The Future

I have seen the future and it is just like the present, only longer.

Most of our future lies ahead.

Never make forecasts, especially about the future.
Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974)

Good science fiction writers don't dream about the future and hope they're right, they have nightmares and hope they're wrong.

The future isn't what it used to be.

back to
contents

Genealogy

She's descended from a long line her mother listened to.
Gypsy Rose Lee (1914-1970)

back to
contents

Genetics

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)

Racism is only the snobbery of the poor.

You are never alone with a clone.

back to
contents

Genius

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931)

The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

back to
contents

Gentlemen

A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn't.

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who then was the gentleman?
John Ball (?-1381)

back to
contents

God

Even God cannot change the past.
Agathon (445BC-400BC)

God doesn't come when you want him but he's right on time.

God help those who do not help themselves.
Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh.

God is dead and I want his job.

God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through.
Paul Valéry (1871-1945)

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform.
William Cowper (1731-1800)

Less is more. God is in the details.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969)

If God exists, that's his problem.

If God lived on earth, people would stone his windows.

If triangles invented a god, they would make him three-sided.
Montesquieu (1689-1755)

Is man one of God's blunders, or is God one of man's?
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Man has never been the same since God died.
Edna St Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

Man is a dog's idea of what God should be.
Holbrook Jackson

The gods too are fond of a joke.
Aristotle (384BC-322BC)

The only thing that stops God from sending a second Flood is that the first one was useless.
Sébastien-Roch Chamfort (1740-1794)

Those who don´t believe in Gosh will go to Heck.

back to
contents

Golf

A good walk spoiled.*
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

I regard golf as an expensive way of playing marbles.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

back to
contents

The Good Things in Life

Give us the luxuries of life and we will willingly dispense with its necessities.
John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877)

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)

Too much of a good thing is wonderful.
Mae West (1892-1980)

back to
contents

Happiness

Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Fill what's empty, empty what's full, and scratch where it itches.

Happiness can't buy you money.

Happiness is no laughing matter.
Richard Whately (1787-1863)

Happiness isn't something you experience. It's something you remember.
Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time.
Edith Wharton (1862-1937)

No one knows what true happiness is until they get married but by then, of course, it's too late.

She was so glad to see me go that I have almost a mind to come again, that she may again have the same pleasure.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Some mornings, it's just doesn't seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.
Emo Philips*

back to
contents

Health

After two days in hospital I took a turn for the nurse.
W.C. Fields (1879-1946)

Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite and furthermore always carry a small snake.
W.C. Fields (1879-1946)

Early to bed
Early to rise
These are the reasons
Why a man dies.

Early to rise and early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead.
James Thurber (1894-1961)

Health is having the same diseases as your neighbours.
Quentin Crisp (1931-)

Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Hospital is a place where they wake you up to give you a sleeping pill.

Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn't mean he knows what it is.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to everyone you know, only more so.

back to
contents

Heaven & Hell

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)

Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.
John Milton (1608-1674)

Hell is a half-filled auditorium.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Hell is other people.
Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

In heaven all the interesting people are missing.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

When I die, I hope to go to Heaven, whatever the Hell that is.

back to
contents

History

History repeats itself because nobody listens.

History repeats itself; historians repeat each other.
Philip Guedalla

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

I do not intend to prejudge the past.
William Whitelaw

In the beginning there was nothing. God said, "Let there be light"; and there was still nothing, but everybody could see it.

Once there was a time when all people believed in God and the church ruled; this time is called the Dark Ages.

Soviet History 101: Who knows tomorrow what happened yesterday?

We owe most of what we know to about one hundred men. We owe most of what we have suffered to another hundred or so.
R.W. Dickson

back to
contents

Holidays

A good holiday is one spent in the company of people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.
J.B. Priestley (1894-1984)

back to
contents

Home

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)

back to
contents

Honesty

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.
Henry Kissinger (1923-)

Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

back to
contents

Hope

He that lives in hope danceth without musick.
George Herbert (1593-1633)

Now that I've given up hope I feel much better.

We often call a certainty a hope, to bring it luck.
Elizabeth Bibesco

back to
contents

Horses

Horse sense is what stops horses from betting on humans.

No horse goes as fast as the money you bet on him.

One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him.

back to
contents

Human Nature

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.

All that we are not stares back at what we are.
W.H. Auden (1907-1973)

Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out.
Anton Chekhov (1960-1904)

Ah! but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?
Robert Browning (1812-1889)

Crises bring out the best in the best of us, and the worst in the worst of us.

Man is vile, I know, but people are wonderful.
Peter de Vries (1910-1993)

None so empty as those who are full of themselves.
Benjamin Whichcote

back to
contents

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty was pushed.

back to
contents

Idealism

A thing is not necessarily right because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

There is a certain impertinence in allowing oneself to be burned for an opinion.
Anatole France (1844-1924)

To die for an idea is to set a rather high price on conjecture.
Anatole France (1844-1924)

back to
contents

Ignorance

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

If ignorance isn't bliss, I don't know what is.

Nothing is more terrifying than ignorance in action.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
Thomas Gray (1716-1771)

back to
contents

Intellect

The difference between a man of intellect and an intellectual is the same as the difference between a gentleman and a gent.
Stanley, Earl Baldwin (1867-1947)

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969)

An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex.
Edgar Wallace (1875-1932)

back to
contents

Journalism

Journalism largely consists in saying 'Lord Jones is dead' to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.
G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

back to
contents

Next Page

Compiled and edited by
Luis de Avendaño
Comments, amendments, suggestions and corrections to

Updated on Sunday, 24 January 2010

Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentages of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances. See Circular 21 and FL 102.
(From the US Copyright Office FAQ.)