More bits that I saved because they tickled my mind or my funny bone. If I didn't agree with the sentiment expressed, I at least admired the way it was expressed, and the way it made me mull the topic. (I am amused that some of the very old political comments still apply.)
Note - all titles are in italics, regardless of whether it is for a book, story, magazine, TV show, whatever. I don't discriminate. If something is unattributed, either it is a common saying, or I don't remember where I found it and I apologize to the author. If it is attributed, it is a direct quote, warts and all.
For Bon Mots 1 of 5 - click here.
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Les Kamm, letter in the Mensa Bulletin: Progress ... is not the result of individual accomplishments, but the product of a vast human consciousness that contains ... a perception of purpose, potential, and need. ...[The] contributions of any single person is not substance, but style.
Woman describing how one does not realize how final death is: And then I found I was waiting for him to come home. He'd been dead long enough now, it was time for him to come home.
A lot of men consider rape merely assault with a friendly weapon.
Andy Rooney: Computers may make it easier to write, but they don't make the writing any better.
Me: SpellCheck programs may ensure that the word is spelled correctly, but it doesn't ensure that you used the right word.
Andy Rooney: If there is life on other planets, they probably won't believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God.
Me: There is negative perfectionism and positive perfectionism. Negative perfectionism is based on a fear of inadequacy. Positive perfectionism strives for mastery.
Me: A round woman has an extravagant body.
In Mexican Spanish slang, "Mensa" means "stupid/crazy woman".
Anais Nin: We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
From Alex Haley's Queen: It is the great flaw of equality ... that everyone believes that only [he] know[s] what is best for the others.
The question Diane Sawyer (interviewed on Oprah) would most like to ask the Pope: What do you think Jesus would think of the way you dress?
My mother (circa 1974): If the Democrats are in, you get a war. If the Republicans are in, you get a recession. The only choice you have in the voting booth is whether you'd prefer to starve or get shot.
Trevanian, The Eiger Sanction: My admiration for you has found new limits.
Trevanian, Shibumi: ... the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years experience in his craft while in fact he has only one year of experience - twenty times.
Me: Virginity is important only to men who fear comparison.
Me: How "good one is in bed" has more to do with the combination than with any skill.
Letter in Mensa Bulletin: If you take the "id" out of "intimidate", you get "intimate".
Dilbert: There's no reason to waste a creative thinker on an implementation task.
L. Long: Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.
L. Long: I shot an arrow into the air. It's still going - everywhere!
The early bird deserves the worm.
Benjamin Franklin: They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Robert Heinlein: Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.
Robert Heinlein: A "nine-days' wonder" is taken as a matter of course on the tenth day.
Paul Levine, in Night Vision: We are all born psychopaths, born without repressions. Society teaches us the restraints of proper behavior and helps us develop a conscience.
Paul Levine, in Night Vision, on "image": It may not get the job done, but it makes it possible to get the job done.
Hugh Prather, Notes to Myself: "Next time I will...." "From now on I will...." -What makes me think I am wiser today than I will be tomorrow?
Hugh Prather, Notes to Myself: Anyone who inhabits himself cannot believe in objective thinking.
Hugh Prather, Notes to Myself: If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire is not to write.
The town I'm from is so small, Charles Kuralt has been there twice.
Follow the man who seeks the truth; avoid the man who thinks he's found it.
Ted Kennedy, of his friend Barry Goldwater: [He] had one motto. It was "Ready! Shoot! Aim!"
Me: "Freedom" is the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action. "License" is a freedom that is used with or allows irresponsibility, or disregard for rules of personal conduct. Too many people confuse the two.
Evans(?), in a letter to the Kingston Daily Freeman: There is no necessary connection between the desire to lead and the ability to lead.... Leadership is more likely to be assumed by the aggressive than by the able and those who scramble to the top are more often motivated by their own inner torments than by any demand for their guidance.
African Proverb: It matters not what you call me, but what I answer to.
South Park: There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
Definition: Punker - Rebel without a clue, with a high school art project hairdo.
Leave the stage while the audience is still clapping.
Diane Vaughn, Uncoupling: This experience is shared by every person who travels to a foreign country.... Difference, not distance, is the critical factor. Returning, the traveler evaluates the familiar with a newly acquired comparative ability. The result is often a disease [dis-ease], a sense of lack of fit, because the traveler has had an experience the others haven't. The traveler can perhaps describe it, but as an experience it is unshareable because it has changed the traveler in ways not obvious to the others, and describing it will not similarly change the others.
~~Silk
Link in this entry:
http://journals.aol.com/jaykolb/Moraine/entries/1711
