Len > Len's Quotes

“The vegetable kingdom still remains one of the few which Napoleon has not yet conquered.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, Uncle Bernac

“A story given in Lillian Hellman's Scoundrel Time.

While attending the funeral of Hollywood producer Harry Cohn with a large number of mourners a friend said to George Jessel - I never saw such a mob at a funeral.

Jessel replied - Same old story: you give 'em what they want and they'll fill the theater.”
― George Jessel

“On top of pique, umbrage, and ennui. Oh, the French diseases of the soul.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“All in all, Varya felt much the same as she had in the restaurant of the Hotel Royale when the men had caught the scent of blood and run wild, entirely forgetting that she even existed - yet another proof that by his very nature man was closer to the animal world than woman, that the feral principle was more pronounced in man, and therefore the true variety of Homo Sapiens was indeed woman, the more advanced, subtle and complex being.”
― Boris Akunin, The Turkish Gambit

“Once every year for four days the tens of thousands of Athenian citizens sat in the open air on the stone seats at the side of the Acropolis and from sunrise to sunset watched the plays of the competing dramatists. All that we have to correspond is a Test match. The manner in which the drama arrived will tell us something valuable about Test matches and (for the moment let us whisper it) the way Test matches arrived may start a trail into that vexed question: the origin of Greek drama. There are so many that another wouldn't hurt.”
― C. L. R. James

“It never ceases to amaze, how often sex and love lead to murder and hatred.”
― Sparkle Hayter, The Chelsea Girl Murders

“MAN, n.
An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.”
― Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

“I've been accused of vulgarity. I say that's bullshit.”
― Mel Brooks

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.”
― Woody Allen

“My dad was the town drunk. Most of the time that's not so bad; but New York City?”
― Henny Youngman

“My definition of an intellectual is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.”
― Billy Connolly

“I only wish I had drunk more champagne.”
― John Maynard Keynes

“Come on, men! They can't shoot straight at this dis...”
― unknown military commander

“Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum.

(English: "I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am")”
― Rene Descartes (Principles of Philosophy)

“When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not playing with me rather than I with her?”
― Michel de Montaigne

“I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.”
― P.G. Wodehouse

“As she watched, one evening, he seated himself at dinner and said: 'Madame, you look absolutely exquisite tonight.'

'Thank you.' She passed the corn.”
― Ray Bradbury, A Literary Encounter, in We'll Always Have Paris

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.”
― A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.”
― W.C. Fields

“I imagine hell like this: Italian punctuality, German humour and English wine.”
― Peter Ustinov

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”
― Mark Twain, Notebook

“Wine is bottled poetry.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson

“Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.”
― Aristophanes

“The most enviable genius in literary history is the guy who invented alphabet soup: nobody knows who he is.”
― Philip Roth, The Anatomy Lesson

“This is not the position in life that I had hoped to fill. I want to be an obstetrician. Who quarrels with an obstetrician? Even the obstetrician who delivered Bugsy Siegel goes to bed at night with a clear conscience.”
― Philip Roth, The Anatomy Lesson

“You can always trust a man who tucks his shirt inside his underpants.”
― Bill Tidy, The Fosdyke Saga

“Who's got my Jaffa Cakes? You know I can't function without Jaffa Cakes.”
― Simon R. Green, Daemons Are Forever