Cool Quotes - O

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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 earthly old people become — mouldy as the grave … They remind me of earthworms.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The object of oratory is not truth but persuasion.

They talk most who have the least to say.

The thoughtless are rarely wordless.

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.

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.

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