My Favourite Quotes

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Laurie Anderson

From O Superman:

When hope is gone, there's always justice.
And when justice is gone, there's always force.
And when force is gone, there's always mum.
                                                         "Hi Mum!"

So hold me Mum, in your long arms.

Laurie Anderson Discusses the American National Debt

Laurie Anderson Discusses Japanese attitudes to Whaling

At least, I think that's what she's talking about.   She might be talking about human sperm.   You decide!

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Madeline Talmage Astor

As she was being helped over the rail of the Titanic in April 1912 - "I rang for ice, but this is ridiculous!"

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David W. Augsburger

Contents

On Corporal Punishment

Adults who were humiliated as children unconciously reproduce that humiliation.  Corporal Punishment is a dramatic reenactment of an adult struggling to regain the power once lost as a child.  The subjection of the child is the basic building block of socialization into the wider sociopolitical structures of domination.  The "silent drama" of the child unfolds in the following acts:

  1. Being hurt/dominated as a young child without anyone knowing the humiliation
  2. Being unable to react to or to process the resultant anger
  3. Internalizing the sense of betrayal by rationalizing or or idealizing the parent's "good intentions"
  4. Repressing the painful memory until it is forgotten
  5. As an adult, discharging the unconsious store of anger onto either self or others

"A vicious cycle of contempt for those who are smaller or weaker" results and becomes institutionalised in the patterns of domination that are repeated from generation to generation.  The patterns of domination that are psychically and socially enforced (introjected psychically, projected socially) create depression within and oppression between persons.

The above quoatation is taken from Helping People Forgive by David W. Augsburger, published by Westminster John Knox Press of Louisville, Kentucky.  It can be found on page 91 of the 1996 edition of this work (ISBN 0-664-25686-4).

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Tallulah Bankhead

Here's a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.

I'm as pure as the driven slush.

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.

It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.

They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.

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Kate Blanchet

As Elizabeth I at Tilbury, just before the attempted invasion by the Spanish Armada

Let them come with the armies of Hell!  They shall not pass!

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Winston Churchill

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.

All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.

Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed.

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

Every day you may make progress.  Every step may be fruitful.  Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path.  You know you will never get to the end of the journey.  But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

I cannot pretend to feel impartial about colours.  I rejoice with the brilliant ones and am genuinely sorry for the poor browns.

I have always felt that a politician is to be judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents.

I like pigs.  Dogs look up to us.  Cats look down on us.  Pigs treat us as equals.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead.  The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.

It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.  The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

One ought never to turn one's back on a threatened danger and try to run away from it.  If you do that, you will double the danger.  But if you meet it promptly and without flinching, you will reduce the danger by half.

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.

Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

The price of greatness is responsibility.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

There are a terrible lot of lies going around the world, and the worst of it is half of them are true.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years.  To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country.  I make up for lost time when I come home.

When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.

Don't talk to me about naval tradition.  It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.

Winston Churchill In conversation with Lady Astor

Lady Astor:
Sir, if I was married to you I'd put poison in your tea!
Winston Churchill:
Madam, if I was married to you, I'd drink it!

It is also rumoured that Churchill once asked an elegant woman, at a dinner party, if she would sleep with him for a very large sum of money.  When she confirmed that she would, he offered her a much smaller sum of money for the same service.  At this point the following conversation occurred between them:

Elegant Woman:
Sir, what do you think I am?
Churchill:
Madam, we have already established what you are; now we are haggling over the price.

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Leonard Cohen

From Closing Time:

And my very close companion
Gets me fumbling gets me laughing
She's a hundred but she's wearing
Something tight

From One of us cannot be wrong:

I showed my heart to the doctor
He said I'd just have to quit
Then he wrote himself a prescription
And your name was mentioned in it
Then he locked himself
In a library shelf
With the details of our honeymoon
And I hear from the nurse
That he's gotten much worse
And his practice is all in a ruin ...

An Eskimo showed me a movie
he'd recently taken of you:
the poor man could hardly stop shivering,
his lips and his fingers were blue.
I suppose that he froze when the wind took your clothes
and I guess he just never got warm.
But you stand there so nice, in your blizzard of ice,
oh please let me come into the storm.

From the chorus of I'm Your Man:

Ah, the moon's too bright
The chain's too tight
The beast won't go to sleep
I've been running through these promises to you
That I made and I could not keep
But a man never got a woman back
Not by begging on his knees
Or I'd crawl to you baby
And I'd fall at your feet
And I'd howl at your beauty
Like a dog in heat
And I'd claw at your heart
And I'd tear at your sheet
And I'd say please, please
I'm your man

From Everybody Knows:

Everybody knows that the plague is coming.
Everybody knows that it's moving fast.
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman,
Are just a shining artefact of the past!

These lines were written, I believe, when AIDS hyseteria was at it's height, when sex without a condom was unthinkable (to large sections of the communitty) when fundamentalist Christians were spouting nonsense about "A Gay Plague" and when certain people were even suggesting forcible quarantine for AIDS sufferers, often in the most unpleasant of circumstances and surroundings.  (Ed.)

From There are no diamonds in the mine:

Well, you tell me that your lover has a broken limb,
You say youre kind of restless now and its on account of him.
Well, I saw the man in question, it was just the other night,
He was eating up a lady where the lions and christians fight.

From The Old Revolution:

Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.

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Drinkers' Toasts

Overheard from the table next to mine, at "Danish Camp", a very nice riverside cafe in Willington Bedfordshire:

Here's to those that wish us well, and all the rest can go to Hell!

Supposedly a favourite toast of the painter Francis Bacon:

Champagne for my real friends. Real pain for my sham friends.

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Albert Einstein - On the subject of a University Education

One had to cram all this stuff into one's mind, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.... It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe that it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry -- especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly.

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Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (aka Mahatma Gandhi)

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Hate the sin, love the sinner.

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.

I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy.

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

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

You must be the change you want to see in the world.

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?

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.

When asked what he thought of Western Civilisation, The Mahatma replied:

I think it would be a good idea.

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Sarah Michelle Geller

In her role as Buffy the Vampire slayer, she counselled her younger sister, played by Michelle Trachtenberg, on the value of history, saying:

"Those of us who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it in Summer School."

N.B. Although I am quoting Sarah Michelle Geller, who actually got to deliver the above line, I believe that I should also credit Jane Espenson, who, so I am informed, wrote the episode in question.  I do not personally remember which episode of Buffy this quote comes from.  However, Lauren V Priest, a fellow member of the "I know I should root for Angel, but I just wanna see Buffy do Spike" group on Facebook, informs me that it is from Series 6, Episode 3 and according to www.IMDB.com (See: www.imdb.com/title/tt0533385/) Series 6, Episode 3 was written by Jane Espenson.

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Richard Gillard

On The Quakers

Some time ago my life seemed to be falling apart. I lost my job, my home of 17 years, my self respect and very nearly my sanity. In this situation I ended up buying a little Bed-Sitting room in an old Victorian House in Bedford. My life was a mess. I was in some danger of going to the wall. The joint spectres of total madness and suicide seemed to loom up in front of me! In this situation I had the very good fortune to meet the local Quaker Community who, by their friendship, helped me back to a more positive approach to life.

If a person falls into bad company they are said to have "Fallen among Theives". Up until now, as far as I am aware, there has not been a similar expression to sum up the alternative experience of falling into good company. I would like to correct this situation. I would like to suggest that, if a chap who is at the end of his teather, should happen to fall in with good people who help him get his life back together, he could be said to have "Fallen among Quakers".

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On re-inventing oneself

So there I was.  I had lost my job.  I had lost my lovely Home in Highgate.  I had lost all my dreams.  I had lost my self respect.  I had nearly lost my sanity.

What else what was there to do?  I found a new set of dreams; a new set of goals; a new set of friends; a new love and new reasons to live. After all, as Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger!"

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On where Good Americans go when they die

Oscar Wilde once said that, when good Americans die, they go to Paris.  Personally, I think this is a pity.  I'm firmly convinced that many of them want to go to California.

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On Genesis Chapter Chapter 51

And God looked down on the Rock Concert and he saw that it was Good. And He said, "Let there be radio microphones", for he knew that Mr Jagger would never be able to run around the stage so freely, on the Bridges to Babylon tour, with all those trailing microphone leads waiting to trip him up.

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On Being Superior

"Being superior" is the last refuge of the truly inadequate!

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My Epitaph

I have decided on the Epitaph I wish to see above my grave, when, eventually, I shake of this mortal coil:

I have lived.  I have loved.  I have tasted.

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On my Roman Catholic Education

As you may know, gentle reader, a Roman Catholic education can be a difficult thing for a chap to deal with, particularly if he has not been born to be a eunoch.  I, myself, dealt with this difficulty a very long time ago.  When one deals with a difficulty, one does what is necessary, whatever is necessary. Looking back on the matter, I am forced to reflect that the necessary action could have been very neatly summarized by Jane Austen. In her unwritten novel, Roman Catholicism without Prejudice, Jane Austen did not open with the words:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a chap who has only recently awoken from the nightmare of a Roman Catholic education, is in urgent need of a brief relationship with a succession of adventurous, amoral (and, ideally, somewhat depraved) whores.

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Modern Day Prophets

If a man truly believes he does God's will, he has the strength of a thousand armies behind him. Woe betide anyone who dares to stand in his way.

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The OC

So. I'm watching The OC and Mischa Barton says: "I'm thinking about skipping school today."

I find myself thinking: "Yeah, well you are about 28 years old. Maybe you should!"

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Aldous Huxley

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment.  If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time.  On no account brood over your wrong doing.  Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

This Quote was taken from the very first paragraph, neigh, it is the very first paragraph, of the forward to a late edition of Aldous Huxley's novel, Brave New World.  Mr Huxley is lamenting the flaws he finds in his own work, on revisiting it at a later date, and explaining that he is nevertheless presenting it as is, because labouring over past mistakes is a pointless and thoroughly enervating activity.

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Natasha Khan - Of Bat for Lashes

Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark.

It is not my intention to try and explain Natasha's lyrics. I merely relate them to you. Ed.

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Abraham Lincoln

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

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Kirsty Maccoll

From her song A New England

I saw two shooting stars last night.  I wished on them, but they were only satellites.  It's wrong to wish on space hardware.  I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care.

Once upon a time at home I sat beside the telephone.  Waiting for someone to pull me through.  When at last it didn't ring I knew it wasn't you.

I loved you then as I love you still.  Though I put you on a pedestal you put me on the pill.

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Richard Nixon

On Donald Rumsfeld:
He's a ruthless little bastard.  You can be sure of that.
To Milton Freidman:
We're all Keynsians now.

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Dorothy Parker

On Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the burial of his manuscripts in his loved one's coffin in Highgate Cemetary, followed by their retrieval during a late night exhumation several years later

Title: D.G.Rossetti

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Buried all of his libretti
Thought the matter over-then
Went and dug them up again.

On Suicide

Title: Resume

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

On being asked to think of a sentence using the word horticulture

You can take a whore t' culture
But you can't make her think.

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Annie Proulx

The following is taken from the film of her novel, The Shipping News:

There are still so many things I don't know.
But if a piece of knotted string can unleash the wind,
and if a drowned man can waken
then I believe a broken man can heal.

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Quotes from: Oliver Reed

As himself:

I have two ambitions in life: one is to drink every pub dry, the other is to sleep with every woman on earth.

I like to give my inhibitions a bath now and then.

I do not live in the world of sobriety

As Father Urbain Grandier, in Ken Russell's Film: The Devils:

The devil is a liar, and the father of lies.

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Keith Richards

Drugs were never a problem.  Policemen were a problem.

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William Shakespeare

The following is an index to a few of Shakespeare's famous speeches.  Please click the relevent link to see the full text of the speech.

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Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears

Mark Antony:

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

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From Macbeth: Act V, Scene V

SEYTON:

The queen, my lord, is dead.

MACBETH:

She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

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From Measure for Measure: Act II, Scene II

ISABELLA:

Could great men thunder
As Jove himself does, Jove would ne'er be quiet,
For every pelting, petty officer
Would use his heaven for thunder;
Nothing but thunder! Merciful Heaven,
Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt
Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak
Than the soft myrtle: but man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he's most assured,
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep; who, with our spleens,
Would all themselves laugh mortal.

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From As You Like It

JAQUES:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

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From Julius Ceasar, Act IV, Scene III

BRUTUS:

Under your pardon. You must note beside,
That we have tried the utmost of our friends,
Our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe:
The enemy increaseth every day;
We, at the height, are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

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From The Tempest - Act 1 Scene 2

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
Hark! now I hear them,--Ding-dong, bell.

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From The Tempest - Act 4 Scene 1

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep

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Elizabeth Taylor

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.

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J.R.R. Tolkien

Criticizing those who are too willing to deal out death to malefactors, and delivered via the mouth of his literary creation, Gandalf the Grey, in Lord of The Rings

"Many that live deserve death.   And some that die deserve life.   Can you give it to them?   Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement."

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Mae West - Various

When I'm good I'm very good, but when I'm bad I'm better.

A hard man... is good to find

I used to be Snow White... but I drifted

It's not the men in my life that counts -- it's the life in my men.

He who hesitates is last.

I go for two kinds of men. The kind with muscles, and the kind without.

So many men... so little time

Too much of a good thing... can be wonderful

Why don't you come on up and see me sometime.. when I've got nothin' on but the radio.

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.

A man in love is like a clipped coupon -- it's time to cash in.

A man in the house... is worth two in the street

Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.

It's better to be looked over, than overlooked

Give a man a free hand... and he'll run it all over you

Good sex is like good Bridge... If you don't have a good partner, you'd better have a good hand

To err is human -- but it feels divine

I don't like myself, I'm crazy about myself.

I like two kinds of men: domestic and imported

When a girl goes wrong, men go right... after her

I'm the lady who works at Paramount all day... and Fox all night.

Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

Save a boyfriend for a rainy day, and another, in case it doesn't rain

I've been rich and I've been poor... Believe me, rich is better

It's hard to be funny...when you have to be "clean"

I like my clothes to be tight enough to show I'm a woman... but loose enough to show I'm a lady.

She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success... wrong by wrong

You may admire a girl's curves on the first introduction... but the second meeting shows up new angles

You can say what you like about long dresses, but they cover a multitude of shins.

Those who are easily shocked... should be shocked more often

When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.

You ought to get out of those wet clothes... and into a dry martini

In response to hearing the words: "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!"

    Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.

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Oscar Wilde

From Lady Windermere's Fan

I can resist anything but temptation.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

From The Importance of Being Earnest

To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

From The Picture of Dorian Gray

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

I do not know from which work the following quote is taken, but it is too good to miss.

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

N.B. If you happen to know where the above quote comes from, please let me know.

From De Profundis

You had not yet been able to acquire the "Oxford temper" in intellectual matters, never, I mean, been one who could play gracefully with ideas but had arrived at violence of opinion merely.

De Profundis is the name generally given to Oscar Wilde's extremely long letter to his friend Bosie, which was written from Reading Gaol.   The name De Profundis is also the name which is often given to Psalm 130, a prayer which starts with the words: "Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord.   Lord, hear my voice."

In my own copy of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, this quote can be found in the second paragraph on page 875.   My own edition of The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde is the 1948, hardback edition, published by Collins of London and Glasgow and reprinted in 1971.   I imagine that other editions may vary in the page numbering scheme, but in the Collins edition, the start of the letter can be found on page 873.

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Annonomous or Unattributed Quotes

From the Movie "Can can", directed by Walter Lang

Sin wasn't invented in Montmarte. It was just perfected here.

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Footnotes:






I regret I never knew Aldous Huxley.  He and I came from completely different social backgrounds.  Also, he died on 17 December 1963, when I was just 11 years old.  However, when I was 19 years old, I first read Brave New World.  When I was 20, I read The Devils of Loudun. In The Devils of Loudun Huxley shared a lot of his religion and philosophy.

By that time in my life, I had already left home and was living in a bedsitter in East Dulwich.  In those days I would often curl up and read Aldous Huxley, Carl Jung and even Aleister Crowley.  "Listening" to their confidential language, I felt as if they were three old friends.  They were all dead by then of course, this was 1973.  However, through the medium of their writing, they pulled aside the curtains of mortality and came into my room.  I had some really high class parties in those heady days!  Also, Mr Crowley had the good grace to introduce me to George Bernard Shaw and Henrik Ibsen.  After that, Mr Shaw would often join our soires too! Regretably, however, I never came anywhere near to understanding Ibsen, until more than 30 years later.      -      Return to Aldous Huxley Quotations



















































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