quotes and thoughts

The poem... is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see - it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what we see is life. ~Robert Penn Warren, Saturday Review, 22 March 1958


Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education. ~Mark Twain


Try not. Do or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda


It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways. ~Buddha


The deepest rivers make least din, the silent soule doth most abound in care. ~William Alexander


I can't help looking gay. I put on a dress and people say, "Who's the dyke in the dress?" ~Karen Ripley


We all know how the size of sums of money appears to vary in a remarkable way according as they are being paid in or paid out. ~Julian Huxley


Progress imposes not only new possibilities for the future but new restrictions. ~Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, 1950


The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult. ~Marie de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand, letter to Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, 7 July 1763


Golf is played by twenty million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun. ~Jim Bishop


A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead. ~Leo Rosten


Who ever thought up the word "Mammogram?" Every time I hear it, I think I'm supposed to put my breast in an envelope and send it to someone. ~Jan King


If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. ~Mark Twain


Why should anyone steal a watch when he could steal a bicycle? ~Flann O'Brien


It's hard to win a pennant, but it's harder losing one. ~Chuck Tanner


Skipping takes me back to less complicated times, without leaving the present! ~Hope Trachtenberg-Fifer, as posted on iskip.com


It behooves a father to be blameless if he expects his child to be. ~Homer


True friendship comes when silence between two people is comfortable. ~Dave Tyson Gentry


An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain - the equality of all men. ~Ignazio Silone


What is so fascinating about sitting around watching a bunch of pituitary cases stuff a ball through a hoop? ~Woody Allen, Annie Hall