Quote Collection
Lord grant me the strength to change what I can, the ability to
accept what I can't, and the capacity to tell the difference.
??? John Calvin ???
People always get what they ask for; the only trouble is that they never
know, until they get it, what they have asked for.
Aldous Huxley
In language, clarity is everything.
Confucius
Great things can be reduced to small things, and small things can be
reduced to nothing.
Chinese Proverb
God created the integers; all the rest is the work of man.
Leopold Kronecker
Yea, from the table of my memory,
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records.
Shakespeare, Hamlet
[Pointers] are like jumps, leaping wildly from one part of data
structure to another. Their introduction into high-level languages has
been a step backward from which we may never recover.
C. A. R. Hoare
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
Joyce Kilmer, Trees
An average English word is four letters and a half. By hard, honest
labor I've dug all the large words out of my vocabulary and shaved it
down till the average is three and a half...
Mark Twain
Wer zuletzt lacht, lacht am besten.
(He who laughs last, laughs best.)
Wenn die Katze aus dem Haus ist, tanzen die Mäuse.
(When the cat's away, the mice will play.)
What we have to learn to do we learn by doing.
Aristotle
There was things which he strechted, but mainly he told the truth.
Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn
Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whenever you say something to them,
they translate it into their own language, and at once it is something
entirely different.
Goethe
Woe to the author who always wants to teach! The secret of being a bore
is to tell everything.
Voltaire
Important references are given in boldface. Italicized numbers indicate
fleeting references, wheras numbers in parentheses refer to mere
implications or unwarranted extrapolations. Asterisks are used to
identifiy particularly distasteful passages.
Peter Schickele, The Definitive Biography of P.D.Q. Bach
All such expressions as \sqrt(-1),
\sqrt(-2)... are neither nothing, nor greater than
nothing, nor less than nothing, which necessarily constitutes them
imaginary or impossible.
L. Euler
We have more useless information than ignorance of what is useful.
Vauvenargues
I can only assume that a "Do Not File" document is filed in a "Do Not
File" file.
Senator Frank Church
Programming graphics in X is like finding \sqrt(\pi)
using roman numerals.
Von guten Maechten wunderbar geborgen, erwarten wir getrost,
was kommen mag. Gott ist mit uns am Abend und am Morgen, und ganz
gewiss an jedem neuen Tag.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.
Albert Einstein
It's only work if somebody makes you do it.
Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes
Life's disappointments are harder to take when you don't know any
swear words.
Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes
People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't
realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.
Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes
There's an inverse relationship between how good something is for you,
and how much fun it is.
Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes
There's no problem so awful that you can't add some guilt to it and
make it even worse.
Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes
That's the remarkable thing about life. No matter how bad it gets, it
can always get worse.
Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin: Boy, what a day...I went to school, played outside, and did my
homework. I'm exhausted. [To dad:] You know what time it is now?
Dad: Uh, 7:35.
Calvin: It's Miller Time...
Calvin and Hobbes
Calvin: What's it like to fall in love?
Hobbes: Well...Say the object of your affection walks by. First, your
heart falls into your stomach and splashes your innards. All the
moisture makes you sweat profusely. This condensation shorts the
circuits to your brain, and you get all woozy. When your brain burns
out altogether, your mouth disengages and you babble like a cretin
until she leaves.
Calvin: That's love?!?
Hobbes: Medically speaking.
Calvin: Heck, that happened to me once, but I
figured it was cooties!
Calvin and Hobbes
Hobbes: Did you ask your Mom if you could jump off the roof?
Calvin: Questions I know the answers to, I don't need to ask, right?
Calvin and Hobbes
Hobbes: How come we play war and not peace?
Calvin: Too few role models.
Calvin and Hobbes
The Lord bless and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.
Numbers 6:24-26 (NIV)
Applicants must also have extensive knowledge of Unix, although they should
have sufficiently good programming taste to not consider this an achievement.
MIT AI Lab job ad in Comm. of the ACM, vol. 35, no. 6,
June 1992, pp. 160
You are what you think, not what you do.
He knew not what to say and so he swore.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
Benjamin Franklin
The fault finder will find fault even in paradise.
Henry David Thoreau
After silence, that which can come nearest to expressing the
inexpressible is music.
Aldous Huxley
Little things affect little minds.
Benjamin Disraeli
When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
Charles Caleb Colton
Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of existence. Laugh at
your mistakes but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather
strength from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome
them. Isn't that worth learning?
L. M. Montgomery
We live, as we dream--alone.
Joseph Conrad
Our happiness or unhappiness depends solely on the quality of the
object we love.
Unknown
It is much easier to suppress a first desire than to satisfy those
which follow.
de La Rouchefoucauld
There is no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day.
Alexander Woollcott
For anything worth having one must pay, and the price is always work,
patience, love and self-sacrifice.
John Burroughs
It is the height of absurdity to sow little but weeds in the first half of
one's lifetime and expect to harvest a valuable crop in the second half.
Percy Johnston
You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
Joseph Conrad
All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.
Benedict Spinoza
We learn to live by living with others.
Thomas Merton
I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength
from distress, and grow brave by reflection.
Unknown
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Arthur Godfrey
To know what is right and not to do it is the worst cowardice.
Confucius
I can usually judge a fellow by what he laughs at.
Wilson Mizner
No God, no peace; know God, know peace.
Unknown
Some walls have ears, but some ears have walls.
Unknown
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace
and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep
and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (NIV)
Do the best you can for your neighbor. Never forget from where you come.
And see if you can improve the lot of your fellow man.
Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
Als je je kont verbrand dan moet je op de blaren zitten.
(If you burn your butt, then you have to sit on the blisters.)
old Dutch saying
Hoge bomen vangen veel wind.
(Tall trees catch a lot of wind.)
old Dutch saying
My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
Adlai Stevenson
In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use
through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which
will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
Mark Twain
It's not denial. I'm just very particular about the reality I choose to accept.
Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be
offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series
of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the
merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the
entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the
entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the
food be omitted.
Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour
To me, a lawyer is basically the person that knows the rules of the country.
We're all throwing the dice, playing the game, moving our pieces around the
board, but if there is a problem the lawyer is the only person who has read the
inside of the top of the box.
Jerry Seinfeld
That's one small step for [a ?] man, one giant leap for mankind.
Neil Armstrong, 20 July 1969
A man is handsome all his life, but a woman is only sexy until she's your wife.
Al Bundy
Strive for perfection in everything. Take the best that exists and make it
better. If it doesn't exist, create it. Accept nothing nearly right or
good enough.
Sir Henry Royce, co-founder of Rolls-Royce
There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want.
Calvin in Calvin and Hobbes
As we acquire more knowldege, things do not become more comprehensible,
but more mysterious
Albert Schweitzer
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly
stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I
was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
Mark Twain
The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, III, iii, 147
When you hire people that are smarter than you are, you prove you are
smarter than they are.
R. H. Grant
A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.
Walter Winchell
What we say is important...for in most cases the mouth speaks what the
heart is full of.
Jim Beggs
...it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. If you
want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have
his own way.
Josh Billings
It is completely unimportant. That is why it is so interesting.
Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
A distributed system is one in which I cannot get something done because a
machine I've never heard of is down.
Leslie Lamport
We judge others by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions.
Jerry Wunder
One test is worth a thousand expert opinions.
Bill Nye, the Science Guy
Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things.
Lazarus Long in Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein
If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't
understand it yourself.
Albert Einstein
Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.
B.F. Skinner, "Education in 1984", New Scientist, May 21, 1964, p. 484
Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is
fear itself.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address, 1933
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein
The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.
Winston Churchill
I dare not speak ill of any man behind his back, but I believe the man
is an attorney.
Samuel Johnson
The computer is unbeatable for dashing quick thoughts off to strangers
[and] as a way of procrastinating sending messages to friends.
Judith Martin (Miss Manners)
It is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to
open it and erase all doubt.
Mark Twain
A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.
Paul Erdos
O! This learning, what a thing it is.
Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
Dorothy Parker
Knowledge itself is power.
Francis Bacon
In religion and politics, people's beliefs and convictions are in
almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.
Mark Twain
Love: a temporary insanity, curable by marriage.
Ambrose Bierce
It is never too late to give up your prejudices.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
...A fine lass, of nice ways and orderly conduct, none ever seeing her
drunk above four days in the seven.
Mark Twain, The Prince and the Pauper
Math was always my bad subject. I couldn't convince my teachers that
many of my answers were meant ironically.
writer Calvin Trillin
By all means marry. If you have a good wife, you will be happy. If you
have a bad wife, you will become a philosopher.
Socrates
An expert is just somebody from out of town.
Mark Twain
Behind every successful man, there stands a proud wife and a surprised
mother-in-law.
Harry S. Truman
He who is bent on doing evil can never want occasion.
Publilius Syrus, ca. 1st century BC, Maxims
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress.
But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
Bertrand Russell
Nobody on his deathbed ever said: "I wish I'd spent more time at the
office."
Peter Lynch, former manager of the Magellan Fund, who left his job in
1990 at 46 (the age at which his father died), to devote time to his
family and his favorite Boston charities. (quoted in
Money 1993)
I have lifted this speech from Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. If
more people would acknowledge that they got their pearls of wisdom from
that book instead of the original, it might clear the air.
Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus
Do all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
To all the people you can
As long as ever you can.
John Wesley (1703-91), founder of Methodism
A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points,
but it is by no means the most interesting.
Dr. Who
Eliminate the impossible and what ever remains, no matter how
improbable, is the truth.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes)
Education is not the filling of a bucket but the starting of a fire.
W.B. Yeats
From: qotd-request@ensu.ucalgary.ca (Quote of the day)
To: qotd@ensu.ucalgary.ca (Quote of the day mailing list)
Subject: Quote of the day
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 1997 03:50:02 -0600
I know the day it happens. On August 29, 1997 it's going to feel
pretty fucking real to you too. Anybody not wearing two million sun
block is going to have a real bad day. Get it?
Sarah Conner (played by Linda Hamilton), in
Terminator 2:
Judgement Day, offers a cheery thought for today. [In the film,
an unfortunate computer glitch leads to the near-destruction of the
Earth on this day. -ed.]
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.
(Everything said in Latin sounds lofty.)
A computer scientist is someone who, when told to "Go
to Hell," sees the "go to," rather than the destination, as harmful.
You never know where you're going 'til you get there
Daffy Duck
There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so
effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the
knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. One can find meaning
in life in three different ways: by creating a work or doing a deed; by
experiencing something or encoutering someone; and by the attitude we
take toward unavoidable suffering. We must never forget that we may
also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless
situation. I bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is
capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable.
Viktor E. Frankl, who survived Auschwitz and three other Nazi
concentration camps while losing his parents and other family
members. He later developed the "Third Vienna School" of
psychotherapy (after Freud and Adler) known as logotherapy, in which
man's primary motivational force is his search for meaning. (Quoted
in newswire obituaries -- Frankl died Sept. 2, 1997.)
In the arithmetic of love, one plus one equals everything, and two
minus one equals nothing.
Ninon de L'Enclos