Animals

Mary had a little lamb and the doctor fainted.

-- Anonymous

Did you ever notice when you blow in a dog's face he gets mad at you? But when you take him in a car he sticks his head out the window.

-- Steve Bluestone

I know a dead parrot when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.... This is an ex-parrot.

-- John Cleese, Monty Python, British comedy television show

I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul.

-- Jean Cocteau

... I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time.

-- Colette

What if it was cats who invented technology... would they have tv shows starring rubber sqeak toys?

-- Douglas Coupland

In a cat's eyes, all things belong to cats.

-- English Proverb

I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited creatures we might be if we weren't certain we knew better.

-- George Bird Evans

When a cat is dropped, it always lands on its feet, and when toast is dropped, it always lands with the buttered side down. I propose to strap buttered toast to the back of a cat; the 2 will hover, inches above the ground. With a giant buttered-cat array, a high-speed monorail could easily link New York with Chicago.

-- John Frazee

When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we'd all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us. It wasn't until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear.

-- Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

Women and Cats will do as they please. Men and dogs had better get used to it.

-- Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, Lazarus Long

Love to eat them mousies
Mousie's what I love to eat.
Bite they little heads off
Nibble on they tiny feet.

-- B. Kliban

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.

-- Abraham Lincoln

It's true that I did get the girl, but then my grandfather always said, "Even a blind chicken finds a few grains of corn now and then."

-- Lyle Lovett, musician, upon marying actress Julia Roberts, 1994

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read.

-- Groucho Marx

The trouble with a kitten is
THAT
Eventually it becomes a
CAT.

-- Ogden Nash

When the mouse laughs at the cat, there is a hole nearby.

-- Nigerian Proverb

A hippo does not have a sting in its tail, but a wise man would still rather be sat on by a bee.

-- Polish proverb

A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatever, and generally stopping before it gets there.

-- Agnes Repplier

There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music and cats.

-- Albert Schweitzer

Weaseling out of things is good. It's what separates us from the other animals....except weasels.

-- Homer Simpson, character from The Simpsons, U.S. animated television show

I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.

-- August Strindberg

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

-- Lily Tomlin

It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

-- Mark Twain

Man is the only animal that blushes--or needs to.

-- Mark Twain

The more I know about people, the better I like my dog.

-- Mark Twain

We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry.

-- John Webster

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

-- Steven Wright

Imagine if birds were tickled by feathers. You'd see a flock of birds come by, laughing hysterically!

-- Steven Wright

Appearance

If Satan ever loses his hair, there'll be hell toupee.

-- Anonymous

UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

You never see a man walking down the street with a woman who has a little pot belly and a bald spot.

-- Elayne Boosler

If people turn to look at you on the street, you are not well dressed.

-- Beau Brummel

Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo.

-- Al Gore, U.S. Vice President

To the ass, or the sow, their own offspring appears the fairest in creation.

-- Latin Proverb

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

-- Abraham Lincoln

There is no one so bound to his own face that he does not cherish the hope of presenting another to the world.

-- Antonio Machado

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

-- Nelson Mandela, A Long Walk to Freedom

In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.

-- Christopher Morley

The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.

-- P. J. O'Rourke

You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.

-- Dolly Parton

I base my fashion sense on what doesn't itch.

-- Gilda Radner

Less and grayer hair.

-- Cal Ripkin Jr., baseball player, describing how he has changed over the course of his consecutive games record

Of the seven dwarves, only Dopey had a shaven face. This should tell us something about the custom of shaving.

-- Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.

-- George Santayana

Why doesn't she like me? Is it my hair, my overbite, the fact that I've worn the same shirt and shorts for the last four years?

-- Bart Simpson, young character from The Simpsons, U.S. animated television show

A beauty is a woman you notice; A charmer is one who notices you.

-- Adlai Stevenson

Like a prune, you are not getting any better looking, but you are getting sweeter.

-- N. D. Stice

Not much meat on her, but what's there is choice.

-- Spencer Tracy, about Katharine Hepburn

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

-- Vincent Van Gogh

One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. Passersby see only a wisp of smoke rising from the chimney and continue on their way.

-- Vincent Van Gogh

A narcissist is someone better-looking than you are.

-- Gore Vidal

Even overweight cats instinctively know the cardinal rule: when fat, arrange yourself in slim poses.

-- John Weitz, American Designer

It is better to be looked over than overlooked.

-- Mae West

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

-- Oscar Wilde

Guys are lucky because they get to grow mustaches. I wish I could. It's like having a little pet for your face.

-- Anita Wise

Duh...

Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

-- Marion Barry, Mayor, Washington, D.C.

We have only one person to blame, and that's each other.

-- Barry Beck, New York Ranger, on who started a fight furing a hockey game

I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.

-- Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward

I believe that mink are raised for being turned into fur coats and if we didn't wear fur coats those little animals would never have been born. So is it better not to have been born or to have lived for a year or two to have been turned into a fur coat? I don't know.

-- Barbi Benton, former Playboy bunny

Ninety percent of the game is half mental.

-- Yogi Berra

No wonder nobody comes here--it's too crowded.

-- Yogi Berra

You can observe a lot by watching.

-- Yogi Berra

You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.

-- Yogi Berra

Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway.

-- Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board

In the early sixties, we were strong, we were virulent...

-- John Connally, Secretary of Treasury under Richard Nixon, in an early 70s speech, as reported in a contemporary "American Scholar"

They were doing a full back shot of me in a swimsuit and I thought, Oh my God, I have to be so brave. See, every woman hates herself from behind.

-- Cindy Crawford, supermodel

There are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.

-- George Armstrong Custer

He didn't say that. He was reading what was given to him in a speech.

-- Richard Darman, director of OMB, explaining why President Bush wasn't following up on his campaign pledge that there would be no loss of wetlands

I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.

-- David Dinkins, New York City Mayor, answering accusations that he failed to pay his taxes.

Tear open packet, unfold and use.

-- Directions on moist towelette package

They gave me a book of checks. They didn't ask for any deposits.

-- Joe Early, Congressman (D-Mass), at a press conference to answer questions about the House Bank scandal

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. President

If I tell a lie it's only because I think I'm telling the truth.

-- Phil Gaglardi, Minister of Highways, British Columbia, Canada

I'll moider da bum.

-- Tony Galento, heavyweight boxer, when asked what he thought of William Shakespeare

Gentlemen, it is better to have died a small boy than to fumble this football.

-- John Heisman

It depends on your definition of asleep. They were not stretched out. They had their eyes closed. They were seated at their desks with their heads in a nodding position.

-- John Hogan, Commonwealth Edison Supervisor of News Information, responding to a charge by a Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector that two Dresden Nuclear Plant operators were sleeping on the job

Because modeling is lucrative, I'm able to save up and be more particular about the acting roles I take.

-- Kathy Ireland, star of 'Alien From L.A.' and 'Danger Island'

Well, I think that it's a- it's had some difficult times but I think we have- we, I think, have been able to make some very good progress and it's- I would say that it's- it's- it's delightful that we're able to- to share the time and the relationship that we- that we do share.

-- Edward Kennedy, U.S. Senator, during a 4 November 1979 interview with Roger Mudd trying to answer the question "What is the present state of your marriage?"

I'm for abolishing and doing away with redundancy.

-- J. Curtis McKay, Wisconsin State Elections Board

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why? Answer: I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever.

-- Miss Alabama, in the 1994 Miss Universe contest

When you don't know that you don't know, it's a lot different than when you do know that you don't know. He knows now that he doesn't know. Last year, he didn't know that.

-- Bill Parcels, New England Patriots head coach, on 2nd year quarter-back Drew Bledsoe

I was a pilot flying an airplane and it just so happened that where I was flying made what I was doing spying.

-- Francis Gary Power, U-2 reconnaissance pilot held by the Soviets for spying, in an interview after he was returned to the U.S.

I support efforts to limit the terms of members of Congress, especially members of the House and members of the Senate.

-- Dan Quayle, Former Vice-President

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history...this century's history.... We all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.

-- Dan Quayle, then Indiana senator and Republican vice-presidential candidate during a news conference in which he was asked his opinion of the Holocaust

The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It's only the people who make them unsafe.

-- Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia

I'm not indecisive. Am I indecisive?

-- Jim Scheibel, mayor, St. Paul MN

Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.

-- Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for a federal anti-smoking campaign

I cannot imagine any condition which would cause this ship to founder. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.

-- E. I. Smith, Captain of the Titanic

After finding no qualified candidates for the position of principal, the school board is extremely pleased to announce the appointment of David Steele to the post.

-- Philip Streifer, Superintendent of Schools, Barrington, Rhode Island

I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.

-- Lawrence Summers, chief economist of the World Bank, explaining why we should export toxic wastes to Third World countries

We didn't send you to Washington to make intelligent decisions. We sent you to represent us.

-- Kent York, Baptist minister to US Rep. Bill Sarpalius

Entertainment/Television

All television is children's television.

-- Richard P. Adler

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.

-- Fred Allen

You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a firefly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart.

-- Fred Allen

The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.

-- T. S. Eliot

If it weren't for electricity we'd all be watching television by candlelight.

-- George Gobel

Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.

-- Katharine Hepburn

Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.

-- Alfred Hitchcock

Television: A medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done.

-- Ernie Kovacs

Fine art and pizza delivery: what we do falls neatly in between.

-- David Letterman

In a novel, the hero can lay ten girls and marry a virgin for the finish. In a movie, that is not allowed. The villain can lay anybody he wants, have as much fun and as he wants cheating, stealing, getting rich, and whipping servants. But you have to shoot him in the end.

-- Herman Mankiewicz

I find television very educating. Every time sombody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

-- Groucho Marx

We in the industry know that behind every successful screenwriter stands a woman. And behind her stands his wife.

-- Groucho Marx

Life is like a movie--since there aren't any commercial breaks, you have to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of it.

-- Nick Mirov

...And since the stench of death will always attract flies and vermin, the arrival of Geraldo was perhaps inevitable.

-- Garry Trudeau

I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.

-- Gore Vidal

Happiness/Sadness

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.

-- Ingrid Bergman

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

-- Victor Borge

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.

-- Leo Buscaglia

Consciously or unconsciously, every one of us does render some service or other. If we cultivate the habit of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger, and will make, not only our own happiness, but that of the world at large.

-- Gandhi

Remember that happiness is a way of travel, not a destination.

-- Roy Goodman

People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.

-- Sir J. Lubbock

Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart, don't know how to laugh either.

-- Golda Meir

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so.

-- John Stuart Mill

The truth is, laughter always sounds more perfect than weeping. Laughter flows in a violent riff and is effortlessly melodic. Weeping is often fought, choked, half strangled, or surrendered to with humiliation.

-- Anne Rice, Taltos

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experience.

-- George Santayana

To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring.

-- George Santayana

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.

-- Rabbi H. Schachtel, The Real Enjoyment of Living

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

-- Mark Twain

Happiness is inward, and not outward; and so, it does not depend on what we have, but on what we are.

-- Henry Van Dyke

Humor

The gods too are fond of a joke.

-- Aristotle

He who laughs last has not yet heard the bad news.

-- Bertolt Brecht

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Snore and you sleep alone.

-- Anthony Burgess

The most wasted day of all is that in which we have not laughed.

-- Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort

In the end, everything is a gag.

-- Charlie Chaplin

He who laughs last is generally the last to get the joke.

-- Terry Cohen

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

-- ee cummings

If you want anything done well, do it yourself. This is why most people laugh at their own jokes.

-- Bob Edwards

He who laughs last didn't get it.

-- Helen Giangregorio

Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

-- Clive James

Learn to laugh at your troubles and you'll never run out of things to laugh at.

-- Lyn Karol

Now is the time for all good men to come to.

-- Walt Kelly

Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.

-- John F. Kennedy

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

-- Abraham Lincoln

The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.

-- W. Somerset Maugham

He who laughs, lasts.

-- Mary Pettibone Poole

Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself, for he shall never cease to be entertained.

-- John Powell

We are all here for a spell; get all the good laughs you can.

-- Will Rogers

He who laughs last thinks slowest.

-- Seen on a bumper sticker

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.

-- Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973

That is the best -- to laugh with someone because you think the same things are funny.

-- Gloria Vanderbilt

This world is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.

-- Horace Walpole

Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

-- Virginia Woolf

Inspiration

Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere.

-- Anonymous

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

-- Aristotle

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

-- James Baldwin

I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it, and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else; hard work and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.

-- Lucille Ball

The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is.

-- Arnold Bennett

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.

-- Thomas Arnold Bennett

Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.

-- Josh Billings

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.

-- Phillip Brooks

We got to roll with the punches, play all of our hunches, make the best of whatever comes your way. Forget that blind ambition, learn to trust your intuition -- plowing straight ahead, come what may.

-- Jimmy Buffett, Cowboy in the Jungle (song)

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.

-- Leonardo da Vinci, Notebooks

Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.

-- Emily Dickinson

Genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration.

-- Thomas Edison

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labour in freedom.

-- Albert Einstein

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

-- Albert Einstein

A problem is a chance for you to do your best.

-- Buke Ellington

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and griefs which we endure help us in our marching onward.

-- Henry Ford

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

-- Henry Ford

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do.

-- Henry Ford

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.

-- Henry Ford

He that would have the fruit must climb the tree.

-- Thomas Fuller, M.D.

We must become the change we want to see.

-- Gandhi

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

-- Gandhi

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What does not kill me makes me stronger.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When we treat man as he is, we make him worse than he is; when we treat him as if he already were what he potentially could be, we make him what he should be.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Every calling is great when greatly pursued.

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one.

-- Ellen Hubbard

May the road rise to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, the rains fall soft upon your fields and, until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.

-- Irish Blessing

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow.

-- Helen Keller

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

-- Helen Keller

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

-- Robert Francis Kennedy

He who limps is still walking.

-- Stanislaw J. Lec

Whatever you are, be a good one.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.

-- Orison Swett Marden

We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.

-- Abraham Maslow

Victory belongs to the most persevering.

-- Napoleon Bonaparte

As for courage and will - we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead.

-- Andre Norton

Chance is always powerful. - Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.

-- Ovid

To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.

-- Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

-- George Santayana

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

-- Semisonic, Closing Time

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

-- Seneca

... then the world 's mine oyster

-- William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

If you want to sing out, sing out, and if you want to be free, be free, 'cause there's a million ways to be, you know that there are...

-- Cat Stevens, from a song lyric

Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

-- Harriet Beecher Stowe

Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?

-- The Artist Formerly Known As Prince

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.

-- Sun Tzu

The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it.

-- Colin Wilson

Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.

-- John R. Wooden, Practical Modern Basketball

Do or do not. There is no try.

-- Yoda, character in the movie The Empire Strikes Back

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars

-- Les Brown

Reality

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.

-- Aesop

What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?

-- Woody Allen

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

-- Philip K. Dick

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

-- Albert Einstein

I like nonsense -- it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope...and that enables you to laugh at all of life's realities.

-- Theodor S. Geisel, a.k.a. "Dr. Seuss"

Your goals, minus your doubts, equal your reality.

-- Ralph Marston

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.

-- Lily Tomlin

Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.

-- Mark Twain

Sports

The best defense is a good offense.

-- Anonymous

I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.

-- Wayne Gretzky

People think we make $3 million and $4 million a year. They don't realize that most of us only make $500,000.

-- Pete Incaviglia, baseball player, 1990

If God wanted women to understand men, football would never have been created.

-- Seen on a bumper sticker

The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise.

-- Roger Simon

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

-- Hunter S. Thompson

Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings.

-- George F. Will, journalist, political commentator, 1994

There's a fine line between fishing and standing on the shore like an idiot.

-- Steven Wright