Favorite Quotes

 

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

-- Mark Twain
Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain
The best introduction to Mark Twain; 670 pages of the funniest short stories ever written: Mark Twain's Short Stories

 

Do not keep saying to yourself, "But how can it be like that?" Nobody knows how it can be like that.

-- Richard Feynman, on quantum physics
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Six Easy Pieces : Essentials of Physics Explained by Its Most Brilliant Teacher

 

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

-- Oscar Wilde
I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation : And Other Quotations from Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being a Wit : The Insults of Oscar Wilde

 

Fashions are induced epidemics.

-- George Bernard Shaw

 

There is so much to be said in favor of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.

-- Oscar Wilde
I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation : And Other Quotations from Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being a Wit : The Insults of Oscar Wilde

 

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

-- Elvis Presley

 

I think he should be called "Mickey Mouse".

-- Lilly Disney (Walt's wife), 1928 (Walt was going to call him "Mortimer Mouse")

 

Short int, usually abbreviated to short, is normally the same as int, except when int is the same as long, in which case short will be shorter, if you see what I mean.

-- Ivor Horton, being uncharacteristically opaque on C programming.
Beginning Visual C++ 5

 

If you get your types mixed up, you'll probably crash or hang instantly. You won't be able to step through your code and find the bug. The compiler won't warn you. You won't be able to use Debug.Print. You won't pass Go. You won't collect $200. You won't even go to jail. If you try to pass garbage on the stack several hundred times a second, you won't be forgiven.

-- Bruce McKinney, waxing melodramatic on the perils of subclassing in Visual Basic programming.
Hardcore Visual Basic, 2nd Edition (Version 5.0)

 

Most men who are not married by the age of 35 are either homosexual or smart.

-- Becky Rodenbeck

 

I've never been married, but I tell people I'm divorced so they won't think something's wrong with me.

-- Elayne Boosler

 

I go from stool to stool in singles bars hoping to get lucky, but there's never any gum under any of them.

-- Emo Phillips

 

A "Bay Area Bisexual" told me I didn't quite coincide with either of her desires.

-- Woody Allen

 

For birth control I rely on my personality.

-- Milt Abel

 

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when my mother took me to see him in a department store, and he asked for my autograph.

-- Shirley Temple
Films of Shirley Temple

 

I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.

-- Oscar Wilde
I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation : And Other Quotations from Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being a Wit : The Insults of Oscar Wilde

 

Learned conversation is either the affectation of the ignorant or the profession of the mentally unemployed.

-- Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being a Wit : The Insults of Oscar Wilde

 

I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations with myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.

-- Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being a Wit : The Insults of Oscar Wilde

 

We teach people how to remember, we never teach them how to grow.

-- Oscar Wilde
I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation : And Other Quotations from Oscar Wilde
The Importance of Being a Wit : The Insults of Oscar Wilde

 

The lot of an electronic brain is hard. Constant, unremitting labor, complex calculations, the abuse and rough humor of attendants -- this is what an apparatus, by its nature extremely delicate, must endure. Little wonder then, that there are breakdowns, and short circuits, which not infrequently represent attempts at suicide. Not long ago I had, in my clinic, such a case. A split personality -- dichotomia profunda psychogenes electrocutiva alternans. This particular brain addressed love letters to itself, employing such endearing terms as 'relay baby,' 'spoolie,' 'little digit drum-dump' -- clear proof of how badly the thing needed affection, a kind word, some warm and tender relationship.

-- Stanislaw Lem, in The Eleventh Voyage
The Eleventh Voyage

 

Any belief that does not allow others the right to believe something else is based more on fear than on faith.

-- Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert's Video Companion

 

Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it.

-- Stephen Vizinczey, Hungarian novelist

 

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