Coolest little quotes/quips ever!

Abaddon

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Over time, i've saved up a few little things I thought were cool.
Do you have any yourself?
If so, please add to this thread.
Feel free to debate the truth, value (or lack of) in any of the sayings in this thread.


Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely; God is all-powerful. Draw your own conclusions

I am not a complete idiot, I lost some bits..

A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip

Sex is like air. It's not important unless you aren't getting any.

If you lend someone £10 and never see that person again, it was probably worth it.

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

Heaven for climate, Hell for society.

Ah, yes, divorce... from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet.

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

The rose may kiss the butterfly
a man may kiss his girl goodbye
the wine may kiss the crystal glass,
but you my friend, may kiss my ass!

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!

I first realised I was dyslexic when I went to a toga party dressed as a goat

I am not completely worthless; I can be used as a bad example.

The only time i don't want head is when i'm pouring a beer.

War does not determine who is right, it determines who is left

One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure its worth watching.
 
"Whatever it is, I'm against it." - Groucho Marx
 
More:

The more beautiful and pure a thing is- the more satisfying it is to corrupt it.
 
These are mostly things I made up myself (or rather, things that other people also know but not bothered writing them down), but some of them aren't:
Spoiler there's 123 of them :
# Don't ever, ever talk to anyone in a public toilet.
# It will always take you longer to do things than you estimate, even when taking this fact into account.
# Time heals all wounds, but sometimes leaves a scar.
# Women are always late for everything.
# Never underestimate the power of stupidity in large armies.
# Experience is no substitute for intelligence.
# Intelligence is no substitute for hard work.
# Hard work is no substitute for blinding luck.
# There's no such thing as a free lunch.
# There's nothing wrong with MSG.
# American football is actually quite entertaining.
# Nobody can ever drink as much as they claim to.
# World of Warcraft is the most powerful contraceptive known to mankind.
# World of Warcraft is the most addictive substance known to mankind.
# World of Warcraft atrophies both muscle and brain mass simultaneously.
# People respond to incentives.
# The tooth fairy is actually my mother, and is married to Father Christmas.
# The Beatles wrote 4 good songs.
# If it was possible to have ignored the problem, then ignoring it has made it go away.
# Nobody really knows what will make them happy.
# Good things come to those who wait... eventually -- if you wait around long enough anything can happen. The longer you wait the more likely it is something will happen during that time.
# Playing the guitar won't necessarily make you popular.
# Respect your elders because they have nothing left to look forward to but your respect.
# Naughty elephants squirt water.
# 90% of everything is crap.
# You run faster with a knife.
# Margaret Thatcher is not for turning.
# He who laughs last laughs alone.
# Everybody lies.
# He who shouts loudest probably has a small willy.
# Things that are supposed to cause blindness very rarely cause blindness.
# Everything either causes or prevents cancer.
# Everything either causes or prevents terrorism.
# All women like shoes.
# Professional athleticism is the only socially acceptable form of homoerotic entertainment.
# Quitting smoking is easy; not starting again is much harder.
# Science will eventually explain everything.
# There's nothing wrong with sugar-free coke.
# Externalities are always overpriced in left-wing governments and underpriced in right-wing governments.
# Don't ever play a game with someone who claims not to care about winning; they will either get bored and mess up the game, or are smug self-satisfied gits.
# Everything in London is about 30 minutes away.
# If you stare at the sun too long it starts turning blue.
# The only thing more painful than child-birth is child death.
# It's better to take Monday off than Friday.
# Never ask anyone if they have a case of the Mondays.
# Never tell anyone to calm down.
# Never tell anyone to cheer up.
# The universe is unfathomably big. There is no way you can possibly comprehend its vast expanse. And perhaps most remarkable of all, it's mostly empty.
# Evolution is unquestionably true.
# All religions are wrong.
# Water does not go down the drain the other direction in the southern hemisphere.
# If it's not in Wikipedia it isn't worth knowing.
# Sometimes you can do everything right and still end up losing -- and vice versa.
# Like buses, trouble always comes in trees.
# The "real world" is just as juvenile as school or university.
# People who claim to have attended the "university of life" or the "school of hard knocks" are insecure about and compensating for the fact that they didn't receive or weren't intelligent enough to receive a university education.
# If a member of the government claims that "the fundamentals of the economy are sound", they are wrong.
# Most junior politicians are well meaning.
# The glass is both half full and half empty.
# Starchy foods have lots of calories but very little fat.
# Most people aren't consistent enough in their behaviour for labels to be applicable.
# Beware false positives.
# Beware prior probability.
# Never attribute to wilful intent what can adequately be explained by luck.
# Turning it off and on again works for the vast majority of technological problems.
# Sometimes things just go wrong.
# The law is a decent proxy for morality in cases not important enough for you to have given much thought yet.
# Peanut butter and jam sandwiches taste good and provide a lot of calories.
# The end is not nigh.
# Things never look so bad in the morning, unless you were drunk the night before.
# Women often struggle to open jars and bottles.
# If you hold a door open for someone several steps behind, they will hurry.
# Receipts are recyclable.
# The tastiest sandwich is the New York Deli Pastrami sandwich.
# Both mustard and mayonnaise go really well with chips.
# All women like food.
# Banks are amazing.
# Never be rude to call centre staff.
# Never sit to the left of a left-handed person in school.
# Cotton buds cost less than a penny each.
# Comparative advantage is misunderstood by almost everybody.
# Quantum mechanics is misunderstood by almost everybody.
# Relativity is misunderstood by almost everybody.
# Never answer the telephone.
# Always carry with you a pen, paper, and a calculator.
# There is not a single good reason to be bored when a wealth of information on any subject imaginable can be found with a 5-second google or wiki search.
# Percentages are different to Percentage points.
# The disutility of losing an object is perceived to be greater than the utility of acquiring the same object.
# Language can be incredibly powerful.
# No problem has ever been solved with a run-on sentence.
# Everyone is weird.
# Sometimes, change is good; other times, change is bad.
# Calendars are very useful.
# Britain does, in fact, have a written constitution.
# Goggles do nothing
# The train from Epsom to Waterloo during morning rush hour is always 5 minutes late
# The Daily Mail is trash.
# Some art is good.
# The only songs worth writing contain only 3 chords: I, IV and V.
# Sunsets are beautiful.
# Bananas are the perfect snack.
# August is a slow news month.
# Most stock market "experts" have a lower success rate than random guessing.
# Liquorice is not made from liquor and rice.
# The BBC News website is amazing.
# If your boss or a girl asks your opinion, always find out what their opinion is, and agree with it.
# Sometimes, respect is deserved without question.
# If you align yourself with self-serving people, they can often be manipulated to serve you instead.
# Compromise suggests a loss for both sides; make sure you can afford your loss.
# When a woman tells you about their problems, she’s seeking sympathy; when a man does it, he’s seeking solutions.
# A predictable, well-worn path to success may be boring, but will still guarantee success.
# Interviewers want to hire you, otherwise you wouldn’t be sat in front of them.
# Sometimes, it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.
# You’re the only person in the room that cares if you can dance, so do it anyway.
# It’s quite possible for the majority to be above average, if the distribution is skewed and average is taken to be the mean.
# Knowledge is never, ever, useless.
# If you’re trying to impress a girl, don’t be rude to the waiter.
# If you lend someone £20 and never see them again, it was probably worth it.
# There are two ways of winning an argument with a woman, and neither of them works.
# No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.
# Never test the depth of water with both feet.
# Simplicity is the height of sophistication.
# If all else fails, reverse the shield polarity.


"Never answer the telephone" is the only one worth remembering tbh.
 
I notice that people in academia love to use little sayings from famous authors/philosophers/etc. to prove a point as if they are authoritative statements, when in reality it's just a vague or banal sentence that only carries weight because Aristotle or Shakespeare said it, or something. Makes for a pretty epigraph in a book chapter, but it's juvenile and annoying. Conversely, they take one sentence from an author they don't like and take it apart to critique him or her, and declare the person wrong.

It also bothers me when people use one-line proverbs like this in real life as if they are authoritative equations about what to do and think, and adamently stick to them. E.g. "my grandmother always said [insert quaint/vague proverb], therefore I'm going to/not going to do X."

Is it just me that happens to run into these people? Are there sayings or proverbs that you have found to be genuinely thoughtful and useful?
 
I notice that people in academia love to use little sayings from famous authors/philosophers/etc. to prove a point as if they are authoritative statements, when in reality it's just a vague or banal sentence that only carries weight because Aristotle or Shakespeare said it, or something. Makes for a pretty epigraph in a book chapter, but it's juvenile and annoying. Conversely, they take one sentence from an author they don't like and take it apart to critique him or her, and declare the person wrong.

It also bothers me when people use one-line proverbs like this in real life as if they are authoritative equations about what to do and think, and adamently stick to them. E.g. "my grandmother always said [insert quaint/vague proverb], therefore I'm going to/not going to do X."

Is it just me that happens to run into these people? Are there sayings or proverbs that you have found to be genuinely thoughtful and useful?
Code:
"A witty saying proves nothing."
- Voltaire :D

Some of my favourites:

Code:
"Even I'm not perfect - all the flaws are missing."
- someone
Code:
"It's better to fail grandly than to victor modestly."
- someone
Code:
"I am not ok. You are not ok. And that is ok."
- someone
Code:
"A man who can utter nothing beautiful of a shovel, ought to be made to use it."
~ Oscar Wilde (paraphrasing)
Code:
"Calm down, my dear! Stillbirth is a sign that God has a sense of humor!"
~ Wilde (a bit cruel to be his though - but it is horribly hilarious :eek: :lol:)
Code:
"An artist never knows whether to commit suicide or throw a party."
- Agatha Christie
Code:
"If you don't accept your fate, you may choose your destiny."
- me (I think)
Code:
"If you never push anyone, you're always in someone's way"
- me (I hope)

Yes, I like my own sayings the best. Especially this last one:
Code:
"Arrogance - keeping superior people sane since 50,000 BC."
That would make a grand caption, but I still haven't found the right picture for it... :scan:
 
I came up with another one today while trying to decide what to have for lunch:

"What doesn't kill you only makes life longer."
 
Kinda cool one there Mise.
 
One quip I know is from my avatar's childhood.

Churchill had been at Harrow, the 2nd best school in England. But when he was 14-15 he went to Eton - the best school in the world. He went into the toilet and after he left a prefect confronted him: "Wash your hands" Churchill responded: "At Harrow we didn't piss on our hands!"!

Even then he was a genius!

I invented a quote in a drunken haze - yet I'm unsure if I had subconciously absorbed it in the daily routine of things or if it is a case of original thinking: "Peace without honor is just a truce" Sounds asian to me.
 
"We're all of us laying in the gutter, but some of us are staring at the stars."

Wilde, epitaph on his memorial on St Martin's lane.

Spoiler :
The memorial is built to allow convenient testing of this theory

2574860286_ac7f1bd5d5.jpg



"Either that wallpaper goes or I do"

Wilde's last words.
 
One quip I know is from my avatar's childhood.

Churchill had been at Harrow, the 2nd best school in England. But when he was 14-15 he went to Eton - the best school in the world. He went into the toilet and after he left a prefect confronted him: "Wash your hands" Churchill responded: "At Harrow we didn't piss on our hands!"!

Even then he was a genius!

I've always seen it rendered as -

"CHURCHILL! At Eton we wash our hands after we piss!

Really? At Harrow we didn't piss on our hands".
 
Upon hearing a pregnant friend remark that she was looking for tips to help her induce labor, I suggested, "Swallow a quarter. It work's for gumball machines."

"You can't get ahead while getting even." -- Dick Armey

"Sometimes doing the right thing is not always that which will save you." -- Myself.

"I love (..) honor, more than I fear death." -- Gaius Julius Caesar

"Were it to be that all my efforts and ambition would shorten my life at every attempt, then I would welcome death all the sooner." -- Myself.

"It is never too late to become what you might have been." -- George Eliot

"Sometimes doing the right thing is not always that which will save you." -- Myself
 
Can we please add more comedy? I've not wanted to save any of the suggested ones yet!

Never go around with a mans wife, unless you can go a round with her husband.
 
More comedy? Like these:

The difference between rape and ecstasy is the sales technique.
- Lord Thomson of Fleet

Work is the curse of the Drinking class.
- Oscar Wilde

We have come so far, that when we fold our hands and pray for our daily bread, then it is implicit that it should be topped with caviar and smoked salmon.

Don't know who said the last one though. :sad:
 
Kinda, up the sillyness perhaps?


Never play leapfrog with a unicorn
 
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