YOUNG AND OLD QUOTES

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CHILDREN

"Insanity is hereditary: You can get it from your children."

-- Sam Levinson.

"Children really brighten up a household. They never turn the lights off."

-- Ralph Bus.

"There are few things more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of
their own."

-- Doug Larson.

"I like children - fried."

-- WC Fields.

"every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies', there's a a little fairy somewhere
that falls down dead."

-- JM Barrie.

"The trouble with children is that they're not returnable."

-- Quentin Crisp.

"A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five."

-- Groucho Marx.

"I Love children, especially when they cry for then someone takes them away."

-- Nancy Mitford.

"Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back
home."

-- Bill Cosby.

"Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million
dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla."

-- Jim Bishop.

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to
have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by
how much he'd learned in seven years."

-- Mark Twain.

"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

-- Mark Twain [Samuel Langhornne Clemens] (1835-1910)

"The child was a keen bed-wetter."

-- Noel Coward.

"I have good looking kids. Thank goodness my wife cheats on me."

-- Rodney Dangerfield.

"My parents used to beat the shit out of me. And, looking back on it, I'm glad they
did. I'm looking forward to beating the shit out of my own kids, for no reason
whatsoever."

-- Denis Leary.

"When you're eight years old nothing is your business."

-- Lenny Bruce.

"In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced in television."

-- Erma Bombeck.

"Never underestimate a child's ability to get into more trouble."

-- Martin Mull.

"I never met a kid I liked."

-- WC Fields.

"I have a stepladder. It's a very nice stepladder but it's sad that I never knew my real
ladder."

-- Craig Charles.

"Children nowadays are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food and
tyrannise their teachers."

-- Socrates.

"Don't bother discussing sex with small children. They rarely have anything to add."

-- Fran Lebowitz.

"Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your head."

-- Martin Mull.

"Childhood is that wonderful time of life when all you need to do to lose weight is
take a bath."

-- Richard Zera.

"The real menace about dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin
to sound like a five-year-old."

-- Jean Kerr.

"My eleven year old daughter mopes around the house all day waiting for her breasts
to grow."

-- Bill Cosby.

"No wonder people are so horrible when they start life as children."

-- Kingsley Amis.

"There are only two things a child will share willingly; communicable diseases and its
mother's age."

-- Benjamin Spock.

"My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. Now I despise all my
seven children equally."

-- Evelyn Waugh.

"Don't tell your kids you had an easy birth or they won't respect you. For years I
used to wake up my daughter and say, 'Melissa you ripped me to shreds. Now go
back to sleep.'."

-- Joan Rivers.

"The baby is fine, the only problem is that he looks like Edward G. Robinson."

-- Woody Allen.

"I love to go to the playground and watch the children jumping up and down. They
don't know I'm firing blanks."

-- Emo Philips.

"Children are the most desirable opponents at scrabble as they are both easy to beat
and fun to cheat."

-- Fran Lebowitz.

"I understand the importance of bondage between parent and child."

-- Dan Quayle.

"Until I was thirteen I thought my name was 'Shutup'."

-- Joe Namath.

"I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, toys
not included."

-- Bernard Manning.

"Parents are not interested in justice, they're interested in peace and quiet."

-- Bill Cosby.

"Babies don't need a vacation but I still see them at the beach. I'll go over to them
and say, 'What are you doing here, you've never worked a day in your life!'."

-- Steven Wright.

"I was the kid NEXT door's imaginary friend."

-- Emo Philips.

"There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: Twins."

-- Josh Billings.

"I've got the brain of a four year old. I'll bet he was glad to be rid of it."

-- Groucho Marx.

OLD AGE AND DEATH

"At my age I do what Mark Twain did. I get my daily paper, look at the obituaries
page and if I'm not there I carry on as usual."

-- Patrick Moore.

"First you forget names, then you forget faces. NEXT you forget to pull your zipper
up and finally, you forget to pull it down."

-- George Burns.

"It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens."

-- Woody Allen.

"Either he's dead or my watch has stopped."

-- Groucho Marx.

"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like
carelessness."

-- Oscar Wilde.

"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work, I want to achieve it through
not dying."

-- Woody Allen.

"So my choice is 'Or Death?'."

-- Eddie Izzard.

"A man's only as old as the woman he feels."

-- Groucho Marx.

"For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls
taper off."

-- Johnny Carson.

"I was with this girl the other night and from the way she was responding to my
skillful caresses, you would have sworn that she was conscious from the top of her
head to the tag on her toes."

-- Emo Philips.

"I'm very proud of my gold pocket watch. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me
this watch."

-- Woody Allen.

"The report of my death was an exaggeration."

-- Mark Twain.

"Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples."

-- George Burns.

"Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate."

-- Ambrose Bierce.

"It's funny how most people love the dead, once you're dead your made for life."

-- Jimi Hendrix.

"I don't feel old. I don't feel anything till noon. That's when it's time for my nap."

-- Bob Hope.

"When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick."

-- George Burns.

"There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an
insurance salesman?"

-- Woody Allen.

"They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that
I'm going to miss mine by just a few days."

-- Garrison Kielor.

"When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to
do is to die at once."

-- Samuel Butler.

"You know you're getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what
else you could do while you're down there."

-- George Burns.

"My grandmother was a very tough woman. She buried three husbands and two of
them were just napping."

-- Rita Rudner.

"On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying
down ."

-- Woody Allen.

"People ask me what I'd most appreciate getting for my eighty-seventh birthday. I
tell them, a paternity suit."

-- George Burns.

"I do wish I could tell you my age but it's impossible. It keeps changing all the time."

-- Greer Garson.

"At my age flowers scare me."

-- George Burns.

"I'm very pleased to be here. Let's face it, at my age I'm very pleased to be
anywhere."

-- George Burns.

"I don't plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face-lifts until my ears meet."

-- Rita Rudner.

"My uncle Sammy was an angry man. He had printed on his tombstone: What are
you looking at?"

-- Margaret Smith.

FUNNY RELIGIOUS QUOTES

"Heaven is an American salary, a Chinese cook, an English house, and a Japanese
wife. Hell is defined as having a Chinese salary, an English cook, a Japanese house,
and an American wife."

-- James H. Kabbler III.

"When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the
ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering
voice of God answered, "There's just something about you that pisses me off."

-- Stephen King.

"How can I believe in God when just last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of
an electric typewriter?"

-- Woody Allen.

"If there is no God, who pops up the NEXT Kleenex?"

-- Art Hoppe.

"My mother said to me, "If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a
monk, you will become the Pope." Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso."

-- Pablo Picasso.

"I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the
soul of the boy NEXT to me."

-- Woody Allen.

"A good sermon should be like a woman's skirt: short enough to arouse interest but
long enough to cover the essentials."

-- Ronald Knox.

"Not only is there no God, but you try getting a plumber at weekends."

-- Woody Allen.

"As God once said, and I think rightly..."

-- Margaret Thatcher.

"Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn."

-- Fulton Sheen.

"If there is no Hell, a good many preachers are obtaining money under false
pretences."

-- William Sunday.

"I admire the Pope. I have a lot of respect for anyone who can tour without an
album."

-- Rita Rudner.

"Thank God I'm an atheist."

-- Luis Bunuel.

"The Bible was a consolation to a fellow alone in the old cell. The lovely thin paper
with a bit of matress stuffing in it, if you could get a match, was as good a smoke as
I ever tasted."

-- Brendan Behan.

"In the begining there was nothing and God said 'Let there be light', and there was
still nothing but everybody could see it."

-- Dave Thomas.

"Sailors ought never to go to church. They ought to go to hell, where it is much
more comfortable."

-- HG Wells.

"If absolute power corrupts absolutely, where does that leave God?"

-- George Deacon.

"I don't believe in the after life, although I am bringing a change of underwear."

-- Woody Allen.

"When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that
the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me."

-- Emo Philips.

"When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the
audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the
Protestants in whom you don't believe?"

-- Quentin Crisp.

"When I am dead, I hope it may be said: 'His sins were scarlet but his books were
read."

-- Hillaire Belloc.

"Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, 'Where have I gone wrong?' Then a voice
says to me, 'This is going to take more than one night.'."

-- Charlie Brown.

"Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our
grandparents breathe through their noses when they're eating sandwiches."

-- Jim Carrey.

"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm
for the rest of his life."

-- Terry Pratchett.

"When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was
talking to myself."

-- Peter O'Toole.

"They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad that
I'm going to miss mine by just a few days."

-- Garrison Kielor.

"It was God who made me so beautiful. If I weren't, then I'd be a teacher."

-- Linda Evangelista.

"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can't
help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that but not with all those flies and
death and stuff."

-- Mariah Carey.

"The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then
having the two as close together as possible."

-- George Burns.

"I would have made a good Pope."

-- Richard Nixon.

"I was raised in the Jewish tradition, taught never to marry a Gentile woman, shave
on a Saturday night and, most especially, never to shave a Gentile woman on a
Saturday night."

-- Woody Allen.

"God is love, but get it in writing."

-- Gypsy Rose Lee.

"I don't pray because I don't want to bore God."

-- Orson Welles.

"As the post said, 'Only God can make a tree,' probably because it's so hard to
figure out how to get the bark on."

-- Woody Allen.

"I have four children which is not bad considering I'm not a Catholic."

-- Peter Ustinov.

"I hear Glenn Hoddle has found God. That must have been one hell of a pass."

-- Bob Davies.

"And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light, but the Electricity Board said
He would have to wait until Thursday to be connected."

-- Spike Milligan.

"No mention of God. They keep Him up their sleeves for as long as they can, vicars
do. They know it puts people off."

-- Alan Bennett.

"I'm Jewish. I don't work out. If God had wanted us to bend over, He would have put
diamonds on the floor."

-- Joan Rivers.

"There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable."

-- Mark Twain.

Children/Youth

Our children's children will hear a good story.: -- Richard Adams, Watership Down
Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years.: -- Anonymous
If you want to recapture your youth, just cut off his allowance.: -- Al Bernstein
Never raise your hands to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.: -- Red Buttons
You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.: -- John Ciardi
Flowers are words which even a baby can understand.: -- Arthur C. Coxe
The trouble with children is that they are not returnable.: -- Quentin Crisp
The soul is healed by being with children.: -- Fyodor Dostoyevski
Children are a poor man's riches.: -- English proverb
Every child is born a genius.: -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Most convicted felons are just people who were not taken to museums or Broadway musicals as children.: -- Libby Gelman-Waxner
Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.: -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When Baby's cries grew hard to bear I popped him in the Frigidaire. I never would have done so if I'd known that he'd be frozen stiff. My wife said, "George, I'm so unhappy! Our darling's now completely frappe!": -- Graham
Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.: -- Herbert Hoover
A wasted youth is better by far than a wise and productive old age.: -- Meat Loaf, from the song "Wasted Youth" on the album Bat Out of Hell II
Children should be like waffles--you should be able to throw the first one away.: -- Mary Alice Messenger
I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.: -- Nancy Mitford
Never raise your hand to your children; it leaves your midsection unprotected.: -- Robert Orben
Laundry increases exponentially in the number of children.: -- Miriam Robbins
It's never too late to have a happy childhood.: -- Tom Robbins, Still Life With Woodpecker
Actually, the only memory I have of being a Cub Scout was trying to get my hat back. That was all I did. Run back and forth at my bus stop going "Quit it.": -- Jerry Seinfeld
Youth is wasted on the young.: -- George Bernard Shaw
I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know why I'll do it again.: -- Bart Simpson, young character from The Simpsons, U.S. animated television show
Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.: -- Socrates
Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.: -- Mark Twain
Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.: -- Peter Ustinov
I am not young enough to know everything.: -- Oscar Wilde
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.: -- Oscar Wilde
The child is the father of the man.: -- William Wordsworth
When I have a kid, I wanna put him in one of those strollers for twins, then run around the mall looking frantic.: -- Steven Wright
We have children because we want immortality and this is the most reliable way of getting it.: -- Woodrow Wyatt

Family/Parenting

Be tolerant of the human race. Your whole family belongs to it -- and some of your spouse's family does too.: -- Anonymous
Mother-in-law: A woman who destroys her son-in-law's peace of mind by giving him a piece of hers.: -- Anonymous
Govern a family as you would cook a small fish - very gently.: -- Chinese Proverb
Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? They have the same enemy-- the mother.: -- Claudette Colbert
The first half of our life is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.: -- Clarence Darrow
There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you.: -- Peter De Vries
When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.: -- Peter DeVries
Honolulu, it's got everything. Sand for the children, sun for the wife, sharks for the wife's mother.: -- Ken Dodd
A small family is soon provided for.: -- English Proverb
A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.: -- Marvin Kitman
Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.: -- Michael Levine, Lessons at the Halfway Point
Having a family is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.: -- Martin Mull
A man can't get rich if he takes proper care of his family.: -- Navaho saying
Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.: -- Dr. Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician, address to new parents
Women's liberationists spread the word that...the only peaceful family is one in which either the wife is enslaved or the husband is androgynous.: -- R. Emmett Tyell, The Liberal Crack-Up, 1984
Parents are the bones upon which children sharpen their teeth.: -- Peter Ustinov
The innkeeper loves the drunkard, but not for a son-in-law.: -- Yiddish Proverb

Health

Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head.: -- Carol Burnett
You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is.: -- Ellen DeGeneres
The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible.: -- Jean Kerr
I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.: -- Carol Leifer
A multiple personality is in a certain sense normal.: -- George H. Mead
I was under medication when I made the decision not to burn the tapes.: -- Richard Nixon, U.S. President
I have never taken any exercise except sleeping and resting.: -- Mark Twain
You have a cough? Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax--tomorrow you'll be afraid to cough.: -- Pearl Williams

Knowledge/Wisdom

Better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.: -- Anonymous
Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so.: -- Lord Chesterfield
Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.: -- Leonardo da Vinci
I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones.: -- The Doctor, Timewyrm: Genesys, author, John Peel
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh.: -- Earl of Chesterfield
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.: -- Albert Einstein
Imagination is more important than knowledge, for knowledge is limited while imagination embraces the entire world.: -- Albert Einstein
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.: -- Albert Einstein
The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.: -- Albert Einstein
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.: -- Albert Einstein
The two most abundant things in the universe are Hydrogren and stupidity.: -- Harlan Ellison
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.: -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.: -- Engineer's Motto
Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain.: -- Euripides
You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance.: -- Edward Flaherty
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.: -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Thought is the labour of the intellect, reverie is its pleasure.: -- Victor Hugo
If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?: -- Thomas Henry Huxley
Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.: -- Thomas Henry Huxley
In the republic of mediocrity genius is dangerous.: -- Robert G. Ingersoll
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.: -- William James
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.: -- William James
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.: -- Samuel Johnson
Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.: -- Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham City Jail, 1963
Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier.: -- Stanislaw J. Lec
There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.: -- Oscar Levant
We are all either fools or undiscovered geniuses.: -- Bonnie Lin
I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.: -- Abraham Lincoln
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.: -- Abraham Lincoln
Know thyself.: -- Linnaeus
Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.: -- Konrad Lorenz
A love affair with knowledge will never end in heartbreak.: -- Michael Garrett Marino
If written directions alone would suffice, libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the universities attached.: -- Judith Martin, "Miss Manners" columnist and author
I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.: -- Isaac Newton, Brewster's Memoirs of Newton. Vol. ii. Chap. xxvii.
You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think.: -- Dorothy Parker
I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.: -- Pogo, character in "Pogo," comic strip by Walt Kelly
Look alive. Here comes a buzzard.: -- Pogo, character in "Pogo," comic strip by Walt Kelly
The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone.: -- Lady Stella Reading
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.: -- Bertrand Russell
But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.: -- Carl Sagan
Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.: -- George Bernard Shaw
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.: -- George Bernard Shaw
It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.: -- Gertrude Stein
But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one: men know him not-and to know not is to care not for.: -- Bram Stoker, Dracula, 1897
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.: -- Johnathan Swift
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.: -- Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Why is it that wherever I go, the resident idiot heads straight for me?: -- Gwynn Thomas
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.: -- James Thurber
Truly great madness can not be achieved without significant intelligence.: -- Henrik Tikkanen
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly. I said, "I don't know.": -- Mark Twain
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things, freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.: -- Mark Twain
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.: -- Mark Twain
To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.: -- Voltaire
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before," Bokonon tells us. "He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.": -- Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
The truth is more important than the facts.: -- Frank Lloyd Wright

Last Words

Thomas Jefferson--still surv...: -- John Adams, dying words
Now comes the mystery.: -- Henry Ward Beecher, dying words, March 8, 1887
I am about to--or I am going to--die; either expression is used.: -- Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian, dying words
I don't feel good.: -- Luther Burbank, dying words
Goodbye, Everybody!: -- Hart Crane, poet, who committed suicide by jumping overboard during a steamship voyage.
Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing.: -- Georges Danton, to his executioner
...the fog is rising.: -- Emily Dickinson, dying words
The nourishment is palatable.: -- Millard Fillmore, dying words
Ask her to wait a moment - I am almost done.: -- Carl Friedrich Gauss, when informed that his wife was dying
More light!: -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, dying words
Dieu me pardonnera. C'est son métier. Translation: God will forgive me. It's his job.: -- Heinrich Heine, dying words
And now, in keeping with Channel 40's policy of always bringing you the latest in blood and guts, in living color, you're about to see another first -- an attempted suicide.: -- Chris Hubbock, who shot herself during a broadcast
This is the fourth?: -- Thomas Jefferson, dying words
Such is life.: -- Ned Kelly, Last words, before being hung at Old Melbourne Gaol
Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.: -- Karl Marx, dying words to his housekeeper
Drink to me.: -- Pablo Picasso, dying words
Why yes -- a bulletproof vest.: -- James Rodges, murderer, on his final request before the firing squad
They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist---: -- John B. Sedgwick, general, dying words, 1864
Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?: -- Socrates, dying words
What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?: -- Gertrude Stein, dying words
Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.: -- Pancho Villa, dying words
Friends applaud, the Comedy is over.: -- Ludwig von Beethoven, dying words
I still live.: -- Daniel Webster, dying words
Go away...I'm alright.: -- H. G. Wells, dying words
Ah, well, then I suppose I shall have to die beyond my means.: -- Oscar Wilde, dying words

Life

Despite the high cost of living it remains a popular item.: -- Anonymous
The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.: -- Anonymous
Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.: -- Francis Bacon
Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.: -- Josh Billings
The tragedy of life is not that man loses, but that he almost wins.: -- Heywood Brown
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.: -- Winston Churchill
What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.: -- Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator, 1890
Life is a succession of lessons enforced by immediate reward, or, oftener, by immediate chastisement.: -- Ernest Dimnet
A person starts to live when he can live outside himself.: -- Albert Einstein
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.: -- Albert Einstein
I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults of the first.: -- Benjamin Franklin
There is more to life than increasing its speed.: -- Gandhi
Life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease.: -- Colin Greene
Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain't the lead dog, the scenery never changes.: -- Lewis Grizzard
Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-five years and you pay it back and then -- one day -- you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then -- one day -- you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe.: -- Denis Leary
And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.: -- Abraham Lincoln
Life - a sexually transmitted terminal condition.: -- Walter Prager
Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.: -- Rainer Maria Rilke
To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being.: -- Tom Robbins
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.: -- George Bernard Shaw
Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.: -- George Bernard Shaw
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.: -- Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854)
Life is not an easy matter.... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.: -- Leon Trotsky, Diary In Exile, Entry for April 3, 1935
Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.: -- Karl Wallenda
One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.: -- Oscar Wilde

Experience

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.: -- Albert Camus
Experience teaches only the teachable.: -- Aldous Huxley
Experience is the worst teacher; it gives the test before presenting the lesson.: -- Vernon Law
Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.: -- Vince Lombardi
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.: -- George Bernard Shaw
Great Spirit, help me never to judge another until I have walked in his moccasins.: -- Sioux Indian Prayer
Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.: -- Don Stanford
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.: -- Robert L. Stevenson
Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.: -- Oscar Wilde
Experience is the name that everyone gives to their mistakes.: -- Oscar Wilde
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience--well, that comes from poor judgement.: -- Cousin Woodman
Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.: -- Aldous Huxley

Past/Future

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.: -- Anonymous
We do not remember days; we remember moments.: -- Anonymous
To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it more fit for its prime function of looking forward.: -- Margaret Fairless Barber
Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.: -- Paul Boese
Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?: -- François de La Rouchefoucauld
I never think of the future - it comes soon enough.: -- Albert Einstein
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.: -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.: -- George Orwell
We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen.: -- Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.: -- Eleanor Roosevelt
Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia.: -- Charles Schultz
Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.: -- Virginia Woolf

Religion/Faith

Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.: -- Woody Allen
An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.: -- Margaret Atwood
Patience with others is Love, Patience with self is Hope, Patience with God is Faith.: -- Adel Bestavros
I have been a stranger in a strange land.: -- Bible, Exodus 2:22
Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error. The strong and virtuous admit no destiny. On earth conscience guides; in heaven God watches. And destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one and dethrone the other.: -- Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.: -- G. K. Chesterton
The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.: -- G. K. Chesterton
The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church.: -- G. K. Chesterton