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Cool Quotes - M
Madness
There's a pinch of the madman in every great man.
French Proverb
I suppose it is much more comfortable to be mad and not know it, than to be sane and have one's doubts.
G. B. Burgin
[Imagination] does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad; but chess players do. Mathematicians go mad … but creative artists very seldom.
G. K. Chesterton
Great wits are sure to madness near allied.
John Dryden
Oh, that way madness lies. Let me shun that.
William Shakespeare
Majorian
[Majorian] presents the welcome discovery of a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to vindicate the honor of the human species.
Edward Gibbon
Majority
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
Mark Twain
Man
Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven.
Alphonse de Lamartine
That man is an aggressive creature will hardly be disputed. With the exception of certain rodents, no other vertebrate habitually destroys members of its own species.
Anthony Storr
God must love the common man, he made so many of them.
Abraham Lincoln
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
Mark Twain
Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.
H. L. Mencken
Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.
Oscar Wilde
Such is the human race. Often it does seem such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.
Mark Twain
Every man is as God made him, ay, and often worse.
Miguel de Cervantes
Man differs from the animal only by a little; most men throw that little away.
Mencius
Mortals, born of woman,
are of few days and full of trouble.
They springs up like flowers and wither away;
like fleeting shadows, they do not endure.
Job 14:1-2
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
Mark Twain
I know in my heart that man is good.
That what is right will always eventually triumph.
And there's purpose and worth to each and every life.
Ronald Reagan
Men are not against you; they are merely for themselves.
Gene Fowler
Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements.
Edward Gibbon
Neither conservatives nor humorists believe man is good. But left-wingers do.
P. J. O'Rourke
In this primitive and abject state [of hunters and gatherers], which ill deserves the name of society, the human brute, without arts or laws, almost without sense or language, is poorly distinguished from the rest of the animal creation.
Edward Gibbon
For this is the tragedy of man—circumstances change, but he does not.
Niccolò Machiavelli
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
George Bernard Shaw
[But] the man who dares not expose his life in the defence of his children and his property, has lost in society the first and most active energies of nature.
Edward Gibbon
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
Bertrand Russell
I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
William Shakespeare
Every man naturally persuades himself that he can keep his resolutions, nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment.
Samuel Johnson
No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne
With man, most of his misfortunes are occasioned by man.
Pliny the Elder
Man is neither angel nor beast; and the misfortune is that he who would act the angel acts the beast.
Blaise Pascal
Mankind
Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this—that you are dreadfully like other people.
James Russell Lowell
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
Abba Eban
Most human beings have an absolute and infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
Aldous Huxley
We should expect the best and the worst from mankind, as from the weather.
Vauvenargues
One of the laws of paleontology is that an animal which must protect itself with thick armour is degenerate. It is usually a sign that the species is on the road to extinction.
John Steinbeck
Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
Mark Twain
To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
The fall of man stands a lie before Beethoven, a truth before Hitler.
Gregory Corso
At very best, a person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Cursed is every one who places his hope in man.
Saint Augustine
[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.
Edward Gibbon
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
T. S. Eliot
Manners
Dear Miss Manners: Please list some tactful ways of removing a man's saliva from your face.
Gentle Reader: Please list some decent ways of acquiring a man's saliva on your face …
Miss Manners
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide the lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as "empty," "meaningless," or "dishonest," and scorn to use them. No matter how "pure" their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.
Robert A. Heinlein
Market
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
John Maynard Keynes
The markets are moved by animal spirits, and not by reason.
John Maynard Keynes (paraphrased)
Markets are too complex to manipulate beneficially.
John Stossel
Marriage
No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes she were not.
H. L. Mencken
Marriage is our last, best chance to grow up.
Joseph Barth
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
Samuel Johnson
Marriage is neither heaven nor hell; it is simply purgatory.
Abraham Lincoln
When there's marriage without love, there will be love without marriage.
Benjamin Franklin
The Japanese have a word for it. It's judo—the art of conquering by yielding. The Western equivalent of judo is, "Yes, dear."
J. P. McEvoy
When a girl marries, she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one.
Helen Rowland
Marriage is a mistake every man should make.
George Jessel
As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.
Socrates (Attributed)
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and deaf husband.
Michel de Montaigne
A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished.
Zsa Zsa Gabor
By all means marry: If you get a good wife, you'll become happy; if you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
Socrates
Choose in marriage only a woman whom you would choose as a friend if she were a man.
Joubert
When should a man marry? A young man, not yet; an elder man, not at all.
Sir Francis Bacon
I like being single. I'm always there when I need me.
Art Leo
Is not marriage an open question, when it is alleged, from the beginning of the world, that such as are in the institution wish to get out, and such as are out wish to get in?
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
Benjamin Franklin
Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde
The average woman must inevitably view her actual husband with a certain disdain; he is anything but her ideal. In consequence, she cannot help feeling that her children are cruelly handicapped by the fact that he is their father.
H. L. Mencken
'Tis more blessed to give than receive; for example, wedding presents.
H. L. Mencken
We were happily married for eight months. Unfortunately, we were married for four and a half years.
Nick Faldo
What nonsense people talk about happy marriages! A man can be happy with any woman so long as he doesn't love her.
Oscar Wilde
When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
Sacha Guitry
When I was a young man, I vowed never to marry until I found the ideal woman. Well, I found her—but alas, she was waiting for the ideal man.
Robert Schuman
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
George Bernard Shaw
I belong to Bridegrooms Anonymous. Whenever I feel like getting married, they send over a lady in a housecoat and hair curlers to burn my toast for me.
Dick Martin
The hardest task in a girl's life is to prove to a man that his intentions are serious.
Helen Rowland
It is assumed that the woman must wait, motionless, until she is wooed. That is how the spider waits for the fly.
George Bernard Shaw
A husband is what is left of the lover after the nerve has been extracted.
Helen Rowland
Men are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.
Oscar Wilde
Marriage is the price men pay for sex, sex is the price women pay for marriage.
Author unidentified
I think of my wife, and I think of Lot,
And I think of the lucky break he got.
William Cole
We sleep in separate rooms, we have dinner apart, we take separate vacations—we're doing everything we can to keep our marriage together.
Rodney Dangerfield
Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
Phyllis Diller
I never knew what real happiness was until I got married. And by then it was too late.
Max Kauffmann
When a man brings his wife flowers for no reason—there's a reason.
Molly McGee
Take my wife … please!
Henny Youngman
Bride, n. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse, as a man shoots himself.
H. L. Mencken
I respect the institution of marriage. I have always thought that every woman should marry—and no man.
Benjamin Disraeli
A man's friendships are, like his will, invalidated by marriage.
Samuel Butler
I don't see why I have to make one man miserable when I can make so many men happy.
Ellyn Mustard
Marriage is the death of hope.
Woody Allen
Sex alleviates tension. Marriage causes it.
Woody Allen
It should be a very happy marriage; they are both so much in love with him.
Irene Thomas
There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about.
Oscar Wilde
Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious; both are disappointed.
Oscar Wilde
I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry.
Rita Rudner
I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
Rita Rudner
When a woman marries again, it is because she detested her first husband. When a man marries again, it is because he adored his first wife. Women try their luck; men risk theirs.
Oscar Wilde
Metellus Numidicus, the censor, acknowledged to the Roman people, in a public oration, that had kind nature allowed us to exist without the help of women, we should be delivered from a very troublesome companion; and he could recommend matrimony only as the sacrifice of private pleasure to public duty.
Edward Gibbon
But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.
St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 7:28
But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife—and his interests are divided.
St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 7:33,34
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
Genesis 2:24
In the most rigorous [Roman] laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been dissolved by the hand of the executioner.
Edward Gibbon
A society in which marriage is encouraged and industry prevails soon repairs the accidental losses of pestilence and war …
Edward Gibbon
My wife doesn't care what I do when I'm away, as long as I don't have a good time.
Lee Trevino
I've traveled the world and been about everywhere you can imagine. There's not anything I'm scared of except my wife.
Lee Trevino
A man may be a fool and not know it—but not if he is married.
H. L. Mencken
What's the secret to a happy marriage? Lots of square feet [i.e. a big house] and 2 Tivos.
Adam Carolla (paraphrased)
You cannot pluck roses without fear of thorns,
Nor enjoy fair wife without danger of horns.
Author unidentified
My wife and I tried two or three times in the last few years to have breakfast together but it was so disagreeable we had to stop.
Winston Churchill
I am about to be married–and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness.
Lord Byron
The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. It's followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again.
Nora Ephron
The husband who wants a happy marriage should learn to keep his mouth shut and his cheque book open.
Groucho Marx (Attributed)
… gosh, maybe that's what true marriage is: two people who want each other to die.
Family Guy
[All] whom I have mentioned failed to obtain happiness, for want of considering that marriage is the strictest tie of perpetual friendship; that there can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity; and that he must expect to be wretched who pays to beauty, riches, or politeness that regard which only virtue and piety can claim.
Samuel Johnson
Martyrdom
The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.
Søren Kierkegaard
To die for an idea is to set a rather high price upon conjecture.
Anatole France
Although always prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it should be postponed.
Winston Churchill
Men reject their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and honor those whom they have slain.
Dostoevsky
Marxist
All I know is I'm not a Marxist.
Karl Marx
Mask
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
Oscar Wilde
Mathematics
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
Bertrand Russell
Media
Remember, son, many a good story has been ruined by over-verification.
James Gordon Bennett
The sports page records people's accomplishments, the front page usually records nothing but man's failures.
Earl Warren
For most folks, no news is good news; for the press, good news is not news.
Gloria Borger
To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
Aleister Crowley
An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff.
Adlai Stevenson
Medicine
The true aim of medicine is not to make men virtuous; it is to safeguard and rescue them from the consequences of their vices. The physician does not preach repentance; he offers absolution.
H. L. Mencken
Mediocrity
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
Joseph Heller
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
Somerset Maugham
Perseverance, n. A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Memory
God gave us memory that we might have roses in December.
James M. Barrie
I never forgive, but I always forget.
Arthur James Balfour
It isn't so astonishing, the number of things that I can remember, as the number of things I can remember that aren't so.
Mark Twain
Our memories are independent of our wills. It is not so easy to forget.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Men
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Frederick Douglass
MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY
Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.
Sir Ernest Shackleton
… any that pisseth against the wall.
1 Samuel 25:22 KJV, example of how the KJV refers to men
Men And Women
Like the ski resort of girls looking for husbands and husbands looking for girls, the situation is not as symmetrical as it might seem.
Alan McKay
The great question which I have not been able to answer, despite my 30 years of research into the feminine soul, is "What does woman want?"
Sigmund Freud
If a woman likes another woman, she's cordial. If she doesn't like her, she's very cordial.
Irvin S. Cobb
Women are like elephants. They are interesting to look at, but I wouldn't want to own one.
W. C. Fields
I dress for women—and I undress for men.
Angie Dickinson
The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows the average man can see much better than he can think.
Ladies' Home Journal
She was not a woman likely to settle for equality when sex gave her an advantage.
Anthony Delano
Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.
H. L. Mencken
A man is a person who will pay two dollars for a one-dollar item he wants. A woman will pay one dollar for a two-dollar item she doesn't want.
William Binger
I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back.
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Men become old, but they never become good.
Oscar Wilde
A woman wants a man who will satisfy her every want and need. A man wants every woman to satisfy his one want and need.
Author unidentified
I married beneath me–all women do.
Lady Nancy Astor
A wise woman will always let her husband have her way.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
When a man opens the car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife.
Prince Philip
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.
William Congreve
If I were asked … to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of [Americans] ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: to the superiority of their women.
Alexis de Tocqueville
When women kiss it always reminds me of prize-fighters shaking hands.
H. L. Mencken
She strode like a grenadier, was strong and upright like an obelisk, had a beautiful face, a candid brow, and not a thought of her own in her head.
Joseph Conrad
Disguise our bondage as we will,
'Tis woman, woman, rules us still.
Thomas Moore
'Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.
William Thackeray
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.
Samuel Johnson
A woman is a woman until the day she dies, but a man's a man only as long as he can.
Moms Mabley
Some men are alive only because it is illegal to kill them.
Author unidentified
A beautiful woman is a blessing from Heaven, but a good cigar is a smoke.
Kipling
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
Kin Hubbard
Brigands will demand your money or your life, but a woman will demand both.
Samuel Butler
Lady Nancy Astor: "Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee."
Winston Churchill: "Nancy, if you were my wife, I'd drink it."
Lady Nancy Astor and Winston Churchill
Let thy maidservant be faithful, strong, and homely.
Benjamin Franklin
Men's magazines often feature pictures of naked ladies. Women's magazines also often feature pictures of naked ladies. This is because the female body is a beautiful work of art, while the male body is hairy and lumpy and should not be seen by the light of day.
Richard Roeper
Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man, but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool.
Kipling
To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.
Benjamin Franklin
When there is an old maid in the house, a watch dog is unnecessary.
Honoré de Balzac
Women sometimes forgive a man who forces the opportunity, but never a man who misses one.
Charles De Talleyrand-Perigord
I asked a Burmese why women, after centuries of following their men, now walk ahead. He said there were many unexploded land mines since the war.
Robert Mueller
I don't mind living in a man's world as long as I can be a woman in it.
Marilyn Monroe
Whether women are better than men I cannot say—but I can say they are certainly no worse.
Golda Meir
She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
Oscar Wilde
Most women are not as young as they are painted.
Max Beerbohm
A man's womenfolk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity.
H. L. Mencken
Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
Charlotte Whitton
George Moore unexpectedly pinched my behind. I felt rather honored that my behind should have drawn the attention of the great master of English prose.
Ilka Chase
She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint—the universal act of women to proclaim ownership.
O. Henry
Young men want to be faithful, and are not; old men want to be faithless, and cannot.
Oscar Wilde
I've been in love with the same woman for forty-one years. If my wife finds out, she'll kill me.
Henny Youngman
Most women set out to try to change a man, and when they have changed him they do not like him.
Marlene Dietrich (Attributed)
On one issue at least, men and women agree: they both distrust women.
H. L. Mencken (Attributed)
Women do not like timid men. Cats do not like prudent rats.
H. L. Mencken
Misogynist, n. A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.
H. L. Mencken
No trust is to be placed in women.
Homer
There is no fouler fiend than a woman when her mind is bent to evil.
Homer
The gods have sent medicines for the venom of serpents, but there is no medicine for a bad woman. She is more noxious than the viper, or than fire itself.
Euripides
I trust only one thing in a woman: that she will not come to life again after she is dead. In all other things I distrust her.
Antiphanes
In point of morals, the average woman is, even for business, too crooked.
Stephen Leacock
Never trust a woman, even though she has given you ten sons.
Chinese Proverb
Woman, like good wine, is a sweet poison.
French Proverb
Women are like death: they pursue those who flee from them, and flee from those who pursue them.
German Proverb
A thousand men can easily live together in peace, but two women, even if they be sisters, can never do so.
Hindu Proverb
A man always blames the woman who fools him. In the same way he blames the door he walks into in the dark.
H. L. Mencken
To attract men, I wear a perfume called "New Car Interior."
Rita Rudner
Women have a hard time of it in this world. They are oppressed by man-made laws, man-made social customs, masculine egoism, the delusion of masculine superiority. Their one comfort is the assurance that, even though it may be impossible to prevail against man, it is always possible to enslave and torture a man.
H. L. Mencken
Women always excel men in that sort of wisdom which comes from experience. To be a woman is in itself a terrible experience.
H. L. Mencken
Women have simple tastes. They can get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.
H. L. Mencken
The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. To the average man, doomed to some banal drudgery all his life long, they offer the only grand hazard that he ever encounters. Take them away, and his existence would be as flat and secure as that of a moo-cow.
H. L. Mencken
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.
Oscar Wilde
Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.
Oscar Wilde
King Solomon loved many strange women.
1 Kings 11:1 (KJV)
On Valentine's Day, millions of men give millions of women flowers, cards and candy as a heartfelt expression of the emotion that also motivates men to observe anniversaries and birthdays: fear.
Dave Barry
Women in general seem to me to be appreciably more intelligent than men. A great many of them suffer in silence from the imbecilities of their husbands.
H. L. Mencken
In every age and country, the wiser, or at least the stronger, of the two sexes, has usurped the powers of the state, and confined the other to the cares and pleasures of domestic life.
Edward Gibbon
All other men govern their wives; but we command all other men, and our wives us.
Cato the Elder (Marcus Porcius Cato)
Women [in ancient Rome] were condemned to the perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians; a sex created to please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty spirit of the ancient law …
Edward Gibbon
[Thales] thanked fortune for three things: first of all, that he had been born a man and not a beast; secondly, that he was a man and not a woman; and thirdly, that he was a Greek and not a barbarian.
Diogenes Laertius
Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think—in a deeper voice.
Bill Cosby
If a woman has "It," she doesn't need anything else; but if she doesn't have "It," it doesn't matter what else she has.
Winston Churchill
No one attached to the traditional image of authoritarian patriarchy could imagine the consternation men endure. They have suffered an unexpected blow to the emotional quality of their lives. Its gravity has not been calculated. They have far fewer reliable links than women to the classic currents of family life. They are alienated not only, as Marx said, from the means of production but also from the means of reproduction.
Lionel Tiger
I noticed that the greatest changes observable were with the women, not the men. I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly; but their wives had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearing to be good.
Mark Twain
God created men and critics.
Author unidentified
Only the stupefying ignorance of young women prevents them from comprehending the stupefying emptiness of the men who cluster round them.
Richard Brookhiser
The young women who attract so much attention never change: They are all stupid. They have at best only the crudest notions of their own power, and never calculate motives or consequences. Giving a young woman a young woman's body makes as much sense as giving ten teenagers Lamborghinis and telling them to drive in figure 8s around a parking lot.
Richard Brookhiser
That is the really great thing about being an adult male, once you get married and have children the whole decision-making process is taken out of your hands, and I for one am extremely grateful.
P. J. O'Rourke
For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
Rudyard Kipling
My husband said he needed more space, so I locked him outside.
Rosanne Barr
Never marry a man who hates his mother, because he'll end up hating you.
Jill Bennett
I've never yet met a man who could look after me. I don't need a husband. What I need is a wife.
Joan Collins
Follow a shadow, it still flies you,
Seem to fly it, it will pursue:
So court a mistress, she denies you;
Let her alone, she will court you.
Say are not women truly, then,
Styl'd but the shadows of us men?
Ben Jonson
I finally figured out what men want. Men want a woman they can be incredibly intimate with … who will leave them alone.
Author unidentified
Mencken, H. L.
He [Mencken] was an autodidact, with all the misplaced confidence and all the astonishing gaps that characterize that breed. Not many of us would venture to write a book about democracy without ever having read de Tocqueville, nor embark on a translation of Nietzsche with only a sketchy knowledge of German.
John Derbyshire
Military
Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
Howell M. Forgy
Veni, vidi, vici.
I came, I saw, I conquered.
Julius Caesar
I dropped an aerial torpedo right in the center, and the group opened up like a flowering rose. It was most entertaining.
Vittorio Mussolini
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
C. E. Montague
They told me it would disrupt my life less if I got killed sooner.
Joseph Heller
In defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.
W. Churchill, on General Montgomery
These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.
Thomas Paine
As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.
Edward Gibbon
The progress of manufactures and commerce insensibly collects a large multitude within the walls of a city: but these citizens are no longer soldiers; and the arts which adorn and improve the state of civil society, corrupt the habits of the military life.
Edward Gibbon
[A] military force was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the generals had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the duty of obedience.
Edward Gibbon
Mind
I am not absent-minded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else.
G. K. Chesterton
Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
G. K. Chesterton
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of Hell, a hell of Heaven.
John Milton
[Riemann] had the type of mind that could hold only those things it found interesting, mathematics mostly.
John Derbyshire
Miracle
Everything is miraculous. It is miraculous that one does not melt in one's bath.
Pablo Picasso
Miscellaneous
"Are you lost daddy," I asked tenderly.
"Shut up," he explained.
Ring Lardner
He looked at me as if I were a side dish he hadn't ordered.
Ring Lardner
Misery
Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
Russell Baker
Misfortune
We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.
Samuel Johnson
What man ever blamed himself for his misfortune?
William Graham Sumner
Kings have long arms, but Misfortune longer:
Let none think themselves out of her reach.
Benjamin Franklin
Mistake
Most people are stupid. Nothing seems like a mistake until it's a mistake.
Samuel Halpern
Moderate
In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.
Edward Gibbon
Moderation
I have not been afraid of excess: excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
W. Somerset Maugham
Moderation is a fatal thing … Nothing succeeds like excess.
Oscar Wilde
Total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.
St. Augustine
Constantly practise abstinence and temperance, so that you may be as wakeful after eating as before.
E. L. Gruber
Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.
Cicero
Modesty
Don't be so humble. You're not that great.
Golda Meir
I was born modest; not all over, but in spots.
Mark Twain
I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have.
Leonardo da Vinci
Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
G. K. Chesterton
When you're as great as I am, it's hard to be humble.
Muhammed Ali
If only I had a little humility, I would be perfect.
Ted Turner
Money
He neither drank, smoked, nor rode a bicycle. Living frugally, saving his money, he died early, surrounded by greedy relatives. It was a great lesson to me.
John Barrymore
You can't force anyone to love you or to lend you money.
Jewish proverb
Money is the most egalitarian force in society. It confers power on whoever holds it.
Roger Starr
Make money and the whole world will conspire to call you a gentleman.
Mark Twain
Never invest your money in anything that eats or needs repairing.
Billy Rose
To be clever enough to get all that money, one must be stupid enough to want it.
G. K. Chesterton
Money swore an oath that nobody who did not love it should ever have it.
Irish Proverb
I was part of that strange race of people aptly described as spending their lives doing things they detest to make money they don't want to buy things they don't need to impress people they dislike.
Emile Henry Gauvreay
The holy passion of friendship is so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring in nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
Mark Twain
When a fellow says, "It ain't the money but the principle of the thing," it's the money.
Frank McKinney Hubbard ("Kin Hubbard")
When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.
Oscar Wilde
Money is a terrible master but an excellent servant.
P. T. Barnum
The chief value of money lies in the fact that one lives in a world in which it is overestimated.
H. L. Mencken
It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, as long as you've got money.
Joe E. Lewis
Money frees you from doing things you dislike. Since I dislike doing nearly everything, money is handy.
Groucho Marx
The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.
Katharine Whitehorn
There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.
John Maynard Keynes
He [Thomas Edison] considered [money] as a raw material, like metal, to be used rather than amassed, and so he kept plowing his funds into new projects. Several times he was all but bankrupt. But he refused to let dollar signs govern his actions.
Charles Edison
Gentlemen, if the man who invented compound interest had secured a patent on his idea he would have had without any doubt the greatest invention the world has ever produced.
Author unidentified
Monk
The peace of the Eastern church was invaded by a swarm of fanatics [monks], incapable of fear, or reason, or humanity; and the Imperial troops acknowledged, without shame, that they were much less apprehensive of an encounter with the fiercest Barbarians.
Edward Gibbon
Pleasure and guilt are synonymous terms in the language of the monks, and they discovered, by experience, that rigid fasts, and abstemious diet, are the most effectual preservatives against the impure desires of the flesh.
Edward Gibbon
The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition.
Edward Gibbon
I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: "My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince."—I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity.
Edward Gibbon
[The monks'] credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.
Edward Gibbon
[All] the manly virtues were oppressed by the servile and pusillanimous reign of the monks.
Edward Gibbon
[The monks'] minds were inaccessible to reason or mercy …
Edward Gibbon
Mood
If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.
Lau Tzu
Morality
When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.
Richard Nixon
It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses.
Mrs. Patrick Campbell, on homosexuality
All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal or fattening.
Alexander Woollcott
I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.
William F. Buckley
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
H. L. Mencken
Moral indignation is in most cases two percent moral, forty-eight percent indignation, and fifty percent envy.
Vittorio de Sica
Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.
Justice Louis D. Brandeis
There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.
Erich Fromm
In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with the current.
Thomas Jefferson
Any of us can achieve virtue, if by virtue we merely mean the avoidance of the vices that do not attract us.
Robert S. Lynd
[Sir Stafford Cripps] has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
Winston Churchill
I say that a man must be certain of his morality for the simple reason that he has to suffer for it.
G. K. Chesterton
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
G. K. Chesterton
He who postpones the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.
Horace
We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions which are unbridled by morality and true religion.
John Adams
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams
Not everything that is legal is reputable.
William F. Buckley
I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.
Theodore Parker
Moron
Nature abhors a moron.
H. L. Mencken
Mother
No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
Florida Scott-Maxwell
My mother had a good deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.
Mark Twain
Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother.
W. Somerset Maugham
Motivational
Become the person you know you should be.
Author unidentified
You can't do anything about what you've done, but you can do something about what you're going to do.
Author unidentified
Movie
I would have been more successful if I had left movies immediately. Stayed in the theater, gone into politics, written; anything. I've wasted a greater part of my life looking for money and trying to get along. Trying to make my work from this terribly expensive paint box, which is a movie. And I've spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie. It's about 2 percent movie making and 98 percent hustling. That's no way to spend a life.
Orson Welles
Murder
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together, who would escape hanging?
Mark Twain
Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one!
Author unidentified
English law does not permit good persons, as such, to strangle bad persons, as such.
T. H. Huxley
Music
The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes—ah, that is where the art resides!
Artur Schnabel
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
Igor Stravinsky
She said, "I know you … you cannot sing". I said, "That's nothing, you should hear me play piano."
Morrissey
When one woman was asked how long she had been going to symphony concerts, she paused to calculate and replied, "Forty-seven years—and I find I mind it less and less."
Louise Andrews Kent
I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.
Elvis Presley (Attributed)
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
Myth
If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.
Bertrand Russell
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Last updated: February 25, 2021