The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that
cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong
goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
-- Douglas Adams
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely
foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
-- Douglas Adams
Eighty percent of success is just showing up.
-- Woody Allen
The most precious things I brought back with me were the same things I left
with: My two best friends. I realized, when you go through any endeavor, any
journey, whether across town or to the moon and back, all that matters is
that you share the experience with people that you love. That's what makes
life special, 'cause ultimately, that's all there is. That's really all
there is.
-- Alan Bean
Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going
on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being
unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.
-- Joseph Campbell
I have proof, 'cuz I read it in the supermarket today.
-- Tony Carey
What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a
kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as
mosquitoes
droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and
it's
perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more.
Now she knows: that was the moment, right then. There has been no other.
-- Michael Cummingham's "The Hours"
I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.
-- Galileo Galilei
2 is never equal to 3, not even for very large values of 2.
-- Grabel's Law
Enhanced understanding will necessarily stir a nation to action.
-- Hacker's Law
After a number of decimal places, nobody gives a damn.
-- I have no idea
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
-- I have no idea
Don't meddle in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good
with ketchup.
-- I have no idea
...as Voltaire said, "incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if
administered with a certain quantity of arsenic."
-- Lydgate in George Eliot's "Middlemarch"
A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks
to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with
an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships -- laden with the
fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the
dark glitter of coal -- are borne along to the town of St Ogg's, which shows
its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the
low wooded hill and the river brink, tinging the water with a soft purple
hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand
stretch the rich pastures and the patches of dark earth, made ready for the
seed of broadleaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the
tender-bladed autumn-cown corn. There is a remnant still of the last year's
golden clusters of bee-hive ricks rising at intervals beyond the hedgerows;
and everywhere the hedgerows are studded with trees: the distant ships seem
to be lifting their masts and stretchig their red-brown sails close among
the branches of the spreading ash. Just by the redroofed town the tributary
Ripple flows with a lively current into the Floss. How lovely the little
river is with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living
companion while I wander along the bank and listen to its low placid voice,
as to the voice of one who is dear and loving. I remember those large dipping
willows... I remember the stone bridge...
-- George Eliot, opening of her book "Mill on the Floss"
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and
wrong.
-- H.L. Mencken
'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true.
-- Nietzche
by the way, the distance from the Land of Point to the Pointless Forest is
directly proportional to the amount of time it takes to sing a song.
-- Harry Nilsson, "The Point"
I'd like to say a few words to Elyzabeth Joy Stagg, who is pregnant with her
second child from a second father, and who lives on our tax dollars ("From the
Welfare Rolls, a Mother's View", My Turn, Newsweek, 23 Aug 1999). Elyzabeth,
I am 30 and have been married for six years. We have no children. Why?
Because we can't afford them. That is a thought that should have crossed
your mind before you had your first child, and certainly before you became
pregnant with your second, but don't worry -- my responsibility will help
fund your irresponsibility.
-- Diane North, letter to the editor in "Newsweek".
"Your life, as it has been, is over."
"Tea, earl gray, hot."
-- Capt. Jean-Luc Piccard in Star Trek, TNG
All things are exactly as they are.
-- Zen Master Seung Sahn
Tobler's first law of geography: everything is related to everything else,
but near things are more related than distant things.
-- Waldo Tobler
it's not the things [you've been through], you see, it's the togetherness
-- Susy, speaking of love in Edith Wharton's "Glimpses of the Moon"
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Last updated: Apr 2005