a bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it - Bob Hope
|
a bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain - Robert Frost
|
a beautiful woman is not a creature whose legs or arms inspire praise, but someone whose overall appearance is so beautiful that it is impossible to admire any single part
|
a bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog - Jack london
|
a book is one of the fonts of joy available to us
|
a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us
|
a book that can't stand two readings is not worth even one
|
a business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business (Henry Ford)
|
a businessman anywhere in the world has the same religion
|
a cavil is a matter of principle that we have forgotten (Sir Elwyn Jones)
|
a child is not a vase to be filled, but a fire to be lit
|
a child on a farm sees a plane fly overhead and dreams of a faraway place. A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home - Carl Burns
|
a Church that is not persecuted, but enjoys privileges and support from the middle classes, is not the true Church of Christ
|
a cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? - Oscar Wilde
|
a commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties
|
a compromise is the art of dividing a cake in such a way that everyone believes he has the biggest piece
|
a concert to save the planet... reminds me of the Titanic
|
a conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done - Fred Allen
|
a consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually - Abba Eban
|
a corporation is closer to any totalitarian institution as any that humans have devised - Noam Chomsky
|
a country without documentary films is like a family without a photo album
|
a couple is composed of three people where one is always momentarily absent
|
a critic is a legless man who teaches running - Channing Pollock
|
a cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin - H.L. Mencken
|
a cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past, he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future - Sydney J. Harris
|
a day will come in which men will look upon an animal's murder the same way they look today upon a man's murder
|
a denial is a piece of information given twice
|
a dictionary can embrace only a small part of the vast tapestry of a language
|
a dictionary is the whole universe arranged in alphabetical order
|
a diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age - Robert Frost
|
a disadvantageous peace is better than the most righteous war
|
a fan club is a group of people who tell an actor he's not alone in the way he feels about himself - Kenneth Williams
|
a Fatherland is a moment-by-moment soporific. One cannot sufficiently envy - or pity - the Jews for not having one, or for having only provisional ones, Israel first of all
|
a fiancé is a happy man who is ready to cease being so
|
a free woman is the exact opposite of a fickle woman
|
a friend is not someone who wipes your tears; he's someone who doesn't make you cry - Anonymous
|
a friend is someone who can readily accept your silence
|
a fruitful conversation springs only from minds absorbed in reinforcing their own confusion
|
a good dictionary is like a mirror: if you know how to use it well, you can find what you already suspected
|
a good man is intelligent, and a bad man is also an idiot. Moral and intellectual characteristics go together
|
a good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a re-reader - Vladimir Nabokov
|
a good review from the critics is just another stay of execution - Dustin Hoffman
|
a government is the only vessel that leaks from the top - James Reston
|
a great obstacle to happiness is to anticipate too great a happiness
|
a journalist is someone whose business it is to explain to others what he personally does not understand - Lord Alfred Northcliff
|
a jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer - Robert Frost
|
a language is a dialect with an army and a navy - Joshua A. Fishman
|
a lawful kiss is never worth as much as a stolen one
|
a lawyer is a gentleman who rescues your estate from your enemies and keeps it for himself - Lord Brougham
|
a lawyer is the natural accomplice of a banker - Henry Ford
|
a learned fool is more foolish than an ignorant fool
|
a learned man is an idler who kills time by study - George Bernard Shaw
|
a liar should keep in mind that to be believed he shouldn't tell more lies than are necessary
|
a literary classic is one of those books that leaves the reader wondering what more there is to the story
|
a little inaccuracy saves a world of explanation - Clarence Edwin Ayres
|
a man alone is always in bad company
|
a man becomes a man only by imitating other men
|
a man can't ride on your back unless it's bent - Martin Luther King
|
a man doesn't plant a tree for himself. He plants it for posterity - Alexander Smith
|
a man gains wisdom only when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance
|
a man generally has two reasons for doing a thing: one that sounds good, and a real one - John Pierpont Morgan
|
a man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar - Mark Twain
|
a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone - Henry David Thoreau
|
a man is rich once he has become familiar with scarcity
|
a man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy, that's the only reason. That's all, that's all! Whoever discovers this will become happy instantly
|
a man needs to stock up on his dreams
|
a man who does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good - Henry Ward Beecher
|
a man who does not lose his mind over certain things has no mind to lose
|
a man who won't die for something is not fit to live - Martin Luther King
|
a man with no dreams, no illusions and no ideals would be a monster, a wild boar with a degree in pure mathematics
|
a man, any man, is worth more than a flag, any flag
|
a man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes - Thomas Henry Huxley
|
a memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer - Dean Acheson
|
a myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes - James K. Feibleman
|
a natural language is the archive where the experiences, knowledge and beliefs of a community are stored
|
a painter is a man who paints what he sells; an artist, on the other hand, is a man who sells what he paints
|
a paranoid is a man who knows a little of what's going on - William S. Burroughs
|
a philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there. A theologian is the one who finds it - H.L. Mencken
|
a poet understands Nature better than a scientist
|
a political campaign costs much more than an honest man can pay - Anonymous
|
a politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country - Texas Guinan
|
a politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen - Winston Churchill
|
a politician thinks about the coming elections, the statesman about the next generations
|
a prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him - Winston Churchill
|
a process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to philosophers to obviously be progress, though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known - Bertrand Russell
|
a proverb is a short sentence based on long experience
|
a psychiatrist is a fellow who asks you a lot of expensive questions your wife asks for nothing - Joey Adams
|
a real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us - W.H. Auden
|
a reformer is a man who rides through a sewer in a glass-bottomed boat - James J. Walker
|
a scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales
|
a sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking - Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
a sensible conclusion is that languages are 'difficult' in inverse proportion to the strength of motivation for learning them (Reg Hindley)
|
a shadow is lost in too much light... or too much darkness
|
a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use - Washington Irving
|
a slave has but one master, an ambitious man has as many as there are people useful to his advancement
|
a slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him - Ezra Pound
|
a smart woman prefers to stay alone than to stay with anyone - Marilyn Monroe
|
a smile is the shortest distance between two people - Víctor Borge
|
a sociologist is someone who goes to a football match to look at the spectators
|
a specialist is one who knows more and more about less and less, ultimately knowing everything... about nothing!
|
a speech belongs half to the speaker and half to the listener
|
a strong foe is better than a weak friend - Edward Dahlberg
|
a synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first thought of - Burt Bacharach
|
a tooth ought to be valued much more than a diamond
|
a tragic indicator of the values of our civilization is that there's no business like war business - Douglas Mattern
|
a traitor is someone who leaves a party to join another and a convert is someone who leaves this other party to join yours
|
a translation done badly is not a translation
|
a woman is a present that chooses you
|
a word is nothing but a noise and books are nothing but paper
|
a writer is a productive labourer not in so far as he produces ideas, but in so far as he enriches the publisher who publishes his works
|
act well your part, there all the honor lies - Edgar Lee Masters
|
adventure is just bad planning
|
advertising always combines superfluousness with pleasure
|
advertising is the art of making whole lies out of half truths - Edgar A. Shoaff
|
advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it - Stephen Leacock
|
after all, it's your relationships with other people that give value to life
|
after all, the language is our homeland
|
after discrediting virtues, our century succeeded in discrediting vices
|
after suffering so much, at least there is the recompense of dying like dogs
|
after three appearances on TV, any fool being interviewed says what he thinks and what others think too
|
age has whitened the hair of some men while leaving their hearts unaffected, which remain fresh and young and beat just as strongly for every good and beautiful thing
|
age to me means nothing. I can't get old; I'm working. I was old when I was twenty-one and out of work. As long as you're working, you stay young - George Burns
|
albeit there are as many grammairiennes as grammariens, indeed more...
|
all charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others - Cyril Connolly
|
all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation - Bertrand Russell
|
all gods were immortal
|
all good acts are only demonstrations of power
|
all happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
|
all history is contemporary history
|
all ideas are already in the brain, just as all statues are in the marble
|
all is worth nothing and the rest is worth even less
|
all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other - H.P. Lovecraft
|
all love letters are ridiculous. They would not be love letters if they were not ridiculous
|
all men have a woman in their thoughts, and married men have another at home
|
all men play a role except, perhaps, some actors
|
all men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers - Orison Swett Marden
|
all modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State
|
all our knowledge merely helps us to die a more painful death than animals that know nothing
|
all she needs do is shout the truth in everyone's face. No one will believe it and everyone will think her mad!
|
all speech, written or spoken, is a dead language - Robert Louis Stevenson
|
all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing - Edmund Burke
|
all that which is invented, is true
|
all the brains in the world are powerless against any kind of stupidity that is in vogue
|
all the glory of the world lies in a grain of corn
|
all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances - William Shakespeare
|
all things considered, there are two types of men in this world. Those who stay home and those who do not - Rudyard Kipling
|
all tramps and beggars are equal under the law
|
all universal moral principles are idle fantasies
|
all we are saying is give peace a chance - John Lennon
|
all would live long, but none would be old - Benjamin Franklin
|
all you need is ignorance and confidence and the success is sure - Mark Twain
|
almost all physicians have their favourite diseases - Henry Fielding
|
although death is terrifying, knowing that you are living to eternity without ever being able to die is even more terrifying
|
always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much - Oscar Wilde
|
always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else - Margaret Mead
|
am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? - Abraham Lincoln
|
America is a country that doesn't know where it is going but is determined to set a speed record getting there - Laurence J. Peter
|
Americans are healthy carriers of democracy
|
among my most prized possessions are words that I have never spoken - Orson Rega Card
|
amusing yourself almost always means a different way of being bored
|
an absolutely logical language without its own idioms would be lifeless and too mechanical
|
an actor is a guy who, if you ain't talking about him, he ain't listening - Marlon Brando
|
an actor is a sincere liar
|
an Ambassador is an honest man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his country - Sir Henry Wotton
|
an American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men - Charles Darwin
|
an archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her - Agatha Christie
|
an arts degree is like a diploma in origami. And about as much use - JG Ballard
|
an e-mail cannot express the sentiment of a tear
|
an editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff - Adlai Stevenson
|
an era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted - Arthur Miller
|
an expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field
|
an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind - Mahatma Gandhi
|
an honest man is always a child
|
an incompetent lawyer can delay a trial for months or years. A competent lawyer can delay one even longer - Evelle Younger
|
an intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself
|
an intellectual is the type of person who has bound those books he has not read
|
an international gang of exchange speculators has mindlessly and heartlessly created a world of inequality, misery and horror. Their criminal hegemony must be ended without delay
|
an optimist is he who believes that things cannot get any worse
|
an optimist is he who thinks that a woman has finished her telephone call merely because she has said '.....well, be seeing you......'
|
anarchy doesn't mean no rules, it means no rulers - Edward Abbey
|
and men have less scruple in offending one who is beloved than one who is feared
|
and of all plagues with which mankind are cursed, ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst - Daniel Defoe
|
and so we find ourselves with this simple, two-pronged truism: firstly, we are a community of people speaking the same language and, secondly, speaking it is one of the ways of marking us as human beings
|
and to avoid it being stolen... money is entrusted to the banks
|
and we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh
|
and what was formerly done 'for the sake of God' is now done for the sake of money, that is to say for what in this day and age ensures more than anything else a feeling of power and peace of mind
|
and yet, the contrary is always true as well
|
animal rights come before religion
|
anthropoid apes and baboons don't speak because, if they could, human beings would force them to work
|
any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so - Gore Vidal
|
any city, however small, is actually divided into two: one for the poor, the other for the rich, and they are at war with each other
|
any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary - Mark Twain
|
any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out
|
any kind of divorce is a patching-up exercise on something that has ended up badly. Battling to get divorce legalised is a battle behind the lines. Marriage should be fought against
|
any man worthy of the name must reproach himself for the reproaches directed against any other man
|
any one of us would term barbaric what is not habitual to us
|
any private property is necessarily under a 'social mortgage'
|
any woman would like to be faithful. The difficulty is finding a man to be faithful to
|
anybody can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success - Oscar Wilde
|
anyone being born should exercise great prudence in the choice of place, year, and parents
|
anyone can speak obscurely, but very few with clarity
|
anyone that wants the presidency so much that he'll spend two years organizing and campaigning for it is not to be trusted with the office - David Broder
|
anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist - Kenneth Boulding
|
anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory
|
anyone who has never owned a dog can't know what loving and being loved mean
|
anyone who holds power for even one minute commits a crime
|
anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old
|
anyone who teaches people to die teaches them to live
|
anything capable of being imagined will one day be made reality
|
apart from a few men, all animals have a soul
|
approbation from others is stimulating, but it is as well sometimes to distrust it
|
art is a call to which too many who are not called give an answer
|
art is a hammer to beat the world, not a mirror to reflect it
|
art is an investment of capital, culture an excuse
|
art is magic freed from the lie of being truth
|
art is the lie that makes us realize truth
|
art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life
|
as a body everyone is single, but as a soul, never
|
as a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our reach
|
as a rule I use only words that enhance the silence
|
as a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death
|
as fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless - Lord Chesterfield
|
as I didn't mind being born, I don't mind dying
|
as in friendship so in love, we are often happier from ignorance than from knowledge
|
as long as I still have something to do, I will have done nothing
|
as long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it - Dick Cavett
|
as long as there is oil, there will be no peace in the Middle East
|
as long as translations exist, language is a vehicle, not a destination - Shashi Tharoor
|
as long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular - Oscar Wilde
|
as men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all
|
as regards obstacles, the shortest distance between two points can be a curve
|
as soon as you start to speak a foreign language, your facial expressions and hand movements and your body language all change. You are already someone else
|
as soon as you tolerate something, it becomes bearable, and before long it will become common - Israel Zangwill
|
as to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent
|
ask no questions and you will be told no lies - Anonymous
|
ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so - John Stuart Mill
|
asking an entrepreneur not to cheat on his income is like asking a dentist not to cheat on invoices
|
astronomy has taught us that we are not the centre of the universe. We are only a minute planet orbiting around a very common star. We, as intelligent beings, are the result of the evolution of the stars; we are made of the stuff of heavenly bodies
|
at any given moment you have to run the risk of losing everything so that something works again
|
at present, with the exception of tobacco, alcohol and television, most drugs are illegal, and yet our kids can always find them on every school corner
|
at the most important crossroads of life, there's no signposts - Ernest Hemingway
|
at times it's better to strive to be happy in misfortune by accepting it, rather than fighting or trying to overcome it
|
audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear
|
Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals
|