Tuesday, December 11, 2007

I Inherited Grandma Dunn's Worry Gene

When I was in high school I was a pretty good except for getting home when I said I would. Mom would get in her car and go driving around Fort Wayne looking for me. It used to aggravate the poo out of me. I would say to her, "What if you were in an accident? How would we find you? What if I get home and see you're gone and decide to go looking for you? What if we both end up out all night?" But it didn't matter. She did it every time.


Then when Mitch and I were dating, one time when he worked an hour away he was late getting home and I was worried. He wasn't answering his work phone or cell phone. He'd driven his motorcycle to work on 69 and it was dark and raining out. I was afraid he'd gone off the road into a ditch or something and I got all into a panic and put the two cats into their carrier and went to go find him. Don't ask me why I put the cats in the carrier. I guess I thought if he was dead on the side of the road I wanted the cats there with me.

So I drove all the way to Hamilton and all the way back looking for him in the dark and rain, neither of which I can see in. Hollie pooped in the carrier because she was carsick and she and Treble were scrambling to one end trying to stay away from it, and of course both ended up with poop all over them. And it smelled. Very bad. And I got back to the apartment and Mitch was there wondering where I was. And he had absolutely no sympathy for me and laughed at me while I washed the cats.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Why Is This Here?

Why are these clothes here, you may be wondering. It's my defense. For those of you who believe I have no sense of style, these are the clothes I would wear if I weighed about 75 pounds less and had lots of money. :)

Friday, December 7, 2007

Books

Updated 9/6/15

A note on books – I adore books! I can’t get enough of them!

Areas of interest: forensics and forensic anthropology, crime scene stuff, etc; history, especially as relates to clothing, culture, the roles of women, mysticism, language (slang, common terms), and daily life topics you normally don’t hear about like how did these people cook and use the restroom and treat illnesses and clean their clothes, etc.; general trivia, quotes, fun facts; artwork by Alphonse Mucha, JW Waterhouse, Maxfield Parrish, and other art nouveau and Pre-Raphaelite artists – I do have some books on these already, so newer releases would be better in this case. I also like books about the making of Harry Potter, but I already have Harry Potter Film Wizardry and Harry Potter Page to Screen: The Complete Filmmaking Journey. I like the ones that have nice pictures and lots of interesting information, not the little scrawny ones that have the basic stuff in them.

To see a list of books I know I want, please reference my Amazon wish list. :)

DVDs

Updated 9/6/15

Please check out my Amazon wish list to see what DVDs I want. :)

Miscellaneous

Updated 8/13/14



Etsy
HandmadeByNovember
$45.00
fennec fox












Games

Updated 9/6/15

Please see my Amazon wish list to see the games I am interested in having.

Home Stuff

Updated 9/6/15

Gift cards to Lowe's!

What we really need for our house:Roof
Siding
Flooring in the kitchen through the foyer
Kitchen cabinets
Kitchen countertops
Vacuum
Dishwasher
Back of the garage painted
New windows
Insulation
Front porch mortar fixed
Front porch floor
Front porch change to screened in
New mattress

Things I Like & Things to Avoid

Me

Updated 9/6/15

LIKE:


I know it sounds really boring, but what I like best are gift cards. Then I can eat out, go to movies and concerts, buy stuff I want, and improve my house. :)

I like wolves, black panthers, tigers, platypus, otters, baby tree sloths, Daffy Duck. If you can work that into a funny pen or maybe a mini jade carving, go for it. :)  No keychains.




AVOID:

I really do not want any stuff for the house like knick knacks, etc. Kevin and I have been working hard to clean out all that sort of thing and we still have plenty left and don't need any more. We also don't have room on the walls for any art or photography.

I really don't like to receive clothes as gifts. I have plenty of funny socks and my sweatshirt collection is now at capacity. I have lots of nightgowns, too, so please - no clothes.

No birds, butterflies, monkeys, flowers, pearls, any Looney Tunes cartoon characters except Daffy Duck (I like Daffy Duck), any Hanna Barbera cartoon characters, any Disney cartoon characters, jewelry that used to be a spoon or fork.

CALENDARS – I like to buy my own. I mean this. People keep giving me calendars. Please don’t!

No more t-shirts, please. My t-shirt drawer is so full I can hardly get it open and if you give me a t-shirt I will have to throw away another perfectly good t-shirt.

No nightwear. My drawer is full.

I have no more room for picture frames of any kind.

I do not collect plates. I have plenty of coffee mugs. I don’t really get into vases, crystal, or other similar items.

I do not like fresh flowers as a gift. This is because flowers die and that’s depressing. DO NOT GET ME A PLANT! I kill plants. My cats kill plants. It stresses me out to have someone give me a plant. If you really must buy me something floral, I'd prefer a gift card to Breck's or Van Engelen, though even this is not great anymore as I am running out of room in my yard to plant things. I do intend to keep buying crocuses and Glory of the Snow to plant in the front yard to come up before the grass needs mowed in the spring. I want a full carpet.  :)

No hotpots or potpourri and absolutely NO CINNAMON anything!

Please do not buy me any kind of perfume (I don’t wear it), body spray, bath fizzies, bath oils, bath teas, bath crystals, bath beads, facial scrubs or any kind of products for my face. My skin is very sensitive and I tend to break out in a rash (though every once in a while I can get away with using bath gel as bubble bath).

NO ANGELS, CUPIDS, OR CUTE LITTLE CHILDREN, PLEASE!!!!! Bleah!

Nothing religious.

Don’t get me candy or chocolate. That said, I love regular Hershey’s chocolate bars. No Peeps (bleah!)! No marshmallow or peanut butter stuff. I will eat Toffeefay, Turtles, Heath bars, Heath bites, Tootsie rolls, Kit Kat (original), peanut M&M's, strawberry Twizzlers, Riesen, and Brach's bridge mix. Also DeBrand's from the Classic Collection, Apricot Crunch, Chocolate Silk, Dark Chocolate Caramel, Dark Chocolate Raspberry Cream; Truffle Collection: Black and White, Dark Chocolate; Connoisseur Collection: Mayan Gold, Pistachio, Rosemary, or Valencia; Dark Chocolate Deluxe Nuts, White Chocolate Covered Pretzels, Dark Chocolate Gourmet Cherry Cordials,Very Cherry Tasting Bar, Milk Chocolate Pecan Patty, Caramel Pretzel Bars. But, right, don't get me chocolate.  :)

Can’t stand Red Hat stuff.

I don’t like those old-fashioned German glass ornaments you see at Christmas, like the famous glass pickle and all that stuff. I have plenty of ornaments for my tree and decorations for my house.

Personal Care

Updated 9/6/15



Gift cards for Sheila Burnett massage, (260) 602-8098
http://www.amtamembers.com/sheilaburnett/contact-me

*****

Noggins (hair color/cut with Angela)
260-485-8600
nogginsinc@verizon.net

They also offer hot stone massages for 30 minutes or 60 minutes. I would be interested in either of these!

The Cameo (pedicure with Connie) 260-436-2515


In bath gels, I like light and fruity or minty. Favorites are mulberry, pear (and I mean a really nice pear fragrance, not just something with pear in the name), peppermint, vanilla, lemon, lemon verbena, tangerine, raspberry, etc. Nothing in florals or spices, please. No bar soap (yuck!). Absolutely no cinnamon.

Please, no gift cards to Woodhouse Day Spa.The massages are so expensive that a normal gift card amount won't cover a service. I am, however, willing to go most other places to get a pedicure, if you can find one that's cheap enough. :) 

Donations

Updated 9/6/15

Making a donation in my name is cool.

The places I wish to support are World Wildlife Fund, Nature Conservancy, Allen County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ACSPCA), National Wildlife Federation, and Wolf Park.

I would also support the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo or Fort Wayne Parks & Recreation Department (to Tree Canopy Trust, Lakeside Rose Garden, Foellinger Theatre Trust, Foster Park Gardens, Parks Unrestricted Trust, Salomon Farm, or Rivergreenway Trust).


World Wildlife Fund
Adopt an Animal. You click on the animal and then scroll to the bottom to find the $25 option.  :)  I would go for (in no particular order) the tiger, three-toed sloth, snow leopard, gray wolf, Amur leopard, Arctic fox, blue-footed booby, sea otter, snowy owl, duck-billed platypus, Darwin's fox, clouded leopard, meerkat, black-footed ferret, river otter, honey badger, wombat, black jaguar, barn owl, sea lion, ring-tailed lemur, Tasmanian devil, harbor seal, red fox, cougar, wolverine, leopard, tenrec, raccoon, warthog, tarsier, or big horn sheep.

National Geographic Big Cats Initiative
To address this critical situation, the National Geographic Society and Explorers-in-Residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert, have launched the Big Cats Initiative, a comprehensive program that supports on-the-ground conservation projects, education, and economic incentive efforts and a global public-awareness campaign. “We no longer have the luxury of time when it comes to big cats,” says Dereck Joubert. “They are in such a downward spiral that if we hesitate now, we will be responsible for extinctions across the globe. If there was ever a time to take action, it is now.” You can help us make a difference. Your donation can help save a big cat and ensure the Earth is not without these majestic creatures."

Panthera was founded in 2006 with the sole mission of conserving the world's 36 species of wild cats. Utilizing the knowledge and expertise of the world’s top cat biologists, Panthera develops, implements, and oversees range-wide species conservation strategies for the world’s largest, most imperiled cats – tigers, lions, jaguars and snow leopards. 100% of your donation goes to the field - where it matters most. Panthera guarantees that 100% of your donation goes to field conservation of wild cats. We are able to make this promise because all our administrative, office and salary costs - ‘overhead’- are covered in their entirety by Panthera’s founder and Chairman of the Board, Dr. Tom Kaplan. Every year, Dr. Kaplan underwrites those costs. That allows Panthera to make the unique promise that every cent from every other donation will indeed be directed to the field and, in many cases, be matched by additional programmatic funds contributed by Dr. Kaplan. We guarantee it.

Saturday, December 1, 2007

Oscar Wilde

It is absurd to divide people into good or bad. People are either charming or tedious.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

A true friend stabs you in the front.
Oscar Wilde

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself.
Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world it's own shame.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Who, being loved, is poor?
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Mark Twain

Man is the only animal that blushes, or needs to.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

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

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But, when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, "I don't know."
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are right.
Mark Twain

I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

There is nothing so annoying as to have two people talking when you're busy interrupting.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain

Politicians, Statesmen, Royalty

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Lord Acton (1834-1902)

You will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.
John Quincy Adams

I didn't accept it. I received it.
Richard Allen, National Security Advisor to President Reagan, explaining the $1000 in cash and two watches he was given by two Japanese journalists after he helped arrange a private interview for them with First Lady Nancy Reagan.

The best audience is intelligent, well-educated, and a little drunk.
Alben W. Barkley, former Vice President

Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.
Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bon-fire under her deck... I have no time for such nonsense.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), commenting on Fulton's Steamship

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
Napoleon Bonaparte

The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
Omar Bradley, General

I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children they just about throw up.
Barbara Bush, First lady, 1989

I've often thought that the process of aging could be slowed down if it had to go through Congress.
George Bush Sr.

The problem with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur.
George Bush Sr. (1924 - ), In a speech in 2002.

Go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.
Former president Jimmy Carter

If you're going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill, Sir (1874-1965)

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill, Sir (1874-1965)

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.
Winston Churchill, Sir (1874-1965)

We all are worms, but I do believe I am a glow worm.
Winston Churchill, Sir (1874-1965)

What do you take me for, an idiot?
Charles de Gaulle, General (1890-1970), when a journalist asked him if he was happy

Nurture your mind with great thoughts.
Benjamin Disraeli

The commander in chief (Bill Clinton) is jogging in San Francisco in his slit-up-the-sides, silk, girlie-girlie jogging pants showing us those beautiful white doughboy thighs of his.
Representative Bob Dornan (R, California)

I am the emperor, and I want dumplings.
Ferdinand I

Experience is a dear teacher, but fools will learn at no other.
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin, from Poor Richard's Almanac

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
Benjamin Franklin

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
Benjamin Franklin

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

We must become the change we want to see.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
Mahatma Gandhi, "Non-Violence in Peace and War"

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
Mahatma Gandhi

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo.
Al Gore, U.S. Vice President

With incest you could get super-smart kids.
Rep. Carl Gunter (R-Louisiana)

I regret that I have but one life to give to my country.
Nathan Hale, American Patriot, final words, executed by the British, 1776

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death!
Patrick Henry

The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.
Adolf Hitler

About the time we can make ends meet, somebody moves the ends.
Herbert Hoover

Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.
Jesse Jackson

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson

Only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. One is to let her think she is having her own way, and the other is to let her have it.
Lyndon B. Johnson

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: PRESIDENT CAN'T SWIM.
Lyndon B. Johnson

I guess this is the week I earn my pay.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), during the Cuban missile crisis

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.
John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?
Robert F. Kennedy

I think what the president needs to do is, frankly, put his big boy pants on. He needs to acknowledge the fact that he lost and he needs to congratulate the winner just as Jimmy Carter did, just as George H.W. Bush did and, frankly, just as Al Gore did and stop this and let us move forward as a country.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, 2020, about President Trump

I cannot tell you how grateful I am - I am filled with humidity.
Texas Speaker of the House Gib Lewis

This is unparalyzed in the state's history.
Texas Speaker of the House Gib Lewis

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.
Sir John Lubbock (English banker, politician, naturalist and archaeologist)

False, lying, cowardly, nauseous puppy. The greatest ass, liar, and beast in the world.
King George III, on his eldest son, Prince Frederick

My father was frightened of his mother. I was frightened of my father. And I am damned well going to see that my children are frightened of me.
King George V

To make women learned and foxes tame has the same defect - to make them more cunning.
King James I

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

Next week there can't be any crisis. My schedule is already full.
Henry Kissinger (Born 1923)

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build bridges even when there are no rivers.
Nikita Khruschev

We are not retreating - we are advancing in another Direction.
Douglas MacArthur, General (1880-1964)

I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.
Dudley Field Malone (lawyer)

I never lose. I either win or learn.
Nelson Mandela

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
Nelson Mandela (1918 - ), 'A Long Walk to Freedom'

Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart, don't know how to laugh either.
Golda Meir (1898-1978)

Don't be so humble, you're not that great.
Golda Meir (1898-1978)

If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
Mother Teresa

I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.
Mother Teresa

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
Mother Teresa

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in an ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
Mother Teresa

When the president does it, that's means it is not illegal.
Richard M. Nixon (1913-1994), Former U.S. President

We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Barack Obama

It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man.
George S. Patton, General (1885-1945)

Maybe there are 5,000, maybe 10,000 Nazi bastards in their concrete foxholes before the Third Army. Now if Ike stops holding Monty's hand and gives me the supplies, I'll go through the Siegfried Line like shit through a goose.
George S. Patton, General (1885-1945)

Behind every successful man there stands a surprised woman.
Maryon Pearson (wife of Lester Bowles Pearson, the 14th Prime Minister of Canada)

I'm one of those stupid bums who went to university. Well, I think it's helped me.
Prince Charles

I'm one of those stupid bums who never went to university, and it hasn't done me any harm.
Prince Philip

Which are the monkeys?
Prince Philip, when confronted by apes and journalists in Gibraltar

You have to decide at the end of the day if you can live with yourself.
Princess Anne

Handsome I cannot think him, with that painfully small and narrow head, whose immense features, and total want of a chin. I never can or shall look at him without a shudder.
Queen Victoria, on her son, the future King Edward VII

She ought to get a good whipping.
Queen Victoria, about a suffragette

You can kill a thousand; you can bring an end to life; you cannot kill an idea.
Shimon Peres, Former Israeli Prime Minister, on the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin

I don’t intend for this to take on a political tone. I’m just here for the drugs.
Nancy Reagan, former First Lady of the United States

You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.
Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004), quoted in Observer, March 29 1981

'The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'
Ronald Reagan

If you haven't got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884-1980)

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962), My Day

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882 - 1945), Pan American Day address, April 15, 1939

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt, "Citizen in a Republic", April 23, 1910

I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.
Theodore Roosevelt, “THE STRENUOUS LIFE” (10 April 1899)

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer “present” or “not guilty.”
Theodore Roosevelt

Lying is forbidden in Iraq. President Saddam Hussein will tolerate nothing but truthfulness as he is a man of great honor and integrity. Everyone is encouraged to speak freely of the truths evidenced in their eyes and hearts.
Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi Minister of Information

I think it's about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we've been voting for boobs long enough.
Claire Sargent, Arizona senatorial candidate

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.
Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
Margaret Thatcher

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
Harry S. Truman

If an American is hit on the head by a ball at the ballpark, he sues. If a Japanese person is hit on the head, he says, 'It's my honor. It's my fault.'
Koji Yanase, of the Japan federation of Bar Associations, on why there are half as many lawyers in his country as in the Washington area

Athletics

We made too many wrong mistakes.
Yogi Berra

We have deep depth.
Yogi Berra

If winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?
Vince Lombardi

If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.
Mickey Mantle

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?
Baseball player Satchel Paige

If I ever run into a really good looking zombie, I sure hope she doesn't start hitting on me. Cause, man, that's one decision I don't want to have to make.
Jim Ross (professional wrestling commentator)

There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
Ben Williams (English Footballer)

I like the word 'indolence'. It makes my laziness seem classy.
Bern Williams (English Footballer)

Scientists, Inventors, Physicians

No aptitude at all for long division, but never mind. It's him they ask to split the atom. How he talked his way into the Nobel prize is beyond me. But then, I suppose it's like the man says, 'It's not what you know...'
Karl Arbeiter, Former teacher of Albert Einstein

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not "Eureka!", but "That's funny..."
Isaac Asimov

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.
Alexander Graham Bell

The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.
Joan Borysenko

May this continent, the last explored by humankind, be the first one to be spared by humankind.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, 1973, on Antartica

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
Walt Disney (1901-1966)

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
Thomas Alva Edison

When women hold off from marrying men, we call it independence. When men hold off from marrying women, we call it fear of commitment.
Warren Farrell (American Psychologist)

Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
Henry Ford (1863-1947)

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
Henry Ford (1863-1947)

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do.
Henry Ford (1863-1947)

The great question - which I have not been able to answer - is, "What does a woman want?"
Sigmund Freud

Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."
Erich Fromm

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
Bill Gates (Born 1955), Microsoft Founder, in 1981

My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it as it is and why it exists at all.
Stephen Hawking

Man should not destroy what it cannot create.
Dr. Ruth Kiew

The world began without man, and it will complete itself without him.
Claude Levi-Strauss (French anthropologist)

Let go of your attachment to being right, and suddenly your mind is more open. You're able to benefit from the unique viewpoints of others, without being crippled by your own judgment.
Ralph Marston (Australian biochemist)

Never believe that a few caring people can't change the world. For, indeed, that's all who ever have.
Margaret Mead

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.
John Muir (one of the first modern preservationists and the founder of The Sierra Club)

Surely all God's people, however serious or savage, great or small, like to play. Whales and elephants, dancing, humming gnats, and invisibly small mischievous microbes - all are warm with divine radium and must have lots of fun in them.
John Muir, The Story of My Boyhood and Youth (1913)

I don’t know what I may seem to the world, but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton

Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.
Simon Newcomb, 1902, eighteen months before Kitty Hawk (Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician)

I am become death, shatterer of worlds.
Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967), citing from the Bhagavadgita, after witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970, philosopher, historian, logician, mathematician, advocate for social reform, and pacifist)

There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music and cats.
Albert Schweitzer (Alsatian theologian, musician, philosopher, and physician)

A ship in harbor is safe - but that is not what ships are built for.
John A. Shedd (second president and chairman of the board of Marshall Field & Company)

Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.
Thomas Szasz (psychiatrist and academic)

To love and to be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.
David Viscott (American psychiatrist, author, businessman, and media personality)

Artists & Musicians

Musicians don’t retire; they stop when there’s no more music in them.
Musician Louis Armstrong

He looks like a dwarf who’s been dipped in a bucket of pubic hair.
Boy George on Prince

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.
Eddie Cantor (1892 - 1964)

When [my mother] was dying, talking to me, she said: “Always try and be kind and nice to people. And if you do that, somebody will always speak up for you." And I’ve found that to be a fact. They really do.
Musician B. B. King

Disclaimer: If anyone disagrees with anything I say, I am quite prepared to not only retract it, but also to deny under oath I ever said it.
Tom Lehrer (American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician)

I always say – that everything is possessed of infinity and eternity….
Musician Yehudi Menuhin

Most people love you for who you pretend to be ... To keep their love, you keep pretending--performing. You get to love your pretense ... It's true, we're locked in an image, an act. And, the sad thing is, people get so used to their image--they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And, if you try to remind them, they hate you for it. They feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession.
James Morrison, lead singer of The Doors

In this age, I don’t think people are as happy; they are worried. They’re too anxious to get ahead of their neighbors; they are striving and striving to get something better. I do think in a way that they have too much now. We did with much less.
Artist Grandma Moses

Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself, for he shall never cease to be entertained.
John Powell (British film music composer)

To bring joy, hope, to make life richer for the spirit because you have been alive, that is the most important thing.
Musician Arthur Rubinstein

The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.
Alan Saporta (musician)

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.
Beverly Sills (American operatic soprano)

If I had as many love affairs as you have given me credit for, I would now be speaking to you from a jar in the Harvard Medical School.
Frank Sinatra

I once asked my history teacher how we were expected to learn anything useful from his subject, when it seemed to me to be nothing but a monotonous and sordid succession of robber baron scumbags devoid of any admirable human qualities. I failed history.
Sting

Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them.
Richard Strauss, on conducting

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney and continue on their way.
Vincent Van Gogh

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.
Andrew Wyeth (American realist painter)

Religious/Spiritual

Let your vision be world-embracing, rather than confined to your own self.
Bahá'u'lláh

My object is none other than the betterment of the world and the tranquility of its peoples.
Bahá'u'lláh

The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.
Bahá'u'lláh

Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.
Buddha

He is able who thinks he is able.
Buddha

You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.
Buddha

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.
Buddha

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
Confucius

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, for in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Kahlil Gibran

As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven.
Russell M. Nelson, LDS Church News, April 1992 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
Sydney Smith (English writer and Anglican clergyman)

Try praising your wife, even if it does frighten her at first.
Billy Sunday (American athlete and evangelist)

Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
Billy Sunday (American athlete and evangelist)

Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come.
Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali poet, Brahmo religionist, visual artist, playwright, novelist, and composer)

The first duty of love is to listen.
Paul Tillich (German-American theologian and Christian existentialist philosopher)

Happiness is inward, and not outward; and so, it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are.
Henry van Dyke (American author, educator, and clergyman)

Spinoza, the great 17th-century Dutch philosopher, argued that nature and its laws constitute God, and you understand Spinoza perfectly with the view at sunset on a mountain pass.
Nicholas Kristof, journalist/hiker

Famous/Infamous

I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something.
Charles Manson

Why yes -- a bulletproof vest.
James Rodges, murderer, on his final request before the firing squad

Comedians

A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong.
Milton Berle

I date this girl for two years--and then the nagging starts: "I wanna know your name."
Mike Binder

I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three.
Elayne Boosler

When women are depressed, they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking.
Elayne Boosler

The hard part about being a bartender is figuring out who is drunk and who is just stupid.
Richard Braunstein

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
A. Whitney Brown

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it's you.
Rita Mae Brown

Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.
Carol Burnett

Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.
George Burns

Retire? I'm going to stay in show business until I'm the only one left.
George Burns, at age 90

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.
George Burns

Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac.
George Carlin

If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten.
George Carlin

The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death. What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating… you finish off as an orgasm.
George Carlin

The very existence of flame-throwers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, `You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, I'm just not close enough to get the job done.'
George Carlin

Anytime four New Yorkers get into a cab together without arguing, a bank robbery has just taken place.
Johnny Carson

The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles off shore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual. Mind you, that wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack.
John Cleese

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.
Rodney Dangerfield

Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
Phyllis Diller

We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.
Phyllis Diller

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.
Redd Foxx

America's one of the finest countries anyone ever stole.
Bobcat Goldthwait

"The path is straight, and the children of the path shall walk upon it, straightly on its straighty straightness."
Brad Garrett's character Robert from Everybody Loves Raymond, upon joining a cult called The Path

According to a new survey, women say they feel more comfortable undressing in front of men than they do undressing in front of other women. They say that women are too judgmental, where, of course, men are just grateful.
Jay Leno

Thirty-five is when you finally get your head together and your body starts falling apart.
Caryn Leschen (comic)

When you go to the mind reader, do you get half price?
David Letterman

Charlton Heston admitted he had a drinking problem, and I said to myself, "Thank God this guy doesn't own any guns!"
David Letterman

Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today? 1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War. 2) Advising the President. 3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin.
David Letterman

After the grand jury session, he (Vernon Jordan) told reporters that he answered the questions truthfully and to the best of his ability. Well, come on, which is it?
David Letterman

I've been on so many blind dates I should get a free dog.
Wendy Liebman (American stand-up comedian)

I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence.
Doug MacLeod (Australian comedy writer)

He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you -- he really is an idiot.
Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx (1895-1977)

Last night I had a typical cholesterol-free dinner: baked squash, skimmed milk, and gelatin. I’m sure this will not make me live any longer, but I know it’s going to seem longer.
Comedian Groucho Marx

It reduces itself to this. You have to be in the right place at the right time, but when it comes, you better have something on the ball.
Comedian Groucho Marx

I voted for the Democrats because I didn't like the way the Republicans were running the country. Which is turning out to be like shooting yourself in the head to stop your headache.
Jack Mayberry (American stand-up comedian)

Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant?? I'm halfway through my fish burger and I realize, Oh my God....I could be eating a slow learner.
Lynda Montgomery (comedian)

A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: "Duh."
Conan O'Brien

My mom said she learned how to swim when someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. I said, 'Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim.'
Paula Poundstone

If I found [Yoko Ono] floating in my pool, I’d punish my dog.
Joan Rivers

I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on.
Roseanne

I figure if the children are alive when he gets home, I've done my job.
Roseanne

I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.
Rita Rudner

I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult.
Rita Rudner

My mother buried three husbands, and two of them were just napping.
Rita Rudner

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.
Mark Russell (American political satirist/comedian)

The Swiss have an interesting army. Five hundred years without a war. Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever see that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews. Bottle openers. 'Come on, buddy, let's go. You get past me, the guy in back of me, he's got a spoon. Back off. I've got the toe clippers right here.'
Jerry Seinfeld

Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to accept God's final word on where your lips end.
Jerry Seinfeld

There's little advice in men's magazines, because men don't think there's a lot they don't know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, "I know what I'm doing, just show me somebody naked."
Jerry Seinfeld

Now they show you how detergents take out bloodstains, a pretty violent image there. I think if you've got a T-shirt with a bloodstain all over it, maybe laundry isn't your biggest problem. Maybe you should get rid of the body before you do the wash.
Jerry Seinfeld

I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners.
Jeff Stilson (American comedian)

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.
Lily Tomlin

I think, therefore I'm single.
Lizz Winstead (comedian, co-creator of The Daily Show, former head writer)

Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
Steven Wright

There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.
Steven Wright

I was so ugly when I was born; the doctor slapped my mother.
Henny Youngman

My wife dresses to kill. She cooks the same way.
Henny Youngman

The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.
Henny Youngman

Classical & Philosophers

Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.
Aesop (620 BC - 560 BC)

Give me a lever long enough, and I shall move the world.
Archimedes

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is the victory over self.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
Aristotle

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
Marcus Aurelius

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.
Marcus Aurelius

Do not condemn the judgment of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong.
Dandemis

I think, therefore I am.
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

Do not write so that you can be understood, write so that you cannot be misunderstood.
Epictetus

Nothing endures but change.
Heraclitus (540 BC - 480 BC), from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

Nothing’s beautiful from every point of view.
Horace

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.
Horace

People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they never use.
Kierkegaard

To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao-Tzu (570?-490? B.C.)

Know thyself.
Linnaeus

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.
Friedrich Nietzsche

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
Plato (427-347 B.C.)

Every person takes the limits for their own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.
Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
Seneca (3 B.C. - 65 A.D.)

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
Socrates (470-399 B.C.)

One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.
Sophocles

He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere.
Ali ibn-Abi-Talib (602 AD - 661 AD), A Hundred Sayings

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding go out to meet it.
Thucydides

Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so, too.
Voltaire (1694-1778)

Now, now my good man, this is no time for making enemies.
Voltaire (1694-1778), on his deathbed in response to a priest asking that he renounce Satan

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

Characters

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.
Calvin in Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes

Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.
Charlie Brown, character in "Peanuts" comic strip, created by Charles Schultz

Boy, I guess it's true what they say, huh? There's a fine line between gardening and madness.
Cliff Clavin, character on "Cheers", U.S. Television show

Interesting little article here. It says that, uh... the average human being only uses seventeen percent of his brain. Boy, you realize what that means? We don't use a full, uh... sixty-four percent.
Cliff Clavin, character on "Cheers", U.S. Television show

Well ya see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.
Cliff Clavin, character on "Cheers", U.S. Television show

How would the Civil War had changed if Abraham Lincoln had octopus tentacles instead of a beard?
Cliff Clavin, character on "Cheers", U.S. Television show

Did I ever tell you kids about the first Thanksgiving? It took place between the ancient Egyptains and aliens from a distant galaxy.
Cliff Clavin, character on "Cheers", U.S. Television show

Women: If they're not turning down your proposals for marriage, they're accusing you of suspicious behavior in the women's lingerie changing room.
Cliff Clavin, character on "Cheers", U.S. Television show

C is for cookie, it's good enough for me; oh cookie cookie cookie starts with C.
Cookie Monster, character on "Sesame Street," U.S. children's television program

A kiss is a rosy dot over the 'i' of loving.
Cyrano De Bergerac

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir - The Sign of Four (Sherlock Holmes)

Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.
Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (movie)

We seek the comfort of another. Someone to share and share the life we choose. Someone to help us through the never-ending attempt to understand ourselves. And in the end, someone to comfort us along the way.
Marlin Finch Lupus (character from Lois & Clark)

So much of human life is wasted in waiting.
Professor Ox, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Propel, propel, propel your craft softly down liquid solution. Ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, ecstatically, Existence is simply illusion.
Fred Rogers, parody of "Row, row, row your boat" on his television show, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."

Love and stoplights can be cruel.
Sesame Street, U.S. children's television show

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.
Winnie the Pooh

Do or do not. There is no try.
Yoda, character in the movie, The Empire Strikes Back

You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.
Ziggy, character in comic strip by Tom Wilson

Actors & Celebrities

Esther, do not be afraid. Everything you want is on the other side of here.
Esther, Making the Cut (Heidi Klum & Tim Gunn fashion competition television show)

Never place a period where God has placed a comma.
Gracie Allen

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.
Woody Allen

Women like silent men. They think they're listening.
Marcel Archard

Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway.
Mary Kay Ash

The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they're too old to do it.
Ann Bancroft

But he has also stopped himself because he is dead right now.
Wolf Blitzer on CNN

I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul.
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)

Old age ain't no place for sissies.
Bette Davis

It’s the friends you can call up at four a.m. that matter.
Marlene Dietrich (1901 - 1992)

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.
Eleonora Duse, actress (1858-1924)

The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.
Helen Hayes (at 73)

Why endeavor to straighten the road of life? The faster we travel, the less there is to see.
Actress Helen Hayes

The story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.
Helen Hayes

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.
Katharine Hepburn

Seeing a murder on television...will help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
Alfred Hitchcock

The real challenge is not simply to survive. Hell, anyone can do that. It’s to survive as yourself, undiminished.
Director Elia Kazan

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.
Helen Keller

To complain too bitterly of the load of mischief that notoriety brings with it would mean that you are unsuited to the position you have made for yourself.
Elsa Lancaster

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
Ann Landers

Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
Ann Landers

Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them.
Ann Landers

It's not hard to tell we was poor when you saw the toilet paper dryin' on the clothesline.
George Lindsey (American character actor)

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
Charlie McCarthy

You know, you made this day a really special day. Just by being yourself. There’s only one person in the world like you. And I happen to like you just the way you are.
Fred Brooks McFeely (Fred Rogers grandfather)

You're not a bitch if you don't trust someone you've never met before.
Georgia and Karen, My Favorite Murder podcast

My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son of a bitch.
Jack Nicholson

I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb...and I also know that I'm not blonde.
Dolly Parton

My idea of forgiveness is letting go of resentment that does not serve your interest, ridding yourself of negative thoughts. All they do is make you miserable. Believe me, you can fret and fume all you want, but whoever it was that wronged you is not suffering from your anguish whatsoever.
Actress Della Reese

If He has given us one marvelous gift, it is that He does not permit us to know the future. It would be unbearable.
Actor Edward G. Robinson

I think people don’t change very much when all they have is a finger pointed at them. I think the only way people change is in relation to somebody who loves them.
Fred Rogers

There are those of us who have been deprived of human confidence. Those who have not been able to develop the conviction that they have anything of value within. Their gap is rather a chasm. And they most often despair of creating any bridges to the land of what might be. They were not accepted as little children. … They were never truly loved by any important human other. … And so it seems to me that the most essential element in the development of any creation, any art or science, must be love.
Fred Rogers

Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.
Fred Rogers

There are three ways to ultimate success:
The first way is to be kind.
The second way is to be kind.
The third way is to be kind.
Fred Rogers

It’s not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff.
Fred Rogers

Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person.
Fred Rogers

If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of.
Fred Rogers

I’d like to give you all an invisible gift. A gift of a silent minute to think about those who have helped you become who you are today. Some of them may be here right now. Some may be far away. Some, like my astronomy professor, may even be in heaven. But wherever they are, if they’ve loved you, and encouraged you, and wanted what was best in life for you, they’re right inside your self. And I feel that you deserve quiet time, on this special occasion, to devote some thought to them. So, let’s just take a minute, in honor of those that have cared about us all along the way. One silent minute...
Whomever you’ve been thinking about, imagine how grateful they must be, that during your silent times, you remember how important they are to you. It’s not the honors and the prizes, and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It’s the knowing that we can be trusted. That we never have to fear the truth. That the bedrock of our lives, from which we make our choices, is very good stuff.
Fred Rogers

See what will happen if you don't stop biting your fingernails?
Will Rogers (1879-1935), to his niece on seeing the Venus de Milo

We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
Will Rogers (1879-1935)

Trouble is a part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person that loves you enough chance to love you enough.
Dinah Shore

I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.
Gloria Steinem

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.
Gloria Steinem

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.
Elizabeth Taylor

You have to be at peace with yourself. I love to laugh. I think laughter can cure. You can see it in a person’s face. Around age forty, when your face has lost the glow of youth, what you are on the inside starts to form on the outside. Either the lines go up or they go down. If they go up, that’s a good sign.
Actress Elizabeth Taylor

Not much meat on her, but what's there is choice.
Spencer Tracy, about Katharine Hepburn

He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.
Forrest Tucker (American actor)

Parents are the bones upon which children sharpen their teeth.
Peter Ustinov

That is the best -- to laugh with someone because you think the same things are funny.
Gloria Vanderbilt

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
Mae West (1892-1980)

Domestic and foreign.
Mae West, when asked what two types of men she preferred

Authors, Poets, and Playwrights

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
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

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
Douglas Adams

When I investigate and when I discover that the forces of the heavens and the planets are within ourselves, then truly I seem to be living among the gods.
Leon Battista Alberti

I am not afraid of the storm, for I am learning to sail my ship.
Louisa May Alcott

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
Maya Angelou

If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain.
Maya Angelou

Every problem has a gift for you in its hands.
Richard Bach

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true. You may have to work for it, however.
Richard Bach

Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.
Dave Barry

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there is a man on base.
Dave Barry

You can say any foolish thing to a dog, and the dog will give you a look that says, "My God, you're right! I never would've thought of that!"
Dave Barry

When you are about to eat a brownie, your brain transmits a signal to your hand, telling it to go ahead and put the brownie into your mouth; almost instantaneously, your hand responds with the signal informing your brain that you ate the brownie several minutes earlier, because your hand and your mouth agreed many years ago that, as far as chocolate is concerned, there is no need to involve your brain.
Dave Barry

Even death is unreliable; instead of zero it might be some ghastly hallucination, such as the square root of minus one.
Writer Samuel Beckett

Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.
Henry Ward Beecher

Now comes the mystery.
Henry Ward Beecher, Last words, March 8, 1887

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by then I was too famous.
Robert Benchley

Well, my deliberate opinion is - it's a jolly strange world.
Arnold Bennett

It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.
Arnold Bennett

Don't mistake pleasure for happiness. They're a different breed of dog.
Josh Billings

Things that upset a terrier may pass virtually unnoticed by a Great Dane.
Smiley Blanton

If there is one thing worse than being an ugly duckling in a house of swans, it's having the swans pretend there's no difference.
Teena Booth, Falling From Fire

Friendships are fragile things, and require as much handling as any other fragile and precious thing.
Randolph S. Bourne

I’ve never met a person, I don’t care what his condition, in whom I could not see possibilities. I don’t care how much a man may consider himself a failure, I believe in him, for he can change the thing that is wrong in his life any time he is ready and prepared to do it.
Preston Bradley

If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.
Anne Bradstreet

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.
David Brink

Breathless, we flung us on a windy hill; Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
Rupert Brooke

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they're not on your road doesn't mean they've gotten lost.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

He said true things, but called them by wrong names.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

You were made perfectly to be loved - and surely I have loved you, in the idea of you, my whole life long.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a heaven for?
Robert Browning

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.
Leo Buscaglia

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip.
Jonathan Carroll - Outside the Dog Museum

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.
Tom Clancy

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
Arthur C. Clarke

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.
Arthur C. Clarke

[The ages of] seven to eleven is a huge chunk of life, full of dulling and forgetting. It is fabled that we slowly lose the gift of speech with animals, that birds no longer visit our windowsills to converse. As our eyes grow accustomed to sight they armour themselves against wonder.
Leonard Cohen, The Favorite Game, Bk 1, Ch. 17

He’s a short man, that’s his trouble. Never trust a man with short legs – brains too near their bottoms.
Noël Coward, writer

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)

I have gathered a posy of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.
Michel de Montaigne (February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592)

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

More than kisses, letters mingle souls.
John Donne

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.
John Donne - Meditation XVII

The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

All people want is someone to listen.
Hugh Elliott, Standing Room Only weblog, May 8, 2003

How much of human life is lost in waiting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

If I'd known it was going to be a classic, I would have paid attention.
Julius Epstein, Screen writer of Casablanca

Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.
William Faulkner

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow follows us. Choose a place where you won't do harm--yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.
E. M. Forester

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
Anne Frank (1929 - 1945), Diary of a Young Girl, 1952

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
Robert Frost (1874-1963)

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on.
Robert Frost

I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

At three cents a word, every time I say ‘bang’ in a story I get three cents. If you think I’m going to finish a gun battle while my hero’s got 15 cents worth of unexploded ammunition in his gun, you’re nuts.
Erle Stanley Gardner

Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way.
Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

To be honest, Norton's death is something I'm not able to think about. I know it happens to the best of us; I've certainly been through it with humans, with those closest to me, those whom I've loved the most. Yet somehow it's different with my cat. Maybe it's because there's no formal language with which to directly communicate caring or sorrow. When a parent is old or dying, it's easy (unless you're British) to say the words "I love you." And once those words are said, it makes everything less difficult, even the pain of final separation. ...But with an animal, words are meaningless. It's actions that count.... When it does finally come time to say good-bye to him, I want to be sure he knows how much he's meant to me. I may not be able to tell him I love him, but I sure can show him.
Peter Gellers, author of The Cat Who Went To Paris, A Cat Abroad, and The Cat Who'll Live Forever

There’s a kind of flowering dullness about [Julie Andrews], a boredom in rowdy bloom.
Columnist Joyce Haber

Cute little babies that fall out of swings - These are a few of my favourite things.
Oscar Hammerstein, working lyric for a piece from "The Sound of Music"

Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests, since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind.
Mike Harding - The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac

Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
Robert A. Heinlein

Don't ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun--and neither can stop the march of events.
Robert A. Heinlein - Time Enough For Love

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?
Ernest Hemingway

We need a president who's fluent in at least one language.
Buck Henry

Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.
Writer Victoria Holt

There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
Homer - Odyssey, ninth century B.C.

To love another person is to see the face of God.
Victor Hugo, Lyric from Les Miserables

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo

Every winter,
When the great sun has turned his face away,
The earth goes down into a vale of grief,
And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,
Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay--
Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.
Charles Kingsley, Saint's Tragedy (act III, sc. 1)

Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration.
D. H. Lawrence

He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.
Stephen Leacock

The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.
Writer Madeleine L’Engle

Into each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and dreary.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If you knew that you were going to die tonight, or merely that you would have to go away and never return, would you, looking upon men and things for the last time, see them in the same light that you have hitherto seen them? Would you not love as you have never yet loved?
Writer Maurice Maeterlinck

Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
W. Somerset Maugham

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.
Herman Melville

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

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.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
A. A. Milne

The heart that gives – gathers.
Hannah More (English religious writer and philanthropist)

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.
Christopher Morley (American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet)

I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all.
Ogden Nash - Song of the Open Road, 1945

To keep your marriage brimming, with love in the wedding cup, whenever you're wrong, admit it; whenever you're right, shut up.
Ogden Nash

If you don't want to work, you have to work to earn enough money so that you won't have to work.
Ogden Nash

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.
Blaise Pascal - Pensées, Translated by A.J. Krailsheimer

What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another?
Alan Paton (South African author and liberal political activist)

The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
Eden Phillpotts (English novelist, poet, and dramatist)

It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth.' and so it goes away. Puzzling.
Robert M. Pirsig (American writer and philosopher)

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary....
Edgar Allen Poe

To err is human, to forgive, divine.
Alexander Pope (English poet)

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
Ambrose Redmoon (writer and psychedelic folk rock band former manager)

We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh.
Agnes Repplier (American essayist)

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
Rainer Maria Rilke

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.
Rainer Maria Rilke

We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.
Tom Robbins (American author)

There are many things worth living for, there are a few things worth dying for, but there is nothing worth killing for.
Tom Robbins (American author)

When the friendly lights go out, there is a light by which the heart sees.
Olga Rosmanith (author)

[George Bush] has the look about him of someone who might sit up and yip for a Dog Yummie.
Columnist Mike Royko on President George Bush

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.
George Santayana (1863-1952, philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist)

Each religion, by the help of more or less myth which it takes more or less seriously, proposes some method of fortifying the human soul and enabling it to make its peace with its destiny.
George Santayana (1863-1952, philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist)

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.
Rabbi H. Schachtel, The Real Enjoyment of Living

I think, therefore I am - I think.
Howard Schneider (award-winning cartoonist, sculptor and children's book author)

Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts.
William Shakespeare - King Henry the Sixth

Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have Immortal longings in me.
William Shakespeare - Antony and Cleopatra

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
William Shakespeare - Henry IV Part I

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.
George Bernard Shaw

The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about, and all the pains that I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time.
George Bernard Shaw

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw

Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed?
Solomon Short (author)

The art of loving matures with age and experience.
Writer Isaac Bashevis Singer

...what nature creates has eternity in it.
Isaac Bashevis Singer

I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
John Steinbeck

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
Harriet Beecher Stowe

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
August Strindberg (Swedish writer, playwright, and painter)

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.
Editor Herbert Bayard Swope

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Henry David Thoreau

Not all who wander are lost.
J. R. R. Tolkien

Nietzsche was stupid and abnormal.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
Arnold Toynbee (English economic historian)

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
Calvin Trillin (American journalist, humorist, and novelist)

And since the stench of death will always attract flies and vermin, the arrival of Geraldo was perhaps inevitable.
Garry Trudeau (American cartoonist, best known for Doonesbury)

Ever consider what (dogs) must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul – chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we’re the greatest hunters on earth!
Anne Tyler

It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.
Anne Tyler (1941 - ), Celestial Navigation, 1974

Listen earnestly to anything your child wants to tell you no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.
Catherine Wallace (teacher, poet and essayist)

We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry.
John Webster (English Jacobean dramatist)

A true friend is someone who is there for you when they would rather be someplace else.
Len Wein (American comic book writer/editor best known for co-creating Swamp Thing and Wolverine)

There are two ways of spreading light: To be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Edith Wharton

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
E. B. White

I celebrate myself, and sing myself.
Walt Whitman

So many things have made living and learning easier. But the real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

Though my soul may set in darkness,
it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night.
Sarah Williams (December 1837 – 25 April 1868), English poet and novelist

If you know wilderness in the way that you know love, you would be unwilling to let it go.
Terry Tempest Williams (American author, naturalist, and environmental activist)

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951, Austrian philosopher)

Knowledge is soon changed, then lost in the mist, an echo half-heard.
Gene Wolfe (American science fiction and fantasy writer)

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
Virginia Woolf

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
Lin Yutang (Chinese writer and inventor)