In response to a diminishing number of requests,
I am including this listing of collected wise and pithy proverbs
(which appear randomly on the ODT Index page).
- eiπ+1=0
-Euler - You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. -Mae West
- Life goes on, having nowhere else to go. -Dianne Ackerman
- Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half the people are stupider than that. -George Carlin
- The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. -George Carlin
- You know the good part about all those executions in Texas? Fewer Texans. -George Carlin
- When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign: that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. -Jonathan Swift
- A fool and his money are soon elected. -Will Rogers
- If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went. -Will Rogers
- You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time -Abraham Lincoln
- I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult. -Rita Rudner
- Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea. -Robert A. Heinlein
- If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then give him only two of them. -Phil Pastoret
- The past is a foreign country; They do things differently there. -L. P. Hartley; The Go-Between (1953)
- Don't be afraid to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is. -Arthur F. Lenenhan
- Time is God's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. -John Wheeler
- The world's biggest problem is that intelligent people are full of doubts, while stupid people are full of confidence. -Anon
- Gaffe definition: When a politition accidentally tells the truth. -Anon
- There are no stupid questions -- but they are easier to answer! -Anon
- The bartender says "We don't serve tachyons here."
A tachyon enters a bar. -Anon - I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one. -Anon
- Forgetting is another kind of extinction. -Anon
- Insanity is hereditary; you get it from your children. -Sam Levenson
- When Fascism comes to America, it will be carrying a cross and wrapped in a flag. -Sinclair Lewis
- A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar. -H. L. Mencken
- A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground. -H. L. Mencken
- Don't overestimate the decency of the human race. -H. L. Mencken
- For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -H. L. Mencken
- I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone. -H. L. Mencken
- Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse. -H. L. Mencken
- Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. -H. L. Mencken
- Say what you will about the ten commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them. -H. L. Mencken
- Martinis are the only American invention as perfect as a sonnet. -H. L. Mencken
- A lie can travel halfway around the world before truth can get her boots on. -Mark Twain
- If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. -Dorothy Parker
- It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. -Mark Twain
- A banker is the person who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it rains. -Mark Twain
- If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man. -Mark Twain
- Golf is a good walk spoilt. -Mark Twain
- Those who do not read have no advantage over those who can not. -Mark Twain
- If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end. -Mark Twain
- If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat. -Mark Twain
- I don't give a damn for a man who can spell a word only one way. -Mark Twain
- We welcome every honest immigrant ... provided only that he leaves off his former nationality and ... becomes an American. -Teddy Roosevelt, 4 Jul 1886
- The best collection is only as usable as its search mechanism. -RAD
- Republicans would repeal oxygen if they thought Obama was behind it! -RAD
- Why is it that some families are chock-a-block with notable members while others have a dearth? -RAD
- I am always keen to perfect my data! -RAD
- I seek dead people. -RAD (with apologies to The Sixth Sense)
- Never trust anything run by a computer. -RAD
- You can never have too many tools. -RAD
- You will never grow if you only read opinion with which you agree. -RAD
- True vision is to see the butterfly in a caterpillar. -RAD
- Genealogist plods on; Among relative strangers. -RAD (6-word stories)
- Conservatives lack that part of the brain that creates empathy; They are simply unable to put themselves in someone else's shoes. We should begin treating them as the brain-damaged wrecks of humanity that they are. -RAD
- Democracy is the worst form of government -- excepting all the others. -W. Churchill
- You can always count on Americans to do the right thing, after they've tried everything else. -W. Churchill
- If you would not be forgotten, / as soon as you are dead and rotten; / Either write things worthy of reading, / or do things worthy of writing. -Benjamin Franklin
- There's no crying in baseball! -Tom Hanks (A League of their own)
- Do, or do not. There is no try. -Yoda (The Empire Strikes Back)
- The future ain't what it used to be. -Yogi Berra
- All generalizations are false, including this one. -Blaise Pascal
- There are three kinds of untruths: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics. -Benjamin Disraeli
- The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -Anatole France
- 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
- I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. -Groucho Marx
- Everything not compulsory is forbidden. -T. H. White (The Once and Future King)
- A fool must now and then be right by chance. -William Cowper
- I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them. -Adlai Stevenson
- You can't have everything. Where would you put it? -Steven Wright
- If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? -Steven Wright
- The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. -Steven Wright
- To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. -Steven Wright
- The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up. -Steven Wright
- 99 percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name. -Steven Wright
- I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don't know what to feed it. -Steven Wright
- There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot. -Steven Wright
- We have met the enemy, and he is us! -Pogo Possum (1970)
- It's always something! -Gilda Radner
- I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize that I should have been more specific. -Lily Tomlin
- 98% of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy 2% that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them. -Lily Tomlin
- The trouble with the rat-race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. -Lily Tomlin
- Punchline: The blonde looks up the river and down the river, then shouts back, "Are you kidding me? You're ALREADY on the other side!" -unknown
- Dogs have masters; Cats have staff. -unknown
- Illegitimi non carborundum (Don't let the bastards wear you down) -unknown
- A Democrat, a Republican and a giraffe walk into a bar. The bartender looks up from his want ads and says, "What is this, a joke?" -unknown
- So, an E-flat, a G-flat and a B-flat walk into a bar. The bartender says "I'm sorry, we don't serve minors." -unknown
- Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change. -unknown
- Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand. -unknown
- To err is human. To really screw things up you need a computer. -unknown
- The same people that wrote the bible thought the world was flat. -unknown - (disputed)
- More austerity coming - the beatings will continue until morale improves! -unknown
- "God is dead." -Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" -God - And when you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. -Fredrich Nietzsche
- Two roads diverged in a wood, and I... I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. -Robert Frost
- Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason. -Jerry Seinfeld
- Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. -Martin Luther King Jr.
- Rev. King's great speech was "I have a dream", not "I have a plan". -Simon Sinek
- First things first, but not necessarily in that order. -Dr. Who
- Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. -Albert Einstein
- Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -Albert Einstein
- Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. -John Lennon
- Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation. -Edward R. Murrow
- Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness always got there first, and it is waiting for it. -Terry Pratchet (Reaper Man)
- Do not go gentle into that good night... / Rage, rage against the dying of the light. -Dylan Thomas
- The answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42. -Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
- Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. -The Wizard Of Oz
- There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't. -Robert Benchley
- Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple. -Barry Switzer
- Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one. -Arthur C. Clarke
- Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit. (Perhaps it will be pleasing sometime to have remembered these things.) -Virgil, The Aeneid
- A people which takes no pride in the achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered by remote descendants. -Thomas Babington Macaulay
- Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do. -Voltaire
- All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
- A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Publicity is the oxygen of terrorism. -Margaret Thatcher
- Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. -Unknown
- A village betrays us, a village is burned; [No matter if it was the wrong one,] the point is made.
Your point, their village. -Boris Pasternak Dr. Zhivago - For of all sad words of tongue or pen,/The saddest are these: "It might have been!" -John Greenleaf Whittier
- The only difference between a taxman and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. -Mark Twain
- There's a reason why the word "wired" means both "connected to the internet" and "high, frantic, unable to concentrate". -Johann Hari
- I never met anyone who didn't like Aida -- and I don't want to! -Unknown
- The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it. -Welsh proverb
- I'm mad a Hell, and I'm not going to take it any more! -Howard Beale Network
- Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. -Leo Tolstoy (Anna Karenina)
- Be yourself; everything else is taken. -Oscar Wilde
- The pure and simple Truth is rarely pure, and never simple. -Oscar Wilde
- You cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable. -Pres. John F. Kennedy
- The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it. -Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- Prediction is difficult, especially about the future. -Danish proverb
- I am big. It's the pictures that got small. -Norma Desmond Sunset Boulevard
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