Here’s a great quote:
“…The day shit is worth money, poor people will be born without an asshole.”
— Gabriel García Márquez, The Autumn of the Patriarch
Here’s another:
“Honey, men are like dogs. You chase them, they’ll run. You run, they’ll chase you.”
— My mom
What are your favorite quotes? Please feel free to discuss that or other topics, such as weekend plans. I’ve gotta get some quiches made tomorrow.
Also, we’re having stormy weather and tornado warnings. Here’s the sky:
But with rare exceptions, our Florida tornadoes are not nearly as scary as the ones out in Sooner country. More like “tornadettes” or “tornadinis.”
CONGRATULATIONS!
And dammit, now I’m gonna have to read the guy. Gone my whole life avoiding it, but that right there is truth and genius in one sentence.
burnspbesq
Paraphrasing Churchill, “jaw, jaw is better than build, build.” I’m counting this as a win until somebody gives me a good reason not to.
Keystone Review Delayed Indefinitely
Mustang Bobby
“All that really matters is that the grass is growing and your dinner’s digested. All the rest is just talk.” — E.B. Wickes III
“Hope is my greatest weakness.” — Bobby Cramer
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
J.Ty
“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem be sure that you are not, in fact, surrounded by assholes.” –somebody William Gibson follows on Twitter
“Old age has taught me the resignation of being Borges.”
“The original is unfaithful to the translation.”
“No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.”
–borges (guys you should all read borges)
“If you handed [character] a glass that was 90% full, he’d tell you that the 10% empty part proved that no one really cared about water.” –AI researcher eliezer yudkowsky, in his epic Harry Potter fanfic
kindness
What mixed drink (adult beverage now) would be good during a Florida storm?
Anoniminous
Denis Diderot:
and
and why not? It’s Easter Season, after all.
donnah
“If ignorance is bliss, you’d think more people would be happy”
One of my dad’s favorites.
Zifnab25
Michael Scott
Amir Khalid
” ” – Marcel Marceau
cleek
“I’m the one who’s gonna have to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.” – Jimi
MariedeGournay
From my namesake:
“But isn’t it beyond belief that those who seek to exalt and strengthen themselves through the weakness of others feel compelled to insist that they can exalt or fortify themselves by means of their own strength?”
Roger Moore
@kindness:
A Hurricane?
NotMax
“Everything old is not necessarily good; everything new is not necessarily better.”
“Sometimes your house burns up, sometimes your house burns down.”
(sources murky or unknown)
“90% of everything is crap.”
- Theodore Sturgeon
Mike E
I’d rather have this bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.
eta: all right, for realz…
“For there is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving.” Albert Camus
K488
“‘Shut up,’ he explained.” Ring Lardner
“Work is the secret of happiness” and “If I had to work I’d quit.” both said by my father, in close conjunction.
J.Ty
@NotMax: I LOVE STURGEON’S LAW!
“He wondered what had lately become of his former… was friend the word? He seemed more like a succession of extraordinary events than a person. The idea of him actually having friends as such seemed not so much unlikely, more a sort of mismatching of concepts, like the idea of the Suez crisis popping out for a bun.” –douglas adams
Egypt Steve
William S. Burroughts
cleek
@kindness:
dark & stormy, hurricane, greyhound ?
schrodinger's cat
. — my grandma.
Yatsuno
@Roger Moore: Too obvious. But maybe a Dark & Stormy?
NotMax
@kindness
A Tropical Storm?
Higgs Boson's Mate
@J.Ty:
“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
raven
@Amir Khalid: He spoke the only word in “Silent Movie”, NO!
Amir Khalid
“To love another person is to see the face of God.” – Herbert Kretzmer, Les Misérables.
raven
“Teaching today’s students the way you taught yesterday robs them of tomorrow”
Dewey
“I don’t skate to where the puck is I skate to where it will be”
Wayne Gretzky
MomSense
” The more I see of people, the better I like dogs.”
my grandma
Belafon
@J.Ty: I make my kids read the Library of Babel.
Calouste
@Amir Khalid:
Did he also write the libretto for “4’33” by John Cage?
Shortstop
Someday I shall live where I can have a banana tree.
J.Ty
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: The Garden of Forking Paths is one of my favorite literary collections ever.
@Belafon: Nice!
JT
“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.” – George Best
raven
Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it is too dark to read.
G Marx
Seanly
My last name is Murphy, so I have to go with my law:
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong
I recently watched Big Trouble in LIttle China:
Jack Burton: Okay. You people sit tight, hold the fort and keep the home fires burning. And if we’re not back by dawn… call the president.
Yeah, they’re not very profound. Other folks can whip out the Jeebus/Churchill/Einstein quotes & look like they’ve read something…
Chat Noir
“Instant gratification takes too long.”
Carrie Fisher
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@burnspbesq: It’s what I’ve been hoping for, kicking the can down the road at least till after mid-terms.
one of my favorite quotes, “fuck off and die”, Dickens style:
There’s a longer passage in that vein, that I love, does the Spoiler Statute of Limitations reach back to 18-something or other?
Turgidson
Still one of my favorites:
“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” -John Rogers
“I collect spores, molds and fungus.” -Harold Ramis as Egon Spengler
Quinerly
“Everybody talks about my drinking. Nobody talks about my thirst.”
Brendan in NC
“You might as well be happy, young fellow. “Cause no one gives a [email protected] if you’re not” William Caunitz One Police Plaza
Yatsuno
@cleek: You stole mine. But I found a slightly more interesting one.
sublime33
“Don’t waste your time arguing with an idiot.” – My father
J.Ty
“I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.” –Mitch Hedberg
(Sorry, I just really like sharing quotes.)
Cassidy
“Don’t believe everything you read on twitter.”- Marilyn Monroe
Betty Cracker
@Shortstop: Did you ever get your kitchen fixed up?
jl
Can’t say it’s my favorite quote, but the one that comes to mind often when reading the news. I think from Thucydides:
The strong do what they want to do, the weak suffer what they must suffer.
I heard a version from a cynical and foul mouthed great auntie, who I don’t think ever hear of Thucydides:
The big man steps where he wants to, the little people have to skitter out of the way.
And my favorite pidgin English saying I learned from pidgin English lesson a fellow grad student (edit: from West Africa) gave some of us:
Beef for go to dey death house, dey no ken dey whistle.
schrodinger's cat
From Winnie Wonka, the great maker of LOLs on ICHC
I lost my virginity but still have the box it came in.
The Thin Black Duke
“Tomorrow never happens. It’s all the same fucking day, man.” (Janis Joplin)
Belafon
@Cassidy: I thought that was Abraham Lincoln.
Cassidy
@Belafon: Maybe Thomas Jefferson.
NotMax
“They say everything is hard the first time. This is the first time I’ve died.”
My grandfather (Max, age 96), in the hospital not long before the end.
Hungry Joe
From memory, and probably mangled — a father’s advice: “Someday, my son, a man will bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of an unopened deck of cards and spit tobacco juice in your ear. But do not take that bet, my son, for if you do you are sure to end up with an ear full of tobacco juice.” — Damon Runyon (I think)
Thoughtcrime
@cleek:
Jimi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucj3vTQwKQc
Quaker in a Basement
“I try to be cynical, but it’s so hard to keep up.”– Lily Tomlin
srv
“Life’s a jest and all things show it. I thought so once, and now I know it.” — John Gay
Trollhattan
–Groucho
In the spirit of Cliven Bundy, who can be rabidly anti-government while taking from the government (a.k.a. “us”) I give you one Ray Nutting–tea party hearthrob, taker of California State grant money and four-time Eldorado County supervisor. That’s some anti-gummint cred, right there.
http://www.sacbee.com/2014/04/18/6334189/supervisors-trial-has-el-dorado.html
MikeJ
“See everything, overlook a great deal, improve a little.” (John XXIII)
“Skepticism is the worst form of gullibility.” (John “adamsj” Adams)
Elmo
“He who would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression.”
Thomas Paine
J.Ty
-Principia Discordia
Hungry Joe
“It is not enough to succeed; others must fail.” — Gore Vidal
And a variation on my Damon Runyon quote (#50 above): “Never bet on another man’s game.” — Don Pool, my high school physics and trig teacher.
Ian
Confucius say man who stand tall on toilet get high on pot
eric
I believe this to be camus, but cannot confirm it, but it is my favorite aphorism of all time:
“Ideology, is spiritual imperialism.”
MikeJ
@Hungry Joe: In the movie it was apple cider.
RP
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps, for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they might have been.
RP
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness. — Beckett
J.Ty
@RP: He would say that.
NotMax
One more.
“Whether you can hear it or not, the universe is laughing behind your back.”
- NatLamp’s Deteriorata
Geeno
“I care not for a man’s religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.” -Abraham Lincoln
dedc79
“Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.”
― Paul Fussell
“If I didn’t have writing, I’d be running down the street hurling grenades in people’s faces.”
― Paul Fussell
GregB
I can resist everything but temptation,
-Oscar Wilde
We will either find a way or make one.
-Hannibal
You fucked up…..you trusted us.
-Otter
Peter
“It has been a common saying of physicians in England, that a cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.” – Samuel Johnson
I actually like cucumbers but that quote brings a smile to my face every time I hear it.
Frankensteinbeck
‘We are as forlorn as children lost in the woods. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours. And if I were to cast myself down before you and weep and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell.’
Franz Kafka
jake the snake
My father had a lot, but my favorite is as follows.
“…… is alright in his own way, he just don’t weigh much.”
Jennifer
Dr. Johnson, in reference to a man who had been unhappily married who then immediately remarried after his wife’s death: “It was the triumph of hope over experience.”
Elly
My dad always used to quip:
“Knowledge is power, and I’m a powerful S.O.B.”
Not his only stock witticism, but the one I remember best.
jl
This is a paraphrase, a generic version distilled from many instances, but more or less goes like
I’m going to punch you morons in the neck. I hate all of you!: John G Cole.
Seems like any compilation of important quotes on BJ blog should include it.
Hank
“Too much is never enough.” – A river guide I used to work with, but whose name I have, alas, forgotten.
Jennifer
Dorothy Parker, asked about the Harvard/Yale football game she had attended: “If every girl in attendance were laid end-to-end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
NotMax
Okay, yet another.
“Try everything once except folk dancing and incest.”
- Sir Thomas Beecham
beth
A friend who works with troubled kids (I’m sure she got it from someone else) – “If kids are so resilient, why are there so many fucked up adults?”.
Mnemosyne
I was looking for a different P.G. Wodehouse quote, but this one jumped out at me:
Amir Khalid
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone 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, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
metricpenny
“A man can’t ride your back unless it’s bent.” – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
May he have been resting in peace since April 4, 1968.
NotMax
Okay, yet another. (First attempt nixed by FYWP, hence trying using extra spaces.)
“Try everything once except folk dancing and i n c e s t.”
- Sir Thomas Beecham
greenergood
“Honey, men are like dogs. You chase them, they’ll run. You run, they’ll chase you.” – Betty Cracker’s mom rules!
also too:
If you’re squeamish, don’t prod the beach rubble – Sappho
Cassidy
Greg Giraldo
This quite popped to mind the other day. A scruffy looking dude was standing in the off ramp with a cardboard sign that said “just hungry”. Smallest bill I had was a $10 and I have it to him. I won’t lie. If I’m sitting at an off ramp and someone hands me a $10 or better, I might very well say fuck it and buy a dimebag.
workworkwork
“The way to kill a bear is to kill it.”
“The same heat that melts the grease hardens the egg.”
– My father, always one for the inexplicable quotes.
Mnemosyne
Here’s the one I was looking for (Bertie Wooster is the character speaking):
jl
@Jennifer:
OK, now. getting to seriously good quotations with Dorothy Parker. I can’t choose my favorite:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dorothy_Parker
scav
@workworkwork: One of my great aunt’s: “Your teeth are your teeth, my teeth are my teeth.”
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Punctuality is the virtue of the bored – Evelyn Waugh
isms, in my opinion, are not good – Ferris Bueller (John Hughes)
NotMax
One other sprang to what’s left of the mind. Cannot recall accurately who said it, but it may have been Jomo Kenyatta. Sure it was a prominent African politician, at any rate.
“The only way to play the harp is to play the harp.”
Lurking Buffoon
“I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”
– Voltaire
“You know Nixon’s coming back, right? They didn’t put a stake in his heart when they buried him.”
– My father
les
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
–Albert Einstein
les
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. Kurt Vonnegut, “Cat’s Cradle”
Shortstop
@Betty Cracker: yes! It looks fantastic and was worth all the work. Very sleek and minimalist, as I’ve always wanted. We did it!
les
Food has replaced sex in my life. Now I can’t even get into my own pants.–Anonymous
Betty Cracker
@Shortstop: Yay! I knew you could do it!
Josie
When you call me that, Smile. — Owen Wister
Higgs Boson's Mate
We must make the good out of the bad because there isn’t anything else to make it out of. – Robert Penn Warren
danielx
The trouble with our Texas Baptists is that we do not hold them under water long enough.
– William Cowper Brann (b 1/4/1855, d 4/1/1898) – American journalist. Mortally wounded from being shot in the back by an irate Baptist, but managed to draw his own pistol and fatally wound his assailant, hitting him multiple times.
danielx
If ignorance ever goes to forty dollars a barrel, I want drillin’ rights on that man’s head.
– Jim Hightower regarding Dollar Bill Clements, former Texas governor and a man born with a burr up his butt.
Suzan
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles but most of them never happened. Mark Twain.
danielx
@Jennifer:
Dorothy Parker regarding Lillian Hellman – Every word she says is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.
burnspbesq
“Ladies, if you don’t want the State of Texas to regulate how you use your vagina, incorporate it.”
Me, doing my best Molly Ivins impression.
Anoniminous
— Robert Graves
jl
@burnspbesq: I think Mary McCarthy (sp?) author of snooty books about snooty college women, said that.
Baud
— John Cole
jl
@Baud: Too many Cole quotes will render this post unsuitable for this wholesome family oriented blog.
Hungry Joe
@danielx: Nope — that was Mary McCarthy. I think Hellman sued her, or was in the process of suing her when she (Hellman) croaked.
Baud
@jl:
— John Cole
Origuy
We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
H. L. Mencken
VFX Lurker
“Bluntly put, there’s no chance that your doctor, dentist, or attorney is a high-school dropout. Your stockbroker, however, just might be.” — William Bernstein, “An Open Letter to Joe Nocera“
SenyorDave
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. – Dean Wormer, from Animal House
WaterGirl
If you don’t understand the question, the answer is always “no”.
– my mom
JSinLA
He was born a quart low and he’s been burning oil ever sense. – James Carville talking about a Republican senate candidate.
WaterGirl
One of my two favorites:
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
sempronia
“HELP! MY TYPEWRITER IS BROKEN!!”
– e e cummings
Chris
A few translated ones:
“I was terrified that the wild boar might be attacking my father, and so I prayed to God – if he existed – to protect him and to direct the boar against my uncle instead, who believed in heaven, and therefore was more willing to die.”
– Marcel Pagnol, describing a hunting trip from his childhood
“Just because thirty million people made the same fuckup doesn’t mean it’s not still a fuckup.”
– Jean Paul Belmondo, on the outcome of certain elections
“I am not bad, thank you. But don’t worry, one of these days I shall certainly die.”
– Charles De Gaulle disconfirming rumors of his deathly illness
C.S.
— My mom, unwittingly distilling the Vimes ‘Boots’ Theory of Socioeconomic Injustice.
Bob In Portland
Here’s my post at the NY Times. It was an editor’s pick. What have I done wrong?
gogol's wife
@Mnemosyne:
Every Wodehouse novel is a tissue of great quotations.
Ernest Pikeman
Life is hard. Everything changes. Don’t take it personally. — Buddha, paraphrased by Wes Nisker (I think).
moderateindy
Regarding women……
Emma
“Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can’t trade for your heart’s desire is your heart.”
“When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.”
Lois McMaster Bujold
gogol's wife
“I only wanted to say that all ideas that have huge consequences are always simple. My whole idea is that if vicious people are bound together with each other and constitute a force, then honorable people have only to do the very same thing. It’s as simple as that.”
Pierre Bezukhov in War and Peace
Groucho48
A long quote but it is one I enjoy hitting my libertarian adversaries with from time to time:
Bobby Thomson
Friendly fire isn’t.
Jennifer
“The sleep of reason begets monsters.” – Goya
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
You must be not named after him.
Matt
“Procrastination is like masturbation, you’re only fucking yourself in the end…”
jl
@Bob In Portland: I heard on the news that Putin blurted out at the Geneva talks that he took Crimea because that was only protection against relentless march of NATO towards Russia’s borders, against what he asserted were promises to the contrary made when old Soviet Union broke up.
I heard some hack on a Sunday Talky show (forget whether it was McCain or some Obama admin hack, hard to tell them apart except wrt bashing Obama) that Putin’s playbook on eastern part of Ukraine was ‘exactly the same’ as for Crimea. That is bunk. If it were ‘exactly the same’, Russia would have invaded eastern Ukraine by now.
I think Russia is playing a ‘what good for the goose is good for the gander’ game in eastern Ukraine, except with goal of keeping that part of Ukraine unstable and intervened in, and internationally monitored for as long as possible. I could be wrong though and Russia might invade, but I think that would be a GW Bush level blunder and crime. Anyway, that smoldering destabilization game would delay or prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, which seems to me Putin admitted is the issue with him and Russian government.
redbeardjim
“Beware he who would deny you access to information; for in his heart he dreams himself your master.”
— Commissioner Pravin Lal, U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
Renie
Laugh before breakfast cry before dinner.
my mother, and it is the oddest thing i have heard (and i heard it many times)
Ruckus
Always put brain in gear before opening mouth.
Sign on dad’s toolbox.
My time isn’t worth much, but it’s worth more than that.
Me.
Hal
“My father had taught me to be nice first, because you can always be mean later, but once you’ve been mean to someone, they won’t believe the nice anymore. So be nice, be nice, until it’s time to stop being nice, then destroy them.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, A Stroke of Midnight
SiubhanDuinne
“This is a big fucking deal.” — VP Joe Biden
Applicable to so many situations.
James E. Powell
Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead. ― Charles Bukowski
dngnmstr
The one thing you can’t trade for your heart’s desire is your heart.
– Miles Vorkosigan – Memory
A Humble Lurker
@Bob In Portland: @Chris:
@jl: Uh…Russia’s already kind of invaded man. Those pro-Russia Ukrainian’s who didn’t even know where the capital building was? The dudes who had anti-tank guns?
PhilbertDesanex
“If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government” – Arthur Laffer
AnotherBruce
“The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”
– Billy Blake (drink!)
jl
@A Humble Lurker:
Seems like you do not understand the difference between “Russia’s already kind of invaded” and “Russia’s invaded”. There is a difference. Maybe you should stick to Fox News.
Bob In Portland
@jl: The only thing that Putin has to do to destabilize Ukraine is to wait.
sylvainsylvain
“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink – when they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as their gonna feel all day”
Frank Sinatra, as told to me by a friend as I was suffering an epic hangover…
Chris
@A Humble Lurker:
… why the hell are you talking to me?
bago
Ehm… Seattle center.
Fort Geek
One favorite, by Carl Schurz:
WaterGirl
@Ruckus:
I love that!
Mothra
“We find a later echo of this call in the famous quote made by Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara who was Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil that goes: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-raushenbush/pope-francis-unfettered-capitalism_b_4449643.html
M.C. Simon Milligan
“Why do the gentle ones always pay the price for others’ ambitions?” – Scorpius commenting on The Three Stooges
“There is no governor anywhere.” – Zhuangzi
Barry Rosenman
Two from Anatole France:
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Jebediah, RBG
“My only regret is that I have boneitis.” -Steve Castle, AKA That Guy.
Jebediah, RBG
@raven:
One of my all-time favorites.
Radio One
“On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.” -Charles Babbage
Howard Beale IV
–Benny Hill
narya
My dad, when asked why we celebrate Christmas since we don’t believe in Christ (because we’re a big ol bunch of atheists):
We celebrate Halloween and we don’t believe in ghosts; why give up a perfectly good holiday?