Lazarus Long

Distance doesn't make you any smaller, but it does make you part of a larger picture.

Do clones have navels?

Do more than anyone expects, and pretty soon everyone will expect more.

Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

— George Bernard Shaw

Do not think by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.

Do not try to solve all life's problems at once -- learn to dread each day as it comes.

— Donald Kaul

Do you know, I think that Dr. Swift was silly to laugh about Laputa. I believe it is a mistake to make a mock of people, just because they think. There are ninety thousand people in this world who do not think, for every one who does, and these people hate the thinkers like poison. Even if some thinkers are fanciful, it is wrong to make fun of them for it. Better to think about cucumbers even, than not to think at all.

— T.H. White

Do you mean that you not only want a wrong answer, but a certain wrong answer?

— Tobaben

Do you realize how many holes there could be if people would just take the time to take the dirt out of them?

Don't be overly suspicious where it's not warranted.

Don't believe everything you hear or anything you say.

Don't change the reason, just change the excuses!

— Joe Cointment

Don't confuse things that need action with those that take care of themselves.

Don't despise your poor relations, they may become suddenly rich one day.

— Josh Billings

Don't ever slam a door; you might want to go back.

Don't expect people to keep in step--it's hard enough just staying in line.

Don't interfere with the stranger's style.

Don't put too fine a point to your wit for fear it should get blunted.

— Miguel de Cervantes

Don't remember what you can infer.

— Harry Tennant

Don't say "yes" until I finish talking.

— Darryl F. Zanuck

Don't shoot until you're sure you both aren't on the same side.

Don't shout for help at night. You might wake your neighbors.

— Stanislaw J. Lem, "Unkempt Thoughts"

Don't tell me that worry doesn't do any good. I know better. The things I worry about don't happen.

— Watchman Examiner

Don't tell me what you dreamed last night for I've been reading Freud.

Don't try to have the last word -- you might get it.

— Lazarus Long

Don't try to outweird me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.

— Zaphod Beeblebrox

Don't worry about avoiding temptation -- as you grow older, it starts avoiding you.

— The Old Farmer's Almanac

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.

— Howard Aiken

Don't worry over what other people are thinking about you. They're too busy worrying over what you are thinking about them.

Don't you wish that all the people who sincerely want to help you could agree with each other?

Dorothy: But how can you talk without a brain? Scarecrow: Well, I don't know... but some people without brains do an awful lot of talking.

— The Wizard of Oz

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

— Voltaire

Drive defensively. Buy a tank.

Early to bed and early to rise and you'll be groggy when everyone else is wide awake.

Elevators smell different to midgets.

Enjoy your life; be pleasant and gay, like the birds in May.

Enjoy yourself while you're still old.

Envy is a pain of mind that successful men cause their neighbors.

— Onasander

Etiquette is for those with no breeding; fashion for those with no taste.

Even a hawk is an eagle among crows.

Even God lends a hand to honest boldness.

— Menander

Even if you persuade me, you won't persuade me.

— Aristophanes

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

— Will Rogers

Even moderation ought not to be practiced to excess.

Everthing is farther away than it used to be. It is even twice as far to the corner and they have added a hill. I have given up running for the bus; it leaves earlier than it used to. It seems to me they are making the stairs steeper than in the old days. And have you noticed the smaller print they use in the newspapers? There is no sense in asking anyone to read aloud anymore, as everbody speaks in such a low voice I can hardly hear them. The material in dresses is so skimpy now, especially around the hips and waist, that it is almost impossible to reach one's shoelaces. And the sizes don't run the way they used to. The 12's and 14's are so much smaller. Even people are changing. They are so much younger than they used to be when I was their age. On the other hand people my age are so much older than I am. I ran into an old classmate the other day and she has aged so much that she didn't recognize me. I got to thinking about the poor dear while I was combing my hair this morning and in so doing I glanced at my own reflection. Really now, they don't even make good mirrors like they used to. Sandy Frazier, "I Have Noticed"

Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.

— Frank Moore Colby

Every man is apt to form his notions of things difficult to be apprehended, or less familiar, from their analogy to things which are more familiar. Thus, if a man bred to the seafaring life, and accustomed to think and talk only of matters relating to navigation, enters into discourse upon any other subject; it is well known, that the language and the notions proper to his own profession are infused into every subject, and all things are measured by the rules of navigation: and if he should take it into his head to philosophize concerning the faculties of the mind, it cannot be doubted, but he would draw his notions from the fabric of the ship, and would find in the mind, sails, masts, rudder, and compass.

— Thomas Reid, "An Inquiry into the Human Mind", 1764

Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.

— Miguel de Cervantes

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

— Schopenhauer

Every time I look at you I am more convinced of Darwin's theory.

Everybody has something to conceal.

— Humphrey Bogart

Everybody is somebody else's weirdo.

— Dykstra

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

Everyone complains of his memory, no one of his judgement.

Everyone hates me because I'm paranoid.

Everyone is a genius. It's just that some people are too stupid to realize it.

Everyone is entitled to my opinion.

Everyone is more or less mad on one point.

— Rudyard Kipling

Everyone wants results, but no one is willing to do what it takes to get them.

— Dirty Harry

Everyone was born right-handed. Only the greatest overcome it.

Everyone's in a high place when you're on your knees.

Evil is that which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.

— H.L. Mencken

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

— Albert Schweitzer

Excellence is THE trend of the '80s. Walk into any shopping mall bookstore, go to the rack where they keep the best-sellers such as "Garfield Gets Spayed", and you'll see a half-dozen books telling you how to be excellent: "In Search of Excellence", "Finding Excellence", "Grasping Hold of Excellence", "Where to Hide Your Excellence at Night So the Cleaning Personnel Don't Steal It", etc.

— Dave Barry, "In Search of Excellence"

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, and just before you realize what is wrong with it.

Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.

— Aldous Huxley

Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.

— Franklin P. Jones

Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.

Experience is what you get when you were expecting something else.

Experience teaches you that the man who looks you straight in the eye, particularly if he adds a firm handshake, is hiding something.

— Clifton Fadiman, "Enter Conversing"

Fame may be fleeting but obscurity is forever.

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

— Oscar Wilde

Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.

— Victor Hugo

Fess: Well, you must admit there is something innately humorous about a man chasing an invention of his own halfway across the galaxy. Rod: Oh yeah, it's a million yuks, sure. But after all, isn't that the basic difference between robots and humans? Fess: What, the ability to form imaginary constructs? Rod: No, the ability to get hung up on them.

— Christopher Stasheff, "The Warlock in Spite of Himself"

Flattery is like cologne -- to be smelled, but not swallowed.

— Josh Billings

For an idea to be fashionable is ominous, since it must afterwards be always old-fashioned.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

— Harrison

For every credibility gap, there is a gullibility fill.

— R. Clopton

For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

— Paul of Tarsus, (Saint Paul)

"For I perceive that behind this seemingly unrelated sequence of events, there lurks a singular, sinister attitude of mind." "Whose?" "MINE! HA-HA!"

For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble: and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.

— Sir Thomas More

For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.

— Clifton Fadiman

For people who like that kind of book, that is the kind of book they will like.

For perfect happiness, remember two things: (1) Be content with what you've got. (2) Be sure you've got plenty.

For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.

— Abraham Lincoln

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

— Johnny Carson

Fortune finishes the great quotations, #2 If at first you don't succeed, think how many people you've made happy.

Fortune finishes the great quotations, #21 Shall I compare thee to a Summer day? No, I guess not.

Fortune finishes the great quotations, #6 "But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks?" It's nothing, honey. Go back to sleep.

Four fifths of the perjury in the world is expended on tombstones, women and competitors.

— Lord Thomas Dewar

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.

— Thomas Jones

Friendships last when each friend thinks he has a slight superiority over the other.

— Honore DeBalzac

Genius is the talent of a person who is dead.

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

— Elbert Hubbard

Give me a sleeping pill and tell me your troubles.

Go out and tell a lie that will make the whole family proud of you.

— Cadmus, to Pentheus, in "The Bacchae" by Euripides

Go slowly to the entertainments of thy friends, but quickly to their misfortunes.

— Chilo

God gives us relatives; thank goodness we can chose our friends.

God must love the common man; He made so many of them.

Good advice is one of those insults that ought to be forgiven.

Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example.

— La Rouchefoucauld

Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.

— Jim Horning

Gratitude, like love, is never a dependable international emotion.

— Joseph Alsop

Great minds run in great circles.

Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent.

Growing old isn't bad when you consider the alternatives.

— Maurice Chevalier

Half of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

Hate is like acid. It can damage the vessel in which it is stored as well as destroy the object on which it is poured.

Hate the sin and love the sinner.

— Mahatma Gandhi

Have no friends not equal to yourself.

— Confucius

Having no talent is no longer enough.

— Gore Vidal

He had occasional flashes of silence that made his conversation perfectly delightful.

— Sydney Smith

He had that rare weird electricity about him -- that extremely wild and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope of ever behaving "normally."

— Hunter S. Thompson, "Fear and Loathing '72"

He hadn't a single redeeming vice.

— Oscar Wilde

He is a man capable of turning any colour into grey.

— John LeCarre

He is considered a most graceful speaker who can say nothing in the most words.

He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others.

— Samuel Johnson

He laughs at every joke three times... once when it's told, once when it's explained, and once when he understands it.

He looked at me as if I were a side dish he hadn't ordered.

— Ring Lardner

He missed an invaluable opportunity to hold his tongue.

— Andrew Lang

He only knew his iron spine held up the sky -- he didn't realize his brain had fallen to the ground.

— The Book of Serenity

He thinks by infection, catching an opinion like a cold.

He walks as if balancing the family tree on his nose.

He was so narrow-minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.

He who always plows a straight furrow is in a rut.

He who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

He who hoots with owls by night cannot soar with eagles by day.

He who is flogged by fate and laughs the louder is a masochist.

He who is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

He who is known as an early riser need not get up until noon.

He who minds his own business is never unemployed.

He who walks on burning coals is sure to get burned.

— Sinbad

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.

— M.C. Escher

He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be there... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.

"He's the kind of man for the times that need the kind of man he is ..."

Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle; always busy without getting on, always behind hand and lamenting it, without altering her ways; wishing to be an economist, without contrivance or regularity; dissatisfied with her servants, without skill to make them better, and whether helping, or reprimanding, or indulging them, without any power of engaging their respect.

— J. Austen

Here I am, fifty-eight, and I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

— Peter Drucker

Hi! I'm Larry. This is my brother Bob, and this is my other brother Jimbo. We thought you might like to know the names of your assailants.

Higgins: Doolittle, you're either an honest man or a rogue. Doolittle: A little of both, Guv'nor. Like the rest of us, a little of both.

— Shaw, "Pygmalion"

Hindsight is always 20:20.

— Billy Wilder

Hindsight is an exact science.

His life was formal; his actions seemed ruled with a ruler.

His mind is like a steel trap: full of mice.

— Foghorn Leghorn

History repeats itself only if one does not listen the first time.

History repeats itself. That's one thing wrong with history.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

— Robert Frost, "The Death of the Hired Man"

Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is to a cockatoo.

— George Bernard Shaw

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

— Francis Bacon

Hope is a waking dream.

— Aristotle

Hope not, lest ye be disappointed.

— M. Horner

How comes it to pass, then, that we appear such cowards in reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule?

— A. Cooper

How long a minute is depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on.

How many "coming men" has one known! Where on earth do they all go to?

— Sir Arthur Wing Pinero

However, never daunted, I will cope with adversity in my traditional manner ... sulking and nausea.

— Tom K. Ryan

Human kind cannot bear very much reality.

— T.S. Eliot, "Four Quartets: Burnt Norton"

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

— Tom Robbins

Humans are communications junkies. We just can't get enough.

— Alan Kay

Humility is the first of the virtues -- for other people.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

I allow the world to live as it chooses, and I allow myself to live as I choose.

I always choose my friends for their good looks and my enemies for their good intellects. Man cannot be too careful in his choice of enemies.

— Oscar Wilde, "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never any good to oneself.

— Oscar Wilde, "An Ideal Husband"

I always say beauty is only sin deep.

— Saki, "Reginald's Choir Treat"

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

— Winston Churchill

I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.

— Katharine Whitehorn

I am looking for a honest man.

— Diogenes the Cynic

"I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."

— Winston Churchill

I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.

— G.K. Chesterton

I call them as I see them. If I can't see them, I make them up.

— Biff Barf

I can give you my word, but I know what it's worth and you don't.

— Nero Wolfe, "Over My Dead Body"

I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.

— A.J. Liebling

I can't seem to bring myself to say, "Well, I guess I'll be toddling along." It isn't that I can't toddle. It's that I can't guess I'll toddle.

— Robert Benchley

I can't stand squealers; hit that guy.

— Albert Anastasia

I can't understand it. I can't even understand the people who can understand it.

— Queen Juliana of the Netherlands.

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

— John Cage

I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions.

— Lillian Hellman

I consider the day misspent that I am not either charged with a crime, or arrested for one.

— "Ratsy" Tourbillon

I didn't get sophisticated -- I just got tired. But maybe that's what sophisticated is -- being tired.

— Rita Gain

"I didn't know it was impossible when I did it."

I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to tell such LIES!

I do not know myself and God forbid that I should.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I do not know where to find in any literature, whether ancient or modern, any adequate account of that nature with which I am acquainted. Mythology comes nearest to it of any.

— Henry David Thoreau

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory'," Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't -- till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!'" "But glory doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -- that's all."

— Lewis Carrol, "Through the Looking Glass"

I don't know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

— Abraham Lincoln

I don't know why we're here, I say we all go home and free associate.

I don't make the rules, Gil, I only play the game.

— Cash McCall

I don't mind arguing with myself. It's when I lose that it bothers me.

— Richard Powers

I don't remember it, but I have it written down.

"I don't think they could put him in a mental hospital. On the other hand, if he were already in, I don't think they'd let him out."

"I don't understand," said the scientist, "why you lemmings all rush down to the sea and drown yourselves." "How curious," said the lemming. "The one thing I don't understand is why you human beings don't."

— James Thurber

I don't want to bore you, but there's nobody else around for me to bore.

I either want less decadence or more chance to participate in it.

I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.

— Mae West

I give you the man who -- the man who -- uh, I forgets the man who?

— Beauregard Bugleboy

I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.

— Butch Cassidy

I guess I've been wrong all my life, but so have billions of other people... Certainty is just an emotion.

— Hal Clement

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

— Samuel Johnson

I hate small towns because once you've seen the cannon in the park there's nothing else to do.

— Lenny Bruce