Cool Quotes - O

Much safer stands the bowing reed than doth the stubborn oak.

Great oaks from little acorns grow.

When you get there [Oakland], there isn't any there there.

The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there it's there!

The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.

Oaths are but words, and words but wind.

He that imposes an oath makes it,
Not he that for convenience takes it;
Then how can any man be said
To break an oath he never made?

You cannot be a true man until you learn to obey.

Obedience is not servitude of man to man, but submission to the will of God, who governs through the medium of men.

Obesity is a mental state, a disease brought on by boredom and disappointment.

A fat paunch never breeds fine thoughts.

She was two yards round the waist, her voice was at once loud and squeaking, and her face brought to my mind the picture of the full moon.

Our disputants put me in mind of the cuttlefish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him till he becomes invisible.

What's past and what's to come is strew'd with husks
And formless ruin of oblivion.

The brevity of our life, the dullness of our senses, the torpor of our indifference, the futility of our occupation, suffer us to know but little: and that little is soon shaken and then torn from the mind by that traitor to learning, that hostile and faithless stepmother to memory, oblivion.

A taste for dirty stories may be said to be inherent in the human animal.

It is obvious that 'obscenity' is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means 'anything that shocks the magistrate'.

I give the fight up: let there be an end,
A privacy, an obscure nook for me.
I want to be forgotten even by God.

How oft the highest talent lurks in obscurity!

If you would be well known of God, be unknown of men.

The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man.

He is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

You see, but you do not observe. The distinction is clear.

Nothing … will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.

October is nature's funeral month. Nature glories in death more than in life. The month of departure is more beautiful than the month of coming, — October than May. Every green thing loves to die in bright colors.

If there is anybody here I have not offended, I apologize.

And love the offender, yet detest the offense.

Men are more ready to offend one who desires. to be beloved than one who wishes to be feared.

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.

The very essence of a free government consists in considering offices as public trusts, bestowed for the good of the country, and not for the benefit of an individual or a party.

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

In politics we must choose between the strong man whose real interests are elsewhere and who will leave office the moment bigger opportunity beckons, and the weakling who will cling because he can't hold a job anywhere else. Public office is the last refuge of the incompetent.

A General Officer who will invariably assume the responsibility for failure, whether he deserves it or not, and invariably give the credit for success to others, whether they deserve it or not, will achieve outstanding success.

Every time I fill a vacant place I make a hundred malcontents and one ingrate.

I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines.

Nature abhors the old.

One should keep to old roads and old friends.

I want a house that has got over all its troubles; I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.

Grandchildren don't make a man feel old; it's the knowledge that he's married to a grandmother.

Who knows whether in retirement I shall be tempted to the last infirmity of mundane minds, which is to write a book.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

If I'd known I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself.

A man is only as old as the woman he feels.

"Next year? Peter, at my age I don't even buy green bananas."

When death comes near the old find that age is no longer burdensome.

When our vices quit us we flatter ourselves with the belief that it is we who quit them.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

It is not the end of joy that makes old age so sad, but the end of hope.

It is the common calamity of old age, to lose whatever might have rendered it desirable.

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

[But] age, the common enemy of mankind, has laid his hand upon you; would that it had fallen upon some other, and that you were still young.

I am able to say that while I am not ruggedly well, I am not ill enough to excite an undertaker.

It takes some little time to accept and realize the fact that while you have been growing old, your friends have not been standing still, in that matter.

… at the wrong end of life …

Everybody my age should be issued with a 2 lb fresh salmon. If you see someone young, beautiful and happy, you should slap them as hard as you can with it.

Old age, by blanching the seat of reason, may cut off the fear of death even in a once imaginative mind, or it may, on the other hand, undermine fortitude, softening the will.

A person is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.

Now that I have reached old age, how I hate it!

Old people have fewer diseases than the young, but their diseases never leave them.

One of his feet is already in the grave.

When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.

Old age consoles itself by giving good precepts for being unable to give bad examples.

Old age makes us wiser and more foolish.

We hope to grow old, and yet we dread old age.

Life protracted is protracted woe.

By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be growing old.

One evil in old age is that, as your time is come, you think every little illness is the beginning of the end. When a man expects to be arrested, every knock at the door is an alarm.

How earthy old people become,—mouldy as the grave! … They remind me of earthworms and mole crickets.

A man over ninety is a great comfort to all his elderly neighbors: he is a picket-guard at the extreme outpost; and the young folks of sixty and seventy feel that the enemy must get by him before he can come near his camp.

Age does not increase sense; it only makes one go slower.

King Solomon and King David
Led very merry lives,
With very many concubines
And very many wives,
Until old age came creeping,
With very many qualms,
Then Solomon wrote the Proverbs
And David wrote the Psalms.

My playfellows were grown old, and forced me to suspect that I was no longer young.

Age is a very stubborn disease.

I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old, being so full of unmannerly sadness in his youth.

A good old man, sir; he will be talking: as they say,
When the age is in, the wit is out.

If you want to be adored by your peers and have standing ovations wherever you go—live to be over ninety.

I am declin’d
Into the vale of years.

The old are in a second childhood.

There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not remember where he laid his hat, it is nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders, and say, "His memory is going."

In youth, however unhappy, we solace ourselves with the hope of better fortune, and however vicious, appease our consciences with intentions of repentance; but the time comes at last, in which life has no more to promise, in which happiness can be drawn only from recollection, and virtue will be all that we can recollect with pleasure.

Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of old age, that age appears to be best in four things,—old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

If men imagine that excess of debauchery can be made reverend by time, that knowledge is the consequence of long life, however idly or thoughtlessly employed, that priority of birth will supply the want of steadiness or honesty, can it raise much wonder that their hopes are disappointed, and that they see their posterity rather willing to trust their own eyes in their progress into life, than enlist themselves under guides who have lost their way?

Few people know how to be old.

If you could shew them, that though they may refuse to grow wise, they must inevitably grow old; and that the proper solaces of age are not musick and compliments, but wisdom and devotion; that those who are so unwilling to quit the world will soon be driven from it; and that it is therefore their interest to retire while there yet remain a few hours for nobler employments.

To me old age is always fifteen years older than I am.

The most usual support of old age is wealth.

It is a fact that no man improves much after the age of 60 and after 65, most suffer a really alarming decline. I could give some examples, but at the advice of my publisher will refrain from doing so.

Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.

It is a man's own fault, it is from want of use, if his mind grows torpid in old age.

What is called the serenity of age is only perhaps a euphemism for the fading power to feel the sudden shock of joy or sorrow.

With full-span lives having become the norm, people may need to learn how to be aged as they once had to learn how to be adult.

Do not cast me away when I am old; do not forsake me when my strength is gone.

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made.

What is the worst of woes that wait on age?
What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow?
To view each loved one blotted from life's page,
And be alone on earth, as I am now.

My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
The worm, the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!

Old-age, a second child, by Nature cursed
With more and greater evils than the first,
Weak, sickly, full of pains; in ev'ry breath
Railing at life, and yet afraid of death.

That sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.

But years hath done this wrong,
To make me write too much, and live too long.

Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.

No, that is the great fallacy: the wisdom of old men. They do not grow wise. They grow careful.

Nature abhors the old, and old age seems the only disease; all others run into this one.

No man is ever so old but he thinks he can live another year.

You must begin to be an old man early if you wish to be an old man long.

An old man is twice a child.

Before a man comes to be wise he is half dead with gouts and consumption, with catarrhs and aches, with sore eyes and a worn-out body.

Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.

A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.

Oh, to be seventy again!

The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning.

My second fixed idea is the uselessness of men above sixty years of age, and the incalculable benefit it would be in commercial, political, and in professional life, if as a matter of course, men stopped work at this age.

Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.

Few know how to be old. (Peu de gens savent être vieux.)

Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form.

What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.

Sometimes it is inconceivable that I should be the age I am.

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth.

Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.

You will be old-fashioned one day. It’s more shocking than getting old.

Most people my age are dead.

It’s nice to be here. When you’re 99 years old, it’s nice to be anywhere.

How confusing the beams from memory’s lamp are; One day a bachelor, the next a grampa. What is the secret of the trick? How did I get so old so quick?

One great thing about getting old is that you can get out of all sorts of social obligations just by saying you're tired.

At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.

We keep saying old people are square. Then when they suddenly aren’t—we don’t like it!

The only thing for old age is a brave face, a good tailor and comfortable shoes.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven't committed.

Therefore my age is as a lusty winter,
Frosty, but kindly.

The oldest hath borne most: we that are young,
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

A man who reviews the old so as to find out the new is qualified to teach others.

It is amazing how little Goldsmith knows. He seldom comes where he is not more ignorant than any one else.

No man was more foolish when he [Goldsmith] had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.

Because he spills his seed on the ground.

How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.

No good opera plot can be sensible … People do not sing when they are feeling sensible.

I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand.

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.

In opera the text must be the obedient daughter of the music.

I have sat through an Italian opera till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded streets, to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment of endless, fruitless, barren attention.

An exotic and irrational entertainment, which has been always combated, and always has prevailed.

He who says what he likes shall hear what he does not like.

Public opinion is a compound of folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.

Too often we … enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

You've no idea what a poor opinion I have of myself—and how little I deserve it.

Absurdity, n. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

Opinions are the cheapest commodities in the world.

We think very few people sensible, except those who are of our opinion.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

What the historian Elie Kedourie called "the Chatham House Version"—that toxic amalgam of smugness, moral relativism, and cherished feelings of guilt about the achievements of Western civilization—everywhere nurtured the catechism of established opinion.

You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

He that complies against his will
Is of his own opinion still.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

Some praise at morning what they blame at night,
But always think the last opinion right.

It is much easier to burn men than to burn their opinions.

Opinionative confidence is the effect of ignorance.

It is a golden rule that one should never judge men by their opinions, but rather by what their opinions make of them.

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Men are never so good or so bad as their opinions.

The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

Circumstances are the creators of most men's opinions.

Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.

Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.

If you enjoy the opinions you possess, if they give you a glow, be suspicious. They may be possessing you. An opinion should be treated like a guest who is likely to stay too late and drink all the whiskey.

We are ready to die for an opinion but not for a fact: indeed, it is by our readiness to die that we try to prove the factualness of our opinion.

Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!

What is more mortifying than to feel that you have missed the plum for want of courage to shake the tree?

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Delay not; swift the flight of fortune's greatest favours.

There is an hour in each man's life appointed
To make his happiness, if then he seize it.

When one door shuts, another opens.

Why, then the world's mine oyster,
Which I with sword will open.

It is doubtful if the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power—power to oppress others. The oppressed want above all to imitate their oppressors; they want to retaliate.

[Optimism] is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell.

For myself I am an optimist—it does not seem to be much use being anything else.

Many of the optimists in the world don't own a hundred dollars, and because of their optimism never will.

My center is giving way, my right is pushed back, situation excellent, I am attacking.

The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

If one truly has lost hope, one would not be on hand to say so.

He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hopes for the human condition is a fool.

There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times.

What fresh hell is this?

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is one who hopes they are.

An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; a pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.

He can best be described as one of those orators who, before they get up, do not know what they are going to say; when they are speaking, do not know what they are saying; and when they have sat down, do not know what they have said.

He who has no hands
Perforce must use his tongue;
Foxes are so cunning
Because they are not strong.

Whoever can speak well can also lie well.

The better the orator the worse the man. (Bonus orator, pessimus vir.)

The object of oratory is not truth but persuasion.

The thoughtless are rarely wordless.

In an orchard there should be enough to eat, enough to lay up, enough to be stolen, and enough to rot upon the ground.

There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.

The trouble about obeying orders is, it becomes a habit. And then everything depends on who's giving the orders.

Nothing is orderly till man takes hold of it. Everything in creation lies around loose.

Never search for the origin of a saint, a river, or a woman.

What a good thing Adam had—when he said a good thing, he knew nobody had said it before.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.

My guess is that well over 80 percent of the human race goes through life without having a single original thought.

A plague on these moderns scrambling for what they call originality—like men trying to lift themselves off the earth by pulling at their own braces: as if by shutting their eyes to the work of the masters they were likely to create new things themselves.

No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work’s sake, and what men call originality will come through.

Now the world in general doesn't know what to make of originality; it is startled out of its comfortable habits of thought, and its first reaction is one of anger.

Originality is not something continuous but something intermittent—a flash of the briefest duration. One must have the time and be watchful (be attuned) to catch the flash and fix it. One must know how to catch and preserve these scant flakes of gold sluiced out of the sand and rocks of everyday life. Originality does not come nugget-size.

So may the outward shows be least themselves:
The world is still deceived with ornament.

Fanatical orthodoxy is in all movements a late development. It comes when the movement is in full possession of power and can impose its faith by force as well as by persuasion.

He [George Orwell] put his faith in man but, looking at the object of his devotion too closely, lost it.

To find the cause of our ills in something outside ourselves, something specific that can be spotted and eliminated, is a diagnosis that cannot fail to appeal. To say that the cause of our troubles is not in us but in the Jews, and pass immediately to the extermination of the Jews, is a prescription likely to find a wide acceptance.

A wise old owl sat on an oak,
The more he saw the less he spoke;
The less he spoke the more he heard;
Why aren't we like that wise old bird?

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.

I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead—not sick, not wounded—dead.

Oysters are a cruel meat because we eat them alive; then they are an uncharitable meat, for we leave nothing to the poor.