Cool Quotes - H

Coming down with something? Please. You reek of booze and bullshit. Don't lie to a Kentuckian about drinking or horses, son.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

We are never so happy nor so unhappy as we imagine.

There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?

Happiness? That's nothing more than health and a poor memory.

It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere.

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

The conviction of the rich that the poor are happy is no more foolish than the conviction of the poor that the rich are.

The only really happy folk are married women and single men.

A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.

When I was young, I used to think that wealth and power would bring me happiness … I was right.

Hollywood is where, if you don't have happiness, you send out for it.

Boethius might have been styled happy, if that precarious epithet could be safely applied before the last term of the life of man.

There is no device whatever to be invented for securing happiness without industry, economy, and virtue.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

The only happy people I know are people I don't know well.

Happiness is a serious problem.

Haste is of the devil. Slowness is of God.

If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?

Make haste slowly

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.

We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right.

Nature, time and patience are the three great physicians.

If a man thinks about his physical or moral state, he nearly always discovers that he is ill.

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world.

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.

I'm not sick, but I'm not well.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; and do not outlive yourself.

Nearly all men die of their medicines, and not of their illnesses.

Sugar and alcohol are sweet poisons.

"Good health" is merely the slowest rate at which one can die.

Leave the table hungry.
Leave the bed sleepy.
Leave the table thirsty.

Be not slow to visit the sick.

Preserving health by too severe a rule is a worrisome malady.

Health is not simply the absence of sickness.

It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

Quit worrying about your health. It'll go away.

People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.

In the face of such overwhelming statistical possibilities, hypochondria has always seemed to me to be the only rational position to take on life.

There is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

The head never rules the heart, but just becomes its partner in crime.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

Each heart knows its own bitterness,
and no one else can share its joy.

Even in laughter the heart may ache,
and joy may end in grief.

Let not your heart be troubled …

Heaven for climate, hell for company.

Everyone who has ever built anywhere a "new heaven" first found the power thereto in his own hell.

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in hell:
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Heaven goes by favour. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.

May you get to Heaven a half hour before the Devil knows you're dead.

It is Hell, of course, that makes priests powerful, not Heaven, for after thousands of years of so-called civilization fear remains the one common denominator of mankind.

Cerberus, n. The watch-dog of Hades, whose duty it was to guard the entrance—against whom or what does not clearly appear; everybody, sooner or later, had to go there, and nobody wanted to carry off the entrance.

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.

Who finds heaven on earth will end in hell.

According to the faith and mercy of his Christian enemies, [Chosroes] sunk without hope into a still deeper abyss [Hell]; and it will not be denied, that tyrants of every age and sect are the best entitled to such infernal abodes.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

I always say, as you know, that if my fellow citizens want to go to Hell I will help them. It's my job.

I have friends in both places [Heaven and Hell].

How do you know that the earth isn’t some other planet’s hell?

Like Jesus Christ himself, Henry [III] was as wise on the day of his birth as he would ever be.

We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.

But heroes are not reckless or foolhardy. … A sensible hero fights bravely when he needs to do so; but first he fights prudently in order to avoid fighting bravely.

No man's a hero to himself.

Even a fool may be wise after the event.

The revolution of ages may bring round the same calamities; but ages may revolve without producing a Tacitus to describe them.

History does not have sides, although historians do.

Don't brood on what's past, but never forget it either.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

History, n. An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

History … is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

[The] Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire …

History's lessons are no more enlightening than the wisdom of those who interpret them.

History repeats itself; historians repeat one other.

The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us novel and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false. It is sobering, too, to find huge and frightening errors constantly repeated; lessons painfully learnt forgotten in the space of a generation; and the accumulated wisdom of the past heedlessly ignored in every society, and at all times.

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

One of the lessons of history is that Nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. [emphasis added]

The voice of history [is] often little more than the organ of hatred or flattery.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

The interpretation of history is forever in flux, as much reflection of the present as window on the past.

From the paths of blood (and such is the history of nations) I cannot refuse to turn aside to gather some flowers of science or virtue.

So obscure are the greatest events, as some take for granted any hearsay, whatever its source, others turn truth into falsehood, and both errors find encouragement with posterity.

[We should] suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of nature and the character of man.

History is a pack of tricks the living play upon the dead.

There are no inevitabilities in history.

… there is no logic or justice in history. It is all a matter of chronology.

There is no such person as History. It is human beings who decree.

… reality cannot for long be banished from history. Facts have a way of making their presence felt.

What is important in history is not only the events that occur but the events that obstinately do not occur.

… the historian of the modern world is sometimes tempted to reach the depressing conclusion that progress is destructive of certitude. In the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries the Western elites were confident that men and progress were governed by reason. A prime discovery of modern times is that reason plays little part in our affairs.

History isn't like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always—eventually—manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time.

If one but tell a thing well, it moves on with undying voice, and over the fruitful earth and across the sea goes the bright gleam of noble deeds ever unquenchable.

Unsung, the noblest deed will die.

Better than the rest of us, they [the Jews] sensed what was ahead for their people.

'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home;

After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.

It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them.

It was no longer esteemed infamous for a Roman to survive his honor and independence.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Honor is like an island, rugged and without a beach; once we have left it, we can never return.

Let us honour if we can
The vertical man
Though we value none
But the horizontal one.

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."

Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

So farewell hope, and with hope, farewell fear,
Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost;
Evil, be thou my good …

Abandon all hope, you who enter here (Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate).

He that lives upon Hope will die fasting.

When any man is more stupidly vain and outrageously egotistic than his fellows, he will hide his hideousness in humanitarianism.

The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. … I call C the Forgotten Man.

Shamus, n. [Yiddish]: A shamus is a guy who takes care of handyman tasks around the temple, and makes sure everything is in working order. A shamus is at the bottom of the pecking order of synagogue functionaries, and there's a joke about that: A rabbi, to show his humility before God, cries out in the middle of a service, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The cantor, not to be bested, also cries out, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The shamus, deeply moved, follows suit and cries, "Oh, Lord, I am nobody!" The rabbi turns to the cantor and says, "Look who thinks he's nobody!"

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.

Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So, for every ten Jews beating their breasts, God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five I knew I was that one.

Humour can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process.

Humour is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act.

There is no reason why a joke should not be appreciated more than once. Imagine how little good music there would be if, for example, a conductor refused to play Beethoven's Fifth Symphony on the ground that his audience might have heard it before.

Ginsberg's Theorem:

1. You can't win.
2. You can't break even.
3. You can't even quit the game.

You know when you're sitting on a chair and you lean back so you're just on two legs then you lean too far and you almost fall over but at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like that all the time.

I filled out an application that said, "In Case Of Emergency Notify". I wrote "Doctor" … What's my mother going to do?

Reverend Lovejoy: Oh, come on, Lisa, now you're here for a reason. Is your father stealing bread?
Lisa: Maybe. I don't watch him every minute.

Boy, life takes a long time to live.

For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier. I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.

I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me.

The other day I … uh, no, that wasn't me.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, "Well, what do you need?"

When I woke up this morning, my girlfriend asked if I had slept well. I said, "No, I made a few mistakes."

You can't have everything. Where would you put it?

Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.

If you don't go to people's funerals, they won't come to yours.

It is illegal to make liquor privately or water publicly.

Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's new lover.

My boyfriend and I broke up. He wanted to get married, and I didn't want him to.

I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous—everyone hasn't met me yet.

Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet people. It provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble.

It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

Paul's Law: You can't fall off the floor.

Lowery's Law: If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

Chaos, panic, and disorder. My work here is done.

Homer: You know, Marge, that Bart is a little miracle—his winning smile, his button nose, his fat little stomach, his face alight with wholesome mischief. He reminds me of me before the weight of the world crushed my spirit.

Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

There are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.

Homer: Marge, I'm going to miss you so much. And it's not just the sex. It's also the food preparation.

Homer: Trying is the first step toward failure.

Grandpa: I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me.

Someday I want to be rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be.

My husband gave me a necklace. It's fake. I requested fake. Maybe I'm paranoid, but in this day and age, I don't want something around my neck that's worth more than my head.

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

When I have a kid, I wanna put him in one of those strollers for twins, then run around the mall looking frantic.

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."

I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.

After handing him a report card filled with F's, the boy asked his father, "Do you think the problem is my heredity or my upbringing?"

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.

If I could drop dead right now, I'd be the happiest man alive.

Success didn't spoil me, I've always been insufferable.

When I was a little kid, we had a quicksand box. I was an only child … eventually.

A friend is someone who will help you move. A real friend is someone who will help you move a body.

My theory is that all of Scottish cuisine is based on a dare.

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

I ask for so little. And boy do I get it.

I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do?

Marge: Growing up means giving up everything that makes you happy.

Lisa: I still stand by my beliefs. But I can't defend what I did …
Homer: I understand honey. I used to believe in things when I was a kid.

As a matter of principle, I never attend the first annual anything.

The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to [himself], "You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done."

Ever notice that anyone going slower than you is an idiot, but anyone going faster is a maniac?

Lenny: Date night, it's the embalming fluid that keeps the mummy of a marriage fresh after the heart and brain have been pulled out through the nose.
Carl: I never should have given you that Egyptology book.

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

Homer: Sometimes, Marge, you just have to go with your gut.
Marge: You always go with your gut. How about for once you listen to your brain?

Homer: Son, when a woman says nothing's wrong, it means everything's wrong. When a woman says everything's wrong, it means everything's wrong. And when a woman says that something isn't funny, you'd better not laugh your ass off!

Homer: Kids, just because I don't care doesn't mean I'm not listening.

Homer: I don't know how you put up with all these kids, Toohey [the daycare director]. If I were you, there'd be a lot of strangled babies.

Mindy: Homer, you don't have to do anything you don't want to.
Homer: Well, maybe I want to [have sex]. Then I think about Marge and the kids … well, not the boy. He drives me nuts. Sometimes I'd just like to [makes strangling motion] …

Homer: That's a problem for future Homer. Man, I don't envy that guy.

You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.

Stress is caused by suppressing the urge to beat the crap out of someone who desperately needs it.

Homer: Girls are easy. Girls love daddy. Girls make birthday cards with glitter on them. Girls can marry a hockey player and get me seats to hockey games. Girls don't steal my knives. And I don't have to tell girls how their bodies work 'cause I don't know.
Bart: You never told me how my body works.
Homer: Point and shoot.

Bart: You don't look like a mom. You look happy.

Bode: What's up. I'm Bode. Do you surf?
Milhouse: No. My parents took me to Hawaii once, but I was intimidated by the physiques of the local kids. So I just stayed in the hotel room.
Bode: That's cool.
Milhouse: No … it's not cool.

He's a 17-year-old boy … He doesn't have any innermost thoughts, and if he did, you wouldn't want to know what they [are] and neither would I.

Everything's perfect about the past except how it led to the present.

Lisa: Dad, no! We're trying to conserve energy.
Homer: Lisa, if we start conserving, the environmentalists win.

I drove [to the airport] like an old man drives through a farmer's market, ignoring all laws of man, nature, and God.

[Somehow] free food at the workplace turns everyone into a bear at Yellowstone Park.

Life is just the time between crapping yourself.

Possum played chicken
with a car
Not playing dead now.

For dads, a family vacation is a 24-hour a day baby sitting job.

Breaking news from the Middle East: Bearded men throwing rocks, yelling.

You've learned a very valuable life lesson, boy, which is that love doesn't exist except briefly between a man and a woman before marriage. After that it's hanging out with someone who kinda hates you, but you can't get it together to leave.

Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything's dying.

Penny: Okay, that's fine, but let's try and get you out of your comfort zone.
Sheldon: Why would we want to do that? It's called the comfort zone for a reason.

[The] majority of the girls working there had major emotional problems. And not cries-too-much emotional problems; more like stabs-her-boyfriend-with-a-steak-knife-then-falls-into-a-corner-and-starts-whispering-to-herself emotional problems.

In my father's time they hanged you for it [homosexuality]. When I was a lad they put you in prison for it. Now it's legal. I hope I die before they make it compulsory.

I had to leave. They were having fun wrong.

Nut tightening stages: Loose, tight, tighter, very tight, over tight, loose.

I don't understand why Cupid was chosen to represent Valentine's Day. When I think about romance, the last thing on my mind is a short, chubby toddler coming at me with a weapon.

Everything happens for a reason. Sometimes that reason is you're stupid and make bad choices.

Lisa: (explaining to Homer) Oedipus killed his father and married his mother!
Homer: God! Who pays for that wedding?!

Ralphie: Daddy, how come you're not at work?
Wiggum: I don't know. How come you're not at school?
Ralphie: My teacher says she's tired of trying.
Wiggum: Yeah, well, so am I, Ralphie, so am I.

I bought a seven-dollar pen because I always lose pens and I got sick of not caring.

You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don't want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something.

When someone hands you a flyer, it's like they're saying here you throw this away.

An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.

If I had nine of my fingers missing I wouldn't type any slower.

Fettuccine Alfredo is macaroni and cheese for adults.

The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I'll never be as good as a wall.

Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something.

I don't have a girlfriend. But I do know a woman who'd be mad at me for saying that.

I wish I could play little league now. I'd be way better than before.

I had a stick of CareFree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality.

I'm gonna fix that last joke by taking out all the words and adding new ones.

I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, 'You're gonna have to move, you're blocking a fire exit.' As though if there was a fire, I wasn't gonna run. If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.

I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long.

I intend to live forever. So far, so good.

I installed a skylight in my apartment … the people who live above me are furious!

Right now I'm having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before.

Anything worth doing has a slight risk of decapitation.

Always be yourself …
Unless you can be Batman—then always be Batman.

I just spent my day playing a toy, in a movie about toys who do horrible things to each other.

Homer: I'm feeling kind of low, Apu. Got any of that beer with candy floating in it? You know, Skittlebrau.
Apu: Such a product does not exist, sir. I think you must have dreamed it.
Homer: Oh … well, then just give me a six-pack and a couple of bags of Skittles.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise—surprise and fear … fear and surprise … our two weapons are fear and surprise—and ruthless efficiency … our three weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope … our four … no … Amongst our weapons—amongst our weaponry—are such elements as fear, surprise … I'll come in again.

No sex, please—we're British.

Homer: My name is Homer and I'm just here [the AA meeting] because the court made me come.
Reverend Lovejoy: Homer, with our help, you'll never touch a beer again.
Homer: [screams and jumps through the window]

In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol. It was the worst 20 minutes of my life.

This is why we can't have nice things …

Carl: Homer, you should see a doctor. I don't think a healthy man can make that kind of smell.

Student 1: Do you think most students on campus are heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual?
Student 2: I think most students are autosexual.

I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too.

I love my fed-ex guy cause he's a drug dealer and he don't even know it…and he's always on time.

It takes forever to cook a baked potato in a conventional oven. Sometimes I'll just throw one in there even if I don't want one. By the time it's done, Who knows?

[Homer is eating from a bag of flour]
Marge: Oh honey, don’t eat that. Wouldn’t you rather have your sugar bag?
Homer: No. I don’t deserve sugar.

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!

Asok: Alice, do you have any valuable career advice?
Alice: Work so hard that it destroys your health and crowds out any chance of having a personal life.
Asok: Wouldn't that make me … unhappy?
Alice: You didn't ask for happiness advice.

lockdown, n. Middle-class people hiding while working-class people bring them things.

Ralph: The doctor said I wouldn't have so many nosebleeds if I kept my finger out of there.

Why are you the way that you are?

As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish, he'd stay away.

Plant Counselor: What you need is a good, long rest. I suggest Florida.
Homer: Florida? But that's America's wang!
Plant Counselor: They prefer the Sunshine State.

Don't wait till your deathbed to tell people how you feel. Tell them to fuck off now.

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it,
Whenever you're right, shut up.

He would grab me in his arms, hold me close—and tell me how wonderful he was.

Husbands are not adults. They are people who pay for things but are still somehow burdens.

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person hypocrisy begins. We parry and fend the approach of our fellow man by compliments, by gossip, by amusements, by affairs. We cover up our thought from him under a hundred folds.

I don't like hypocrisy, but I fear a world without it. As long as it continues to exist, it means that standards continue to exist. You can only have hypocrisy when you have standards.