Fat Ol' Quote File

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.- Erica Jong
We are living in the era of the busybody. In ancient Greece, if a person wanted guidance, it involved a long, arduous journey to consult the oracle at Delphi. Today, if you want guidance, all you have to do is unplug your ears. -Margo Kaufman
It seems to be a rule of life that the less qualified you are to give counsel, the more counsel you give. -Margo Kaufman

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.-Doug Larson
The older you get, the better you realize you were. -J. Smith

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.- George Bernard Shaw
America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail it knocks over a chair.-Arnold Toynbee
We're screaming nerve-jangled maniacs in a have-a-nice-day country. -Cynthia Heimel
Americans are broad-minded people. They'll accept the fact that a person can be an alcoholic, a dope fiend, a wife beater, and even a newspaperman, but if a man doesn't drive there's something wrong with him.-Art Buchwald

Love is what separates us from the animals.-Lister from Red Dwarf
What separates us from the animals is that we don't clean our own genitals with our tongue.-Rimmer from Red Dwarf
1. Don't go to sleep with big animals, e.g., elephants, rhinoceri, hippopotamuses; 2. Don't put animals with sharp teeth or poisonous fangs down the front of your clothes; 3. Don't put certain animals, e.g., crocodiles and scorpions or dogs you have just kicked.-Mike Harding
(Lobsters) displays all three of the classic biological characteristics of an insect, namely: 1. It has way more legs than necessary. 2. There is no way you would ever pet it. 3. It does not respond to simple commands such as "Here, boy!" -Dave Barry

I don't have an attitude problem, it's supposed to be like this.-Keychain
I Love My Attitude Problem.-T-shirt slogan

Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.-Michel de Montaigne

Many Americans who are not fastened at the temples to a Christian prayer book are offended by politicians who justify their decisions by piously quoting the Old Testament. -Susie Bright
If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be- a Christian.-Mark Twain
Speaking of hell, one thing that has always annoyed me about fun-dementedists (fundamentalist Christians) is that they believe anyone who accepts Jesus Christ as their savior will go to heaven, even mass murderers like Adolph Hitler. Yet anyone who does not accept Christ as their savior, even if they are otherwise benevolent, will be sent by God to be tortured for the rest of eternity in Hell. The thing that annoys me is that they still have the balls to turn around and say that their deity is good and forgiving. -Blasphemy Vision
Christianity is the most prevalent and most obnoxious religion in America. -Blasphemy Vision
The trouble with born-again Christians is that they are an even bigger pain the second time around.-Herb Caen

Birth: The first and direst of all disasters.-Ambrose Bierce
The birth was great. She'd been telling everyone for months it was going to be a natural childbirth and, ten minutes in, she cracked and started yelling, "Give me the drugs, you fat cow." -Bridget Jones

I feel like the baronness from The Sound of Music: While everybody's singing and climbing mountains, I want to stick a guitar up the nun's ass. -Lisa Kudrow, The Opposite of Sex.

When Prince Charles speaks, everybody pretends to be fascinated, even though he has never said anything interesting except in that intercepted telephone conversation wherein he expressed the desire to be a feminine hygeine product. -Dave Barry

Save a boyfriend for a rainy day- and another, in case it doesn't rain.-Mae West

Brain: The apparatus with which we think that we think.-Ambrose Bierce

Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.-Oscar Wilde

With a car there is always a problem. -Margo Kaufman

I've decided to stop caring about things. If you care, you just get disappointed all the time. If you don't care, nothing matters. So you're never upset. -Calvin, Calvin and Hobbes

I am not one to generalize, but cartoonists, as a group, exhibit a level of social sophistication generally associated with pie fights. In high school, when the future lawyers were campaigning for class president, the future cartoonists were painstakingly altering illustrations in their history books so that Robert E. Lee appeared to be performing an illegal act with his horse. -Dave Barry

Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this. -Unknown

The Catcher in the Rye is the book preferred 9 times out of ten by whackos, serial killers, and disgruntled teenagers. Unknown
Holden Caulfield says that life sucks, everyone is a phony, and you'll be inevitably disappointed by everyone that you hold in awe. If you think that this sounds awful, ask yourself one question. When was the last time you found any joy in watching Barney or the Care Bears? Unknown

All charming people, I fancy, are spoiled. It is the secret of their attraction.-Oscar Wilde

But from the perspective of the aging parent, there is no major difference between four and fifteen, except that when your child is four, his motoring privileges are restricted to little toy Fisher-Price vehicles which are unlikely (although I would not totally rule it out in America ) to sue you. -Dave Barry

Chores: The very worst thing about these mundane tasks, however, and the one thing that they have in common, is that they're BORING! And I hate being bored. More that almost anything else in this world, I hate being bored. I don't do well with boredom. I go crazy, and do something that's not boring, like quitting vacuuming. When I'm part-way done. Then I can go play on the computer, or something that's not boring. But... how guilty would I feel, laying on my deathbed, thinking "I wasted my life! I did boring things! Let me start all over again...". Yeah, see, I would feel really bad about that. So I'm not gonna let it happen. Doug

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.-Mark Twain

Cleanliness is almost as bad as godliness.-Samuel Butler
If cleanliness is next to godliness . . . this place is going to hell.-Post-It Note
In my experience, Cupid's arrows rarely strike two people with the same definition of cleanliness. One partner usually feels like he or she is being asked to live in a furniture exhibit in the British Museum. The other partner remains convinced that he or she is forced to contend with the human version of Hurricane Gilbert. -Margo Kaufman

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.-Mark Twain
Look, in particular, at the people who, like you, are making average incomes for doing average jobs- bank vice presidents, insurance salesmen, auditors, secretaries of defense- and you'll realie they all dress the same way, essentially the way the mannequins in the Sears menswear department dress. Now look at the real successes, the people who make a lot more money than you- Elton John, Captain Kangaroo, anybody from Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, and so on. They all dress funny- and they all succeed.-Dave Barry
Besides, the only thing you can control in life is your wardrobe. Cars break down when you least expect it. Boats eat money and gas. Your house, your mate, your friends, your family, even your career, are beyond your control. However, you're in total command of what you put on your back each morning. -Margo Kaufman
Some try to find clothes for a social life, I try to find a social life for my clothes. -Cathy

You can lead a boy to college, but you can't make him think.-Elbert Hubbard
See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each other wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for.-Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you're not part of the solution, you're a newspaper columnist. -Dave Barry
WARNING: This is not a column. This is a lame, half-baked, quarterhearted, self-indulgent excuse for a column. The "columnist" may not be held responsible for any excessive head-scratching, dozing or irate exclamations along the lines of "They pay her for this?" amongst her readership. -Cynthia Heimel
Lots of you know me as a lone, hard-bitten columnist, prone to lurking on deserted rocky promontories while searching for my muse. -Cynthia Heimel

A whole category of commercials that, according to the survey, people really detest- namely, commercials that discuss extremely intimate bodily functions and problems, often at dinnertime. People do not wish to hear total strangers blurting out statements about their constipation and their diarrhea and their hemorrhoids and their "male itch." People do not wish to see scientific demonstrations of pads absorbing amazing quantities of fluids. People also cannot fathom why this fluid is always blue. As Carla and Bill Chandler put it: "If anyone around here starts secreting anything BLUE, the last thing we're going to worry about is how absorbent their pad is." People do not wish to hear any more about incontinence. Rich Klinzman wrote: "I have often fantasized about sneaking up behind June Allyson, blowing up a paper bag, and slamming my fist into it, just to see how absorbent those adult diapers really are." People also do not wish to see actors pretending to be mothers and daughters talking about very personal feminine matters as though they were discussing the weather. Richard J. O'Neil, expressing a common sentiment, wrote: "If I was a woman, I would walk on my lips through a sewage plant before I would share this information with any living soul, let alone my mother." -Dave Barry
The increase in suicides among young people is due to the beer commercials showing a bunch of rednecks in a beat-up pickup swigging beer from cans and telling everyone "It don't git no better'n this." -A.J. VanHorn

Common sense is what tells us the Earth is flat and the Sun goes around it.-Anonymous
We seldom attribute common sense except to those who agree with us.-La Rouchefoucauld

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain. -Lily Tomlin

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

Consult: To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.-Ambrose Bierce

If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world, it will come through that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature.-Bruce Barton

The more you try to control something, the more out of control it becomes. -Gary Emery
A control freak is just someone who cares about something more than you do. - Milton Wolpin

As long as people will accept crap, it will be financially profitable to dispense it.-Dick Cavett

If we weren't all crazy, we would go insane.-Jimmy Buffett
I swear to God I'm crazy. I admit it. -Holden Caulfield
Maybe your kid is a kook; but this doesn't mean that he or she won't amount to anything. Some of the best-known people in history were a little kooky. People who are relatively unknown and of modest means are called "goofy" when they exhibit quirks of behavior, while rich and famous people who exhibit such quirks are called "eccentric." If your kid seems a tad goofy at times, it may be only that he's not rich or famous enough to be eccentric. -Ray Orrock
I want to be a nut like everyone else in this building. -Paul Bratter, Barefoot in the Park
But God has the most fun with artists and writers: he inflames them with the desire to rival his own creations, then douses their overheated ambitions with a cold spray from the garden hose of reality. If they persist, he slams them to the ground and tweaks them on the proboscis for good measure. A fortunate few break free and prosper; the others lament the day they didn't become bank clerks. -Rick Bayan
Very gifted people may be sociopathic in varying degrees.-Camille Paglia
Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go -Hamlet

Critics- we think we're so damn smart. Why else do we pen 3,000-word screeds on such trivial subjects as, say, Celine Dion? Do we take narcissistic delight in our Roget's vocabulary and incomprehensible theory? Or do we imagine that Dion fans will read what we write and feel instantly ashamed? Puhleeze. Nobody cares if we get worked up over the maudlin, the mundane, and the mainstream. -Jeff Chang
For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism.

Cynic: A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.-Ambrose Bierce
Cynic: A man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin.-H.L. Mencken
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth,-Lillian Hellman.

Dawn: The time when men of reason go to bed.-Ambrose Bierce
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get up.-W. Somerset Maugham
A man can stand almost anything except a succession of ordinary days.-Goethe
I have never enjoyed an experience that begins at five A.M. -Margo Kaufman

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.-Douglas Adams

If you can survive death, you can probably survive anything.-Maxwell Smart from Get Smart

Desire is the brushfire drinking gasoline.-Soul Coughing

The trouble with me is, I like it when somebody digresses. It's more interesting and all. -Holden Caulfield

Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice Doggie!" till you can find a rock.. Wynn Catlin

Here's to you and here's to me, and I hope we never disagree. But, if that should ever be, to HELL with you, here's to ME!-Unknown

Disclaimer: My opinions are the opinions of my employer, my employer's family and friends, and anyone else in the entire world who either has or has not met me, unless they specifically tell you otherwise and specify the opinion with which they disagree. After having done so, any such individual still holds my opinions, whether they care to admit it or not. -Charlie Haase

It's wrong to discriminate based on skin color when there are so many other reasons not to like someone.-Dennis Miller

All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening.-Alexander Woollcott

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

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.-Alfred Hitchcock

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive. Unknown
Just because someone can't read doesn't mean that they can't drive. -Bill Gengler

Don't do drugs because if you do drugs you'll go to prison, and drugs are really expensive in prison.-John Hardwick
I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me.-Hunter S. Thompson
Drugs are marvelous- it's life that's evil. And sometimes the only way to face it is to get completely twisted. -E. Jean Carroll
To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it. -J. Smith

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know-G.K. Chesterton
No one wants a good education. Everyone wants a good degree.-Lee Rudolph
The incalculation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.-John Maynard Keynes
Thanks to my solid academic training, today I can write hundreds of words on virtually any topic without possessing a shred of information, which is how I got a good job in journalism. -Dave Barry
Egghead Vic Ovum Cranium difficilis est (The way of the Egghead is hard)-Adlai E. Stevenson

Egotist: A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.-Ambrose Bierce

I prefer to remain an enigma,-Unknown

Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.-Dark Helmet from Spaceballs

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

The best kind of fame is a writer's fame. Just enough to get a good table at a restaurant and not enough for someone to interrupt you while you are eating. -Fran Lebowitz
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

We all have rosy memories of a simpler, happy time- a time of homemade apple pie and gingham curtains, a time when Mom understood everything and Dad could fix anything. "Let's get those traditional family values back!" we murmur to each other. Meanwhile, in a simultaneous universe, everyone I know, and every celebrity I don't know, is coming out of the closet to talk about how miserable they are because they grew up in dysfunctional families. -Cynthia Heimel
Those rosy memories we all share are actually memories from our favorite TV shows. We've confused our own childhoods with episodes of "Ozzie and Harriet," "Father Knows Best," and "The Brady Bunch." In real life, Ozzie had a very visible mistress for years, Bud and Kitten on "Father Knows Best" grew up to become major druggies, and Mom on "The Brady Bunch" dated her fifteen-year-old fictional son. -Cynthia Heimel

Fanatic: One who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.-Winston Churchill

There are three rules to writing fiction. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.-W. Somerset Maugham
The difference between fiction and reality? Fiction has to make sense.-Tom Clancy.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day. -J. Smith

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.-Douglas Adams
When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth.-Cynthia Heimel
Every person is a fool in somebody's opinion.-Spanish proverb

Bill Clinton, who, to his credit, has established a clear and consistent foreign policy, which is as follows: Whenever the president of the United States gets anywhere near any foreign head of state, living or dead, he gives that leader a big old hug. This has proven to be an effective way to get foreign leaders to do what we want: Many heads of state are willing to sign any random document that President Clinton thrusts in front of them, without reading it, just so he will stop embracing them. -Dave Barry

France: As a professional journalist, I like the idea of a society where it is considered an acceptable occupation to basically sit around and drink. -Dave Barry

It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.-Mark Twain

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else. -Will Rogers

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in confederacy against him.-Jonathan Swift
Nobody in football should be a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.-Joe Theismann
There are few people more convinced of their own genius than those who complain of how stupid they are. -La Rochefoucauld
The reluctance to put away childish things may be a requirement of genius. -Rebecca Pepper Sinkler
Common minds think alike, great minds think differently. -Unknown

The Pain-Free Shopping Method: Buy a present for you, then a present for a friend. Then another present for you. Then a present for a friend. Then two presents for you. Then a present for a friend. Then go home, get into bed, and pull up the covers. -Cynthia Heimel

Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.-Hedy Lamarr

If triangles created a god, they would make him three-sided.-Charles de Secondat
I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.-Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.-Woody Allen
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.-Galileo Galilei
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee/And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.-Robert Frost.
One cannot help but to feel sorry for the all powerful all knowing god that does not intercede in the affairs of man. Being human is bad enough--we are not all powerful or all-knowing. But can you imagine having the power to change, and knowing the outcomes of life on planet earth, and still not interceding. That is one pitiable lifeform!! -Susan Rankin

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.-Mark Twain

It isn't what they say about you, it's what they whisper.-Errol Flynn

Please, please, please tell me this isn't what being a grown-up is all about. Please tell me life isn't supposed to be like this. -Jessica, The Tide

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.-Gustave Flaubert
If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being, you'd be a game show host.-Heathers
I don't need much to keep me happy. In fact, some days nothing keeps me happy!-Maxine from Crabby Road

I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.-John Mortimer
Eat right. Exercise. Die Anyway.-T-shirt slogan

Hell is other people.-Jean-Paul Sartre

My husband says that I'm afraid of heights, but that's not true. What I'm afraid of is falling. -Margo Kaufman

He who hesitates is probably right.

A hick town is one in which there is no place to go where you shouldn't be.-Alexander Woollcott

I'm pretty honest. I need to work on that.-Daria Morgendorffer

If the whole human race lay in one grave, the epitaph on its headstone might well be: "It seemed like a good idea at the time."-Rebecca West

I am under no obligation to save anyone from his or her ignorance, and I have no desire to do so. -David. F. Prenatt, Jr.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe.-Albert Einstein
The universe is not indifferent to intelligence, it's actively hostile to it.-Anonymous

Sometimes integrity is a punch in the face.-Leslie Nielsen

Still forging ahead in spite of everything in our seemingly pointless quest to fill the global bandwidth with even more useless crap. -Lance Arthur

Irony is only hypocrisy with style. -Looking For Richard

As a professional journalist, I am always looking for new ways to get paid for being motionless. -Dave Barry

I believe in long slow deep soft wet kisses that last for three days.-Crash Davis from Bull Durham
If I kiss you, that is a psychological interaction. On the other hand, if I hit you over the head with a brick, that is also a psychological interaction. The difference is that one is friendly and the other is not so friendly. The crucial point is if you can tell which is which.-Dolph Sharp

Ah, the lazy days of summer. They rank right up there with the lazy days of spring, fall, and winter.-Maxine from Crabby Road

Lies There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.-Benjamin Disraeli
Everyone tells tiny lies, what's important really is the size.-Stephen Sondheim

Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.-George Sand
Life is too serious to be taken seriously.-Mike Leonard
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another.-J.M. Barrie
Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.-John Lennon
It is not true that life is one damn thing after another . . . It's one damn thing over and over.-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.-Ferris Bueller from Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.-Mark Twain
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son. -Dean Wormer, Animal House

Los Angeles: A city I like because it's easy to tell who the strange people are. -Margo Kaufman

Love is having somebody to nudge when you see something you like and want to share it.-Unknown
Love is like epidemic diseases. The more one fears it the more likely one is to contract it.-Nicholas Chamfort
Ah-love-the walks over soft grass, the smiles over candlelight, the arguments over just about everything else.-Max Headroom
Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.-Lynda Barry
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve the continuation of the species.-W. Somerset Maugham
What is irritating about love is that it is a crime that requires an accomplice.-Charles Baudelaire
Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.-H.L. Mencken
Love is a capricious creature which desires everything and can be contented with almost nothing.-Madeleine de Scudery
Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one agrees on just what it is.-Diane Ackerman
Love, the most powerful, efficient chemical lobotomy known to man. Slow acting yet awsome in scope, it cripples all major advanced brain functions. Unrequited love: akin to rat poison. -Blaise Camp
If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.-Lynda Barry
Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.-Joan Crawford.
It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.-Francois de La Rouchefoucauld
Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.-Rose Franken
Love and stoplights can be cruel.-Sesame Street
Love is a perky elf dancing a merry little jig and then suddenly he turns on you with a miniature machine gun.-Matt Groening
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.-Matt Groening
When yer in a funk, people in love are a royal pain in the patookus.-Portnoy from Outland
Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and difficult as that.-Michael Leunig
In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.-Andre Maurois
The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.-Iris Murdoch
On to more quotes...