My Favorite Quotations

• "Predictions are hard to make, especially about the future." -Yogi Berra (i think)
• I can resist anything but temptation. Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act I
• War is hell - William Tecumseh Sherman
• Simplify, simplify, simplify - Thoreau, Henry David
• Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people. - Eleanor Roosevelt
• It is good to trust, but it is better not to trust. -Roman Proverb

Some more Quotations

• Those who know do. Those who don't know teach. (Those who don't know how to teach, teach teaching.)
• "There's no there there." about Los Angeles - Gertrude Stein
• Good manners spoil good food - Ingrid Bergman Indiscreet
• There is nothing more embarassing for a man than to be sentimental when the woman is not. - Cary Grant Indiscreet
• "When you smile it's like the sun coming up." -Clark Gable - The Misfits
• "News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising." --William Randolph Hearst
• "You can observe a lot by watching." --Yogi Berra
• "I really didn't say everything I said" .
• "Never answer an anonymous letter"
• " When you come to a fork in the road....Take it "
• " If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be "
• "If the people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them "
• " The future ain't what it used to be "
• " It gets late early out here"
• Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical.
• No one goes there nowadays, it's too crowded.
• Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more. Mark Twain
• Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. Mark Twain
• An Englishman is a person who does things because they have been done before. An American is a person who does things because they haven't been done before. Mark Twain
• Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough. Mark Twain
• Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. Mark Twain
• Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. Mark Twain
• I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it. Mark Twain
• Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. Oscar Wilde
• Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative. Oscar Wilde
• I always like to know everything about my new friends, and nothing about my old ones. Oscar Wilde
• Promptness is the thief of time - Oscar Wilde
• The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself. Oscar Wilde
• When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers. Oscar Wilde, An Ideal husband, 1893
• Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Oscar Wilde, De Profundis, 1905
• What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892, Act III
• It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art. Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, 1891
• I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
• I can believe anything, provided that it is quite incredible. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
• I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
• I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better than anything else in the world. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
• Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
• One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
• Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
• The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891
• the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about- OW
• You're only as young as the nurse you feel. Groucho Marx
• Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped. Groucho Marx
• Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. Groucho Marx
• Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others. Groucho Marx
• Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history. George Bernard Shaw
• If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect. Benjamin Franklin
• In science one tries to tell people; in such a way as to be understood by everyone; something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry; its the exact opposite. - Paul Dirac (1902-1984)
• "When the farmers go into the stock market, I go out." -unknown (from gabe)
• "Never look at the same piece of paper more than once."- some businessman (from gabe)
• "any decision is better than no decision" -some businessman

Excerpts from Man's Search for Meaning

• Quoting Nietzsche "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how" p. 121, 164 (Pocket Books Simon and Schuster 1963)
• Quoting Nietzsche "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker." (That which does not kill me, makes me stronger.) p. 130
• What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you. Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind. p 131
• At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like Paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. p. 168
• Quoting schopenhauer : mankind was apparently doomed to vacillate eternally between the two extremes of distress and boredom. p. 169
• we can discover meaning in life in three different ways: by doing a deed; by experiencing a value; and by suffering. p. 176
• I observed that procreation is not the only meaning of life, for then life in itself would become meaningless, and something that in itself is meaningless cannot be rendered meaningful merely by its perpetuation. p.189
• For, in the past, nothing is irrecoverably lost but everything is irrevocably stored. p. 191
• At any moment, man must decide, for better or for worse, what will be the monument of his existence. p. 191
• Ha he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees, or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reason has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future that is in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think. "Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and of love loved, but of suffering bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these are things which cannot inspire envy." p. 192- 193
• Anticipatory anxiety must be counteracted by paradoxical intention; hyperintention as well as hyper-reflection must be counteracted by de-reflection; de-reflection, however, ultimately is not possible except by the patient's reorientation toward his specific vocation and mission in life. p. 294