- R
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- If God had meant me to exercise, he'd put diamonds on the floor.
--Joan Rivers
- What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.
--Will Rogers
- A difference of opinion is what makes horse racing and missionaries.
--Will Rogers
- I belong to no organized political party -- I am a Democrat.
--Will Rogers
- Old men are fond of giving advice to console themselves for being no
longer in a position to give bad examples.
-- Francois de la Rouchefoucald
- Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
--Bertrand Russel
- The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are
composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
--Mark Russell
- S
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- I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a
blessing it is that they never try to talk English.
-- Saki (H. H. Munro)
- An autobiography is the story of how a man thinks he lived.
-- Herbert Samuel
- The tendency of an event to occur varies inversely with one's
preparation for it.
--David Searles
- I never thought much of the courage of a lion-tamer. Inside the cage
he is at least safe from people.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
--George Bernard Shaw
- Love is the gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and
everyone else.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- Great Britain and the United States are nations separated by a
common language.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- What is the use of straining after an amiable view of things, when a cynical view is most likely to be the true one?
-- George Bernard Shaw
- He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
--George Bernard Shaw
- Do you know what a pessimist is? A man who thinks everybody as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.
-- George Bernard Shaw
--
- The perfect love affair is one which is conducted entirely by post.
--George Bernard Shaw
- Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
-- George Bernard Shaw
- Moral indignation is, in most cases, 2% moral, 48% indignation, and 50% envy.
--Vittorio de Sica
- The more I see of man . . . the more I like dogs.
-- Madam de Stael
- There's nothing wrong with the average person that a good psychiatrist can't exaggerate.
--Toronto Star Newspaper
- In America, anyone can become president. That's one of the risks you take.
--Adlai Stevenson
- Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
--Publius Syrus
- Let a fool hold his tongue and he will pass for a sage.
-- Pubilius Syrus
- T
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- With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of
the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.
-- James Thurber
- Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
--James Thurber
- A great many open minds should be closed for repairs.
--Toledo Blade Newspaper
- I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more
specific.
--Lilly Tomlin, actress, author and commedian
- Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then - we elected them.
--Lily Tomlin
- Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
--Lilly Tomlin, actress, author and commedian
- The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you're still a rat.
--Lilly Tomlin, actress, author and commedian
- I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight.
-- Mark Twain
- Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
--Mark Twain
- The difference between the right word and almost the right word is the difference between lighning and the lightning bug.
-- Mark Twain
- I find that the further I go back, the better things were, whether they happened or not.
-- Mark Twain
- If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a man and a dog.
-- Mark Twain
- Providence protects children and idiots. I know because I have tested it.
--Mark Twain
- The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.
-- Mark Twain
- "Be Yourself" is about the worst advice you can give to people.
-- Mark Twain
- Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was that they escaped teething.
-- Mark Twain
- By trying we can easily endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
-- Mark Twain
- Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
-- Mark Twain
- Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she has laid an asteroid.
-- Mark Twain
- A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and no body wants to read.
--Mark Twain
- I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything
which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful
that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have
gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera
the result has been the next thing to suicide.
--Mark Twain, 1891
- Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.
--Mark Twain
- Let us be thankful for fools. But for them the rest of us could not
succeed.
-- Mark Twain
- July 4. Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in
all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has
grown so.
-- Mark Twain, from Pudd'nhead Wilson
- V
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- Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle,
a higher tax bracket, or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.
-- Judith Viorst
- W
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- Reality is the leading cause of stress among those in touch with it.
--Jane Wagner
- One is never more on trial than in the moment of excessive good
fortune.
--Lew Wallace
- I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
--Mae West
- When women go wrong, men go right after them.
--Mae West
- Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people
are right more than half of the time.
-- E.B. White
- I am not young enough to know everything.
-- Oscar Wilde
- Don't give a woman advice; one should never give a woman anything
she can't wear in the evening.
-- Oscar Wilde
- Bad artists always admire each other's work.
-- Oscar Wilde
- Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.
-- Oscar Wilde
- A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is
absolutely fatal.
--Oscar Wilde
- Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.
--Oscar Wilde, from Impressions of America
(quoting someone in 'Leadville')
- Ah! Don't say that you agree with me. When People agree with me I
always feel that I must be wrong.
--Oscar Wilde
- It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist.
It produced a false impression.
--Oscar Wilde, from The Importance of Being Earnest
- The good ended happily and the bad ended unhappily. That is what
fiction means.
--Oscar Wilde, from The Importance of Being Earnest
- On an occaision of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to
speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.
--Oscar Wilde, from The Importance of Being Earnest
- I couldn't help it. I can resist everything except temptation.
--Oscar Wilde, from Lady Windermere's Fan
- Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter
it every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde
- Either the wallpaper goes or I do.
-- Oscar Wilde, last words
- You can pick out actors by the glazed look that comes into their
eyes when the conversation wanders away from themselves.
-- Michael Wilding
- Twixt the optimist and pessimist
The difference is droll:
The optimist sees the doughnut
But the pessimist sees the hole.
-- McLandburgh Wilson, Optimist and Pessimist
- The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team.
--John Wooden
- On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who
points.
--Virginia Woolf, playwrite
- Z
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- The only true love is love at first sight; second sight dispels it.
-- Israel Zangwill
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