I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way. -Franklin P. Adams

If lenth be considered a merit, it hath no other. Edmund Waller, on John Milton's Paradise Lost

It was good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four. Samuel Butler, on Thomas Carlyle

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. -W. H. Auden

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any. -Russell Baker

Longfellow is to poetry what the barrel-organ is to music. Van Wyck Brooks, on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer. -Charles Caleb Colton

Hardy went down to botanize in the swamps....he became a sort of village atheist brooding and blaspheming over the village idiot. G.K. Chesterton, on Thomas Hardy

The gloom is not even relieved by a little elegance of diction. Lytton Strachey, on the poems of Thomas Hardy

Some of Bierce's bitterness may have been caused by an unfortunate accident during the Civil War. In the Battle for Kennesaw Mountain, he received a musket ball through his head. Though the two holes eventually healed up, Bierce still felt hurt. Richard Armour, on Ambrose Bierce

Bierce would bury his best friend with a sigh of relief, and express satisfaction that he was done with him. Jack London, on Ambrose Bierce

There is always in his work a certain clean-cut angularity which makes us remember that he was fond of cutting wood with an axe. G.K.Chesterton, on Robert Louis Stevenson

Apart from vanity or mock modesty (which healthy people always use as jokes) my real judgement of my own work is that I have spoilt a number of jolly good ideas in my time. G.K. Chesterton, on himself

Mr. Faulkner, of course, is interested in making your mind rather than your flesh creep. Clifton Fadiman, on William Faulkner

Miss Ferber, who was fond of wearing tailored suits, showed up at the Round Table one afternoon sporting a new suit similar to one Noel Coward was wearing. "You look almost like a man," Coward said as he greeted her. "So," Miss Ferber replied, "do you." Robert E. Drennan, on Edna Ferber

I can't read ten pages of Steinbeck without throwing up. James Gould Cozzens, on John Steinbeck

Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to? -Clarence Darrow

It has been a bitter moritification for me to digest the conclusion that the 'race is for the strong' and that I shall probably do little more but be content to admire the strides others made in science. -Charles Darwin

Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it. -Gordon R. Dickson

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers. -Kahlil Gibran

Food, one assumes, provides nourishment; but Americans eat it fully aware that small amounts of poison have been added to improve its appearance and delay its putrefaction. -- John Cage

Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac. -- George Carlin

What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on? -- George Carlin

You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime. -- Dale Carnegie

You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover's arms can only come later when you're sure they won't laugh if you trip. -- Jonathan Carroll, Outside the Dog Museum

I'm worried that the universe will soon need replacing. It's not holding a charge. -- Edward Chilton

You don't have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone. -- John Ciardi

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. -- George Clemenceau

Don't spend $2 to dry-clean a shirt. Donate it to the Salvation Army instead. They'll clean it and put it on a hanger. Next morning buy it back for 75 cents. -- Billiam Coronel

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I'm beginning to believe it. -- Clarence Darrow

I'd marry again if I found a man who had 15 million and would sign over half of it to me before the marriage and guarantee he'd be dead within a year. -- Bette Davis

Sex is God's joke on human beings. -- Bette Davis

Minds are like parachutes - they only function when open. -- Thomas Dewar

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it's the exact opposite. -- Paul Dirac

It destroys one's nerves to be amiable everyday to the same human being. -- Benjamin Disraeli

It is easier to be critical than correct. -- Benjamin Disraeli

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it. -- Alexandre Dumas fils

" What guarantee is there that the five senses, taken together, do cover the whole of possible experience?.. There are gaps between the fingers; there are gaps between the senses. In these gaps is the darkness which hides the connection between things... The darkness is the source of our vague fears and anxieties, but also the home of the Gods. " - Alan Watts, The Book

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

Coffee is a beverage that puts one to sleep when not drank. -- Alphonse Allais

There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. -- Johann Sebastian Bach

It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality. -- Arnold Bennett

I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different. -- Tony Bennett, 1995

I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's sixth husband. I know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't know how to make it interesting. -- Milton Berle, when called to the microphone at the 2nd Annual Comedians Hall of Fame Inductions

The covers of this book are too far apart. -- Ambrose Bierce

Ah Mozart! He was happily married - but his wife wasn't. -- Victor Borge

The hard part about being a bartender is figuring out who is drunk and who is just stupid. -- Richard Braunstein dedicated to our local bar owner, who doesn't know that the answer is "both".

If someone offers you a breath mint, accept it. -- H. Jackson Brown, Jr., Life's Little Treasure Book, on wisdom

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others. -- H. Jackson Brown

Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts. -- William S. Burroughs

I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli. -- George Bush, U.S. president, 1990

"He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals." -Benjamin Franklin

"Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are." -Houssaye

"To love another person is to see the face of God." -Les Miserables

"Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition." -Alexander Smith

"I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him." -Booker T. Washington

"Associate with the noblest people you can find; read the best books; live with the mighty. But learn to be happy alone. Rely upon your own energies, and so do not wait for, or depend on other people." -Professor Thomas Davidson

"If a man loses pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music in which he hears, however measured, or far away." -Henry David Thoreau

"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity, or registering wrongs." -Charlotte Bronte

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

"Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." -Abraham Lincoln

"It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle." -Plato

When I give a lecture, I accept that people look at their watches, but what I do not tolerate is when they look at it and raise it to their ear to find out if it stopped. -- Marcel Achard

" What guarantee is there that the five senses, taken together, do cover the whole of possible experience?.. There are gaps between the fingers; there are gaps between the senses. In these gaps is the darkness which hides the connection between things... The darkness is the source of our vague fears and anxieties, but also the home of the Gods. " - Alan Watts, The Book

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ignorance of one's misfortunes is clear gain. -- Euripides

These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig. -Alfred Hitchcock

The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye. The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract. -Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature. -Kin Hubbard

We have a habit in writing articles published in scientific journals to make the work as finished as possible, to cover up all the tracks, to not worry about the blind alleys or describe how you had the wrong idea at first, and so on. So there isn't any place to publish, in a dignified manner, what you actually did in order to get to do the work. -- Richard Feynman

There is nothing so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can't set it right in the course of an afternoon. -- Giraudoux

Life is a sexually transmitted terminal disease. -- Colin Greene

Man's mind stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions. -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

There it was, hidden in alphabetical order. -- Rita Holt

There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends. -- Homer, Odyssey, ninth century B.C.

When a friend is in trouble, don't annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. -- E. W. Howe

A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost pays to be one. -- Kin Hubbard

The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them. -- Kin Hubbard

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach. -- Aldous Huxley

Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate. -- Thomas Jones

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

The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible. -- Jean Kerr

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

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision. -- Lynn Lavner

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

Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women it is merely a good excuse not to play football. -- Fran Lebowitz

I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not. -- Fran Lebowitz

Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast the disc jockey is not allowed to talk. -- Fran Lebowitz

Every St. Patrick's Day every Irishman goes out to find another Irishman to make a speech to. -- Shane Leslie

Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today? 1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War. 2) Advising the President. 3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin. -- David Letterman

In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others. -- Andr� Maurois

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why. -- Mignon McLaughlin

The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there. -- Robert M. Pirsig

Do not assume that she who seeks to comfort you now, lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. Her life may also have much sadness and difficulty, that remains far beyond yours. Were it otherwise, she would never have been able to find these words. -- Rainer Maria Rilke

I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. -- Francois-Auguste Rodin, when asked how he managed to make his remarkable statues

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. -- Bertrand Russell

Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, not condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion. -- George Santayana

A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness. -- Elsa Schiapirelli

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

Start slow and taper off. -- Walt Stack, marathon runner

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. -- Gloria Steinem

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry. -- Gloria Steinem

Never look at the trombones. You'll only encourage them. -- Richard Strauss, on conducting

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

Saying that men talk about baseball in order to avoid talking about their feelings is the same as saying that women talk about their feelings in order to avoid talking about baseball. -- Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand

The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready. -- Henry David Thoreau

Do not let yourselves be discouraged or embittered by the smallness of the success you are likely to achieve in trying to make life better. You certainly would not be able, in a single generation, to create an earthly paradise. Who could expect that? But, if you make life ever so little better, you will have done splendidly, and your lives will have been worthwhile. -- Arnold Toynbee

Education ... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. -- G. M. Trevelyan

Health food makes me sick. -- Calvin Trillin

If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers? -- Calvin Trillin

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found. -- Calvin Trillin

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. -- Rebecca West, 1913

You have a cough? Go home tonight, eat a whole box of Ex-Lax--tomorrow you'll be afraid to cough. -- Pearl Williams

The limits of my language means the limits of my world. -- Ludwig Wittgenstein

Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley's Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer's opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller's Practical Gamekeeping. -- Ed Zern, Field and Stream, November 1959

"The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable." -In a Bucharest Hotel Lobby

"Debussy played the piano with the lid down." -Robert Bresson

"Of Dickens' style it is impossible to speak in praise. It is jerky, ungrammatical, and created by himself in defiance of rules... No young novelist should ever dare to imitate the style of Dickens." -Anthony Trollope

"Fitzgerald never got rid of anything; the ghosts of his adolescense, the failures of his youth, the doubts of his maturity plagued him to the end. He was supremely a part of the world he described, so much a part that he made himself its king and then, when he saw it begin to crumble, he crumbled with it and led it to death." -John Aldridge

"Mr. Fitzgerald -- I believe that is how he spells his name -- seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home." -Zelda Fitzgerald

"Handel is only fourth rate. He is not even interesting." -Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky

'Ben Hur' -- "Charlton Heston throws all his punches in the first ten minutes (three grimaces and two intonations) so that he has nothing left long before he stumbles to the end, four hours later, and has to react to the crucifiction. (He does make it clear, I must admit, that he disaproves of it.)" -Dwight MacDonald

'Symphony for Wind -- Memory of Debussy' -- "I had no idea Stravinsky disliked Debussy as much as this." -'Musical Times' (1921)

"I love wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws." -Chales Baudelaire

"Saw Washington Monument. Phallic. Appalling. A national catastrophe." -Arnold Bennett

"The most famous living artist in America is Andy Warhol, unfortunately." -John Heilpern