed of time is one-second per second.
When a
clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.
Punctuality is the thief of time.
Time
flies when you don't know what you're doing.
If it
wasn't for the last minute, nothing would get done.
A
seminar in time travel will be held two weeks ago.
A
stitch in time would have confused Einstein.
When a
clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
Every
calendar’s days are numbered.
Now
may be an excellent time to become a missing person.
In
just two days, tomorrow will be yesterday.
TRADITION
Tradition is what you resort to when you don't have the time or
the money to do it right.
- Kurt
Herbert Alder.
TRAGEDY &
MISFORTUNE
The
worst is not
So
long as we can say
‘This
is the worst’.
- King
Lear
He who
laughs has not yet heard the bad news.
-
Bertold Brecht.
In
this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what
one wants and the second is getting it.
-
Oscar Wilde.
If it
wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.
-
Blues song.
Manure
occureth.
When
you're up to your nose, keep your mouth shut.
Calamities are of two kinds: Misfortune to ourselves, and good
fortune to others.
I
can't remember ever getting any good news out of an envelope
with a window in it.
TRAVEL
Just
get on any major highway, and eventually it will dead-end in a
Disney parking area large enough to have its own climate,
populated by large nomadic families who have been trying to find
their cars since the Carter administration.
- Dave
Barry.
And
that's the wonderful thing about family travel: it provides you
with experiences that will remain locked forever in the scar
tissue of your mind.
- Dave
Barry.
The
World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
- St.
Augustine.
I
travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's
sake. The great affair is to move.
-
Robert Louis Stevenson.
Thanks
to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel
across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.
-
Charles Kuralt, On the Road With Charles Kuralt.
A good
traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao
Tzu.
Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed
between man and the universe.
-
Anatole France.
Travellers never think that they are the foreigners.
-
Mason Cooley.
Most
travel is best of all in the anticipation or the remembering;
the reality has more to do with losing your luggage.
-
Regina Nadelson.
Now I
know why they tell you to put your head between your knees on
crash landings. You think you're going to kiss your ass
good-bye.
-
Terry Hanson.
Whenever we safely land in a plane, we promise God a little
something.
-
Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook.
The
time to enjoy a European trip is about three weeks after
unpacking.
-
George Ade, Forty Modern Fables.
To
travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other
countries.
-
Aldous Huxley.
The
traveller sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come
to see.
- G.K.
Chesterton.
A
journey of a thousand miles begins with a large cash advance.
TREES
Except
during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man
manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
-
George Bernard Shaw.
You
can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honoured to
have so venerable a neighbour, even when it sheds needles all
over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your
deck at still of night.
-
Denise Levertov.
I
never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though
they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far
as we do. They go wandering forth in all directions with every
wind, going and coming like ourselves, travelling with us around
the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows
how fast and far!
- John
Muir.
God
has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease,
avalanches, and a thousand tempests and floods. But he cannot
save them from fools.
- John
Muir.
Of all
the wonders of nature, a tree in summer is perhaps the most
remarkable; with the possible exception of a moose singing
"Embraceable You" in spats.
-
Woody Allen.
I
think that I shall never see
A
billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll
never see a tree at all.
-
Ogden Nash, Song of the Open Road.
Trees
are poems that earth writes upon the sky,
We
fell them down and turn them into paper,
That
we may record our emptiness.
-
Kahlil Gibran.
Only
when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and
the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money.
- Cree
Indian Proverb.
You
can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of
subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.
- Hal
Borland, Sundial of the Seasons.
A tree
never hits an automobile except in self defence.
-
American Proverb.
Save a
tree. Eat a beaver.
Save a
tree. Eat a woodpecker.
Save
trees. Eat white ants.
HARRY S. TRUMAN
President of the United States, 1945-1953
My
choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a
whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s
hardly any difference.
-
Harry S. Truman.
To err
is Truman.
-
Republican Party slogan.
TRUST
Our
distrust is very expensive.
-
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Few
things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon
him, and to let him know that you trust him.
-
Booker T. Washington.
Every
two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with
the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character
assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the
country - and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost
trust in its politicians.
-
Charles Krauthammer.
Love
all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
-
William Shakespeare.
Few
delights can equal the mere presence of one whom we trust
utterly.
-
George MacDonald.
In God
we trust, all others we virus scan.
Most
human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things
for granted.
-
Aldous Huxley.
TRUTH & LIES
It is
easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex
truth.
-
Alexis de Tocqueville.
This
above all: to thine own self be true
-
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, (Act I, scene iii).
Truth,
in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
-
Oscar Wilde.
The
aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give
pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society.
-
Oscar Wilde.
If you
tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
- Mark
Twain.
All
truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being
self-evident.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
Facts
are the enemy of truth.
- Don
Quixote.
When
money speaks, the truth keeps silent.
- Old Russian proverb.
Truth
is never pure, and rarely simple.
-
Oscar Wilde.
The
victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
-
Adolph Hitler.
There
is no god higher than truth.
-
Mahatma Gandhi.
Like
all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.
-
Jean-Paul Sartre.
When
you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth.
- Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle.
We
swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only
little by little at a truth we find bitter.
-
Denis Diderot.
We do
not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a
glance. We err because this is more comfortable.
-
Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
There
is no truth. There is only perception.
-
Gustave Flaubert.
A lie told often enough
becomes the truth.
- Lenin.
A lie
can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting
on its shoes.
- Mark
Twain.
A lie
gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to
get its pants on.
-
Winston Churchill.
It has
always been desirable to tell the truth, but seldom, if ever,
necessary.
- A.J.
Balfour.
I
welcome the opportunity of pricking the bloated bladder of lies
with the poniard of truth.
-
Aneurin Bevan, replying to a House of Commons speech by Winston
Churchill.
I
should think it hardly possible to state the opposite of the
truth with more precision.
-
Winston Churchill, replying to a House of Commons speech by
Aneurin Bevan.
Truth
is a rare and precious commodity. We must be sparing in its use.
- C.P.
Scott.
If one
tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later to be found out.
-
Oscar Wilde.
….the
truth is a thing I get rid of as soon as possible! Bad habit, by
the way. Makes one very unpopular at the club….with the older
members. They call it being conceited.
-
Oscar Wilde.
It is
always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course, you
are an exceptionally good liar.
-
Jerome K. Jerome.
If you
are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.
-
Albert Einstein.
It
take two to lie, Marge. One to lie and one to listen.
-
Homer Simpson.
He who
cannot lie does not know what the truth is.
-
Friedrich Nietzche.
The
liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed,
but that he cannot believe anyone else.
- G.B.
Shaw.
I
offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling
falsehoods about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.
-
Adlai Stevenson.
Lying
is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.
-
Bergen Evans.
Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It
made one Gasp and Stretch one’s eyes;
Her
Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth,
He’d
kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The
effort very nearly killed her.
-
Hilaire Belloc.
There
are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst
of it is that half of them are true.
-
Winston Churchill.
Truth
is sacred and if you tell the truth too often nobody will
believe it.
- G.K.
Chesterton
No
matter how thin you slice it, it’s still baloney.
-
Alfred E. Smith.
Any
preoccupation with ideas of what is right and wrong in conduct
shows an arrested intellectual development.
-
Oscar Wilde.
People
will believe anything if you whisper it.
The
truth shall make you free, but first it shall piss you off.
The
truth will set you free .... but first it will make you
miserable.
If you
tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
Trust
me, would I lie to you……again?
TYRRANY
The
best government is a benevolent tyranny, modified by an
occasional assassination.
-
Voltaire.
The
only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
-
Mahatma Ghandi
In
Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak
up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for
the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a
trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't
speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and
by that time no one was left to speak up.
-
Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran Pastor.
There are few minds to
which tyranny is not delightful.
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