Miscellaneous

It's no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase As pretty as an airport appear.
--Douglas Adams

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
--Douglas Adams

Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so.
--Douglas Adams

If on the other hand he went to pay his respects to The Door and it wasn't there...what then?
The answer, of course, was very simple. He had a whole board of circuits for dealing with exactly this problem, in fact this was the very heart of his function. He would continue to believe in it whatever the facts turned out to be, what else was the meaning of belief? The Door would still be there, even if the Door was not.
-- Douglas Adams (Dirk Gently: Holistic Detective Agency)

Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn't have a good answer to.
-- Douglas Adams

He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
-- Douglas Adams

The night sky over the planet Krikkit is the least interesting sight in the entire Universe.
-- Douglas Adams

In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move.
-- D. Adams

Life... is like a grapefruit. It's orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.
-- Douglas Adams

The Hitch Hiker's Guide has not been an opera. It has however been a tapestry, if you count a woven bath towel as a tapestry.
-- Douglas Adams

Very deep. You should send that into Reader's Digest, they've got a page for people like you.
-- Douglas Adams

All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss.
--Douglas Adams

Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get *there*. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.
-- Douglas Adams

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea ...
-- Douglas Adams

Men were real men, women were real women, and small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were REAL small, furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. Spirits were brave, men boldly split infinitives that no man had split before. Thus was the Empire forged.
--Douglas Adams

This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
--Douglas Adams

You know, it's at times like this when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young!
Why, what did she tell you?
I don't know, I didn't listen!
- Douglas Adams/Ford Prefect

One reason I don't drink is because I wish to know when I'm having a good time.
-- Nancy Astor (Viscountess Astor) 1879-1964

Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded.
-- Yogi Berra

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.
-- F. H. Bradley

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

I know that this defies the law of gravity, but, you see, I never studied law.
-- Bugs Bunny

Never give succor to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit.
--William S. Burroughs

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
-- Chinese Proverb

A joke is a very serious thing.
--Winston Churchill

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

Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
--Winston Churchill

It was the best of times, it
was the worst of times.
-- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it?
-- Clarence Darrow

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
-- Albert Einstein

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
-- Albert Einstein

Kill no more pigeons than you can eat.
--Benjamin Franklin

The sleeping fox catches no poultry.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Plough deep while sluggards sleep.
--Benjamin Franklin

Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade.
--Benjamin Franklin

Early morning hath gold in its mouth.
--Benjamin Franklin

Having been poor is no shame, but being ashamed of it, is.
--Benjamin Franklin

Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy.
--Benjamin Franklin

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.
--Benjamin Franklin

Well done is better than well said.
--Benjamin Franklin

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.
-- Ava Gardner

I had a great idea this morning, but I didn't like it.
-- Samuel Goldwyn

Any man who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined.
-- Samuel Goldwyn

If we aren't supposed to eat animals, then why are they made out of meat?
-- Harper's Magazine correspondence section (Nov. 1997)

Go to Hell! or other direct insult is all the answer a snoopy question deserves.
-- Robert Heinlein/Lazarus Long

If Wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets.
-Frank Herbert

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.
-- Aldous Huxley

To us, the moment 8:17 A.M. means something - something very important, if it happens to be the starting time of our daily train. To our ancestors, such an odd eccentric instant was without significance - did not even exist. In inventing the locomotive, Watt and Stevenson were part inventors of time.
-- Aldous Huxley

The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best.
--Thomas Jefferson

No instance exists of a person's writing two language perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth.
--Thomas Jefferson

It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say, that the means follow their end.
--Thomas Jefferson

A lady came up to me on the street and pointed to my suede jacket. You know a cow was murdered for that jacket? she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, I didn't know there were any witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too.
-- Jake Johanson

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.
-- Franklin P. Jones

New York... when civilization falls apart, remember, we were way ahead of you.
-- David Letterman

Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped.
-- Sam Levenson

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
-- Henry W. Longfellow

It is bad luck to be superstitious.
-- Andrew Mathis

If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
-- William Somerset Maugham

Is the glass half empty, half full, or twice as large as it needs to be?
-- William Somerset Maugham

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.
-- William Somerset Maugham

I think it would be totally inappropriate for me to even contemplate what I am thinking about.
-- Donald F. Mazankowski

Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective
.
-- P. J. O'Rourke
The message so far has been: don't panic. As the crisis goes on, and its impact worsens, the message is: start panicking a little.
I concluded from the beginning that this would be the end; and I am right, for it is not half over yet.
-- Sir Boyle Roche

Miscellaneous is always the largest category.
-- Joel Rosenberg, The Warrior Lives (1988)

We know too much and feel too little. At least we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.
-- Bertrand Russell

Q: How do you attract a vegetarian?
A: Make a noise like a wounded vegetable.
-- Tommy Smothers

Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that's bad for you!
-- Tommy Smothers

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-- Mark Twain

Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.
-- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Book I (1954)

We must cultivate our garden.
-- Voltaire

A witty saying proves nothing.
-- Voltaire

Right now I'm having amnesia and déjà vu at the
same time. I think I've forgotten this before.
-- Steven Wright

I have the world's largest collection of sea shells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world...perhaps you've seen it.
-- Steven Wright

I used to be a proofreader for a skywriting company.
-- Steven Wright

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

Last night somebody broke into my apartment and replaced everything with exact duplicates...

When I pointed it out to my roommate, he said, Do I know you?
-- Steven Wright