Attatude:
“A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”
Herm Albright
(1876 - 1944)
“Complaining is good for you as long as you're not complaining to the person you're complaining about.”
Lynn Johnston, For Better or For Worse, 11-06-03
Canadian cartoonist (1947
boredness:
“Bore, n.: A person who talks when you wish him to listen.”
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
US author & satirist (1842 - 1914)
A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.
Bert Leston Taylor, The So-Called Human Race (1922)
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Dorothy Parker, (attributed)
US author, humorist, poet, & wit (1893 - 1967)
Someone's boring me. I think it's me.
Dylan Thomas, in Rayner Heppenstall, Four Absentees (1960)
Welsh poet (1914 - 1953)
Every improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible.
Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
George Saunders, last words
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that when you bore people, they think it's their fault.
Henry Kissinger
US (German-born) diplomat & scholar (1923 - )
Death:
I'm afraid I'm being an awful nuisance.
Edith Sitwell, Her last words, as quoted in The Last Years of a Rebel : A Memoir of Edith Sitwell by Elizabeth Salter, 1967
English biographer, critic, novelist, & poet (1887 - 1964)
For three days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.
Johnny Carson
US comedian & television host (1925 - 2005)
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.
Joseph Stalin
Georgian Soviet politician (1879 - 1953)
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
Leonardo da Vinci
Italian engineer, painter, & sculptor (1452 - 1519)
Dreams:
Hope is a waking dream.
Aristotle, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC - 322 BC)
He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
Douglas Adams, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
English humorist & science fiction novelist (1952 - 2001)
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
Edgar Allan Poe, "Eleonora"
US short story author, editor, & poet (1809 - 1849)
You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, "Why not?"
George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methuselah" (1921), part 1, act 1
Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 - 1950)
It has never been my object to record my dreams, just to realize them.
Man Ray, O Magazine, September 2002
Last night I dreamed I ate a ten-pound marshmallow, and when I woke up the pillow was gone.
What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat guy in the third row exists?
Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
US movie actor, comedian, & director (1935 - )
Humour:
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
E. B. White, Some Remarks on Humor, introduction
US author & humorist (1899 - 1985)
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
Horace Walpole
English author (1717 - 1797)
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.
James Thurber, in Edward R. Murrow television interview
US author, cartoonist, humorist, & satirist (1894 - 1961)
Where humor is concerned there are no standards - no one can say what is good or bad, although you can be sure that everyone will.
John Kenneth Galbraith
US (Canadian-born) administrator & economist (1908 - 2006)
One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.
Humor is our way of defending ourselves from life's absurdities by thinking absurdly about them.
Lewis Mumford
US architect & sociologist (1895 - 1990)
Humor is a rubber sword - it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.
Humor is just another defense against the universe.
Mel Brooks
US actor, comedian, & movie director (1926 - )
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
Mel Brooks
US actor, comedian, & movie director (1926 -
Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
Robert Benchley
US actor, author, & humorist (1889 - 1945)
Life is tough, and if you have the ability to laugh at it you have the ability to enjoy it.
There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
Will Rogers
US humorist & showman (1879 - 1935)
Internet:
When I took office, only high energy physicists had ever heard of what is called the Worldwide Web.... Now even my cat has its own page.
Bill Clinton, announcement of Next Generation Internet initiative, 1996
42nd president of the United States (1946 - )
My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them.
Penn Jillette, in a Compuserve chat
US magician & showman (1955 - )
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
Peter Steiner, cartoon in The New Yorker, July 5, 1993
We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.
Robert Wilensky, speech at a 1996 conference
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.
William Gibson
US science fiction novelist in Canada (1948 - )
Luck:
People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.
Anne Tyler, Celestial Navigation
US novelist (1941 - )
We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don't like?
Jean Cocteau
French dramatist, director, & poet (1889 - 1963)
True luck consists not in holding the best of the cards at the table; luckiest is he who knows just when to rise and go home.
John Hay, Distichs, latter 19th century
US author & politician (1838 - 1905)
Luck is what you have left over after you give 100 percent.
Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
US essayist & poet (1803 - 1882)
