Famous Quotes & Sayings

Robin McLeavy

When you take a character seriously, there's more room for comedy because you're not aware of how absurd you are.

Michael Leunig

Einstein was a great advocate of the notion that good ideas look absurd at the beginning. Camus expressed a similar view.

Dennis Hastert

unless the federal government adopts New Orleans as its ward and pays all its bills for the next 20 years--an unlikely to absurd proposition--the place won't be rebuilt.

Kurt Braunohler

I think we get stuck in routines so easily that when an absurd moment in life seems to be there for no reason, it wakes you up out of your everyday pattern. You pull back and look at life a little bit wider because of that one weird thing you weren't expecting.

Kurt Braunohler

I was writing this really long joke about the smell of poop, and I was like, 'What am I doing with my life?' I started to think about why I was a comedian, and then I came up with a reason for existence, which is: inserting absurdity or stupidity into strangers' lives in order to make the world a better place.

Reggie Watts

I like that feeling of discombobulation that comes in creating an absurd world that doesn't make sense. 'Monty Python' does a good job of it; 'Bugs Bunny,' too.

Lauren Willig

Like everyone else, I grew up loving the Anne books, but L.M. Montgomery is so much more. Like Jane Austen, she has an eye for the absurd and a gift for the 'mot juste.'

Stephan Pastis

It seems so absurd to get really mad with a cartoonist over a comic strip. It's sort of like getting in a fight with a circus clown outside your house. It's not going to end well.

Ken Watanabe

About half the scripts sent to me feature characters I just can't identify with, particularly one-dimensional businessmen or, if it's a comedy, some absurd 10-year-old Japanese stereotype, some role related to IT or business... There's no point in getting mad about it; it's just the way things are.

John Pearson

We usually say of ancient persons, that they have already one foot in the grave, and the rest of their life is nothing else but the bringing of these feet together.

Marguerite Gardiner

The Temple of Diana is in the vicinity of the fountain, which has given rise to the conjecture that it originally constituted a portion of the ancient baths.

Hans-Ulrich Obrist

I remember going to a monastery library when I was very young and being surrounded by ancient books. I fell in love.

Alan Titchmarsh

I love Paris for its wide boulevards and cafes, and Rome for the ancient history, as seen at the Forum.

Harvey Pitt

Unless there's a reason to re-open ancient history, we should move on,

S. Jay Olshansky

Physical immortality is seductive. The ancient Hindus sought it; the Greek physician Galen from the 2nd Century A.D. and the Arabic philosopher/physician Avicenna from the 11th Century A.D. believed in it.

Sarah Monette

I would love with all my heart to be able to speak Greek, classical or modern or both. It is a beautiful language, both aurally and in terms of the intricacy of its construction. I took four semesters of Ancient Greek in college, but it's all rusted away now - and I never learned to speak it anyway.

Theodore William Richards

If our inconceivably ancient universe even had any beginning, the conditions determining that beginning must even now be engraved in the atomic weights.

George Will

Just as the common law derives from ancient precedents - judges' decisions - rather than statutes, baseball's codes are the game's distilled mores. Their unchanged purpose is to show respect for opponents and the game. In baseball, as in the remainder of life, the most important rules are unwritten. But not unenforced.

Alan Price

We had a missionary zeal about blues music, and I felt, particularly, that Mickie Most was attempting to homogenize, sweeten, and make it accessible for the mass market. Which is understandable if you're the producer, but aggravating if you're the artist.

Alan Moore

If the audience knew what they wanted then they wouldn't be the audience, they would be the artist.

Alan Bean

But I found that being an artist and doing accurate work is very difficult.

Alan Alda

As an artist, as an actor, as a writer, you have to use what's personal to you. You have to be personal about your work; otherwise, it doesn't ring true.

Akon

Whatever obstacle comes your way, you gotta be prepared to jump over it! And I think that's what separates the legends from the regular artists. It's all in how you manage that success, and how you deal with the controversy when it actually comes.

Akira Kurosawa

The role of the artist is to not look away.

Chris Blackwell

I never liked the whole thing about pictures with the artists. You look back at an Elvis Presley record, and you don't see any producer credits, because the audience is not supposed to know about the producer credit.

Chloe Grace Moretz

If I'm talking to a photographer, I'm talking to a stylist, I'm talking to a makeup artist, we're kind of creating and collaborating and making something that is artwork and is special and is different.

Chogyam Trungpa

The artist has tremendous power to change the world.

Jeff Lemire

We want to take our time with 'Descender' and let the story unfold at its own pace. But we have carefully planned each world and worked to give each its own look and feel. And each of the 9 core worlds will play a role in the series.

Steve Squyres

There are cliffs the rover could fall over and die if we aren't careful. We are gong to proceed carefully and methodically.

Lee Byung-hun

Hollywood has a longer pre-production period and they juggle shooting schedules more carefully for each cast. In Korea, we shoot day and night without much break.

Nabil Sha'ath

watching carefully the unfolding political developments to see its consequences on the peace process.

Erik Autor

We're going to monitor this situation very carefully over the next several months. This is a case where what happens in Washington can have as much effect on cargo as what happens on the docks.

Niklas Savander

When we carefully considered the requirements of our customers when developing these devices, two clear new trends emerged: the need for IT departments' to have a secure and manageable platform, and the need for devices to support a variety of employee preferences and different working styles.

Alice Lichtenstein

What's really important is that we carefully look at what our lifestyle patterns are, our eating patterns are, make small changes and make sure those changes that we make can be maintained on a daily basis.

Jack Straw

We're going to listen carefully to what the president has to say and we'll take it from there,

Jean Charest

We're going to carefully prepare this mission. It's not easy to go to a country like India where we don't have a presence.

Charles Dickens

Change begets change.

Charles Caleb Colton

He that has energy enough to root out a vice should go further, and try to plant a virtue in its place.

Charles Dickens

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast.

Charles Dickens

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his departure from the monotonous scene on which he has been an actor of importance would seem to be the signal for instant confusion. The mine which Time has slowly dug beneath familiar objects is sprung in an instant; and what was rock before, becomes but sand and dust.

Charles Sturt

If we strike a line to the N.W. from Sydney to Wellington Valley, we shall find that little change takes place in the geological features of the country.

Charles Spurgeon

It is not well to make great changes in old age.

Alan Watts

Everything is perpetually becoming new.

Alan Watts

When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was.

Alan Perlis

It is easier to change the specification to fit the program than vice versa.

Julien Pain

We want them to see that they helped the Chinese police to jail people, human beings.

Chris Christie

If the Chinese commit cyberwarfare against us, they are going to see cyberwarfare like they have never seen before.

Chris Christie

Hillary Clinton: putting big government spending financed by the Chinese ahead of good-paying jobs for middle-class Americans. Is she guilty or not guilty?

David Tang

Cantonese, which has up to nine tones as opposed to the five in Mandarin, is much more versatile and one of the richest dialects in Chinese.

Bryan Q. Miller

Never eat Chinese food in Oklahoma.

Liang Guanglie

We appreciates the Jordanian side's concern with the Chinese people.

Nancy Mui

We are proud to have things that show the Chinese culture.

Zhu Bangzao

Where is the responsibility? I think it's very clear. The pronouncements of the United States are unacceptable to the Chinese people.

Martin Jacques

The Internet has been seen in the West as the quintessential expression of the free exchange of ideas and information, untrammeled by government interference and increasingly global in reach. But the Chinese government has shown that the Internet can be successfully filtered and controlled.

James Glassman

When you're an economist trained in conceptual stuff, you tend to be less intuitive. You fall back on this conceptual framework that the profession has invested a lot of time in.

Annie Leibovitz

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view and to be conceptual with a picture. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.

Craig Venter

I have an unusual type of thinking. I have no visual memory whatsoever. Everything is conceptual to me.

Tina Weymouth

David is purely a conceptual artist. He didn't play any instruments or paint or anything. We were painters.

Douglas Wilson

But this is not a how-to show, it's a conceptual show. It's about ideas. It's about fun.

Andrea Seigel

I think a conceptual idea comes to me first - something I've been mulling over a lot right before I feel like writing a book - and then the characters start to develop around it.

Barton Gellman

Doctrines don't govern policy. They provide a conceptual framework by which policymakers approach their decisions. But there is no such thing as a doctrine that controls policy in every way.

Matt Dera

We have a lot of designs still in conceptual stages, a lot we haven't printed yet, and we are trying to keep them a secret.

Ashley Hahn

I'm speaking towards the conceptual plan (that Quinlan is proposing), but I definitely think this project is something that town should pursue. There's not enough information yet, and I don't know if he can engineer proper septic systems and if it will be environmentally safe, but I think the town is doing the right thing by exploring the possibilities.

Edith Wharton

To your generation, I must represent the literary equivalent of tufted furniture and gas chandeliers.

Arne Jacobsen

Furniture manufacturing in plastics requires very costly machinery, which the Danish market is not big enough to justify. Or so they say. But show me a plastics manufacturer who dares to take on the experiment

Billy Casper

Like a lot of fellows around here, I have a furniture problem. My chest has fallen into my drawers.

Spencer Tracy

Learn your lines and don't trip over the furniture

Nicole Holofcener

If a woman gets insomnia, you never know where you're going to find her furniture the next morning. It's primal. We have so little we can control, but we can perfect the way our room looks.

Jeremy Gorman

Pottery Barn's had a big influence on the furniture industry. We have a lot of similar items that you can take home now and in a lot of cases, better quality.

Tom Collins

No one should let their guard down. Rivers are at dangerously high levels. It's not the time to go out and put the lawn furniture back up.

Howard Davidowitz

Furniture doesn't typically spell romance. A sporting goods store is another off-beat destination. I mean, what would you get? A paddle, a tennis racquet?

Zachary Smith

We've even got a list of about 15 people who've helped us out, giving us $20 or offering to give us furniture when we get settled down. We just thought that if we got their information, we could give something back to them once we get straightened out here in Katy.

Alan Bean

I found I have to stay painting.

David Milne

Anything is good painting material once you get to know it.

Edward Hopper

Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.

David Hockney

Photoshop came out of painting, and now it's going back to painting.

Barnett Newman

I prefer to leave the paintings to speak for themselves.

Edgar Degas

For those who don't know what they are doing, painting is easy. For those who do know what they are doing, painting is difficult.

Edouard Manet

I paint as I feel like painting; to hell with all their studies.

Bob Ross

Happy painting and God Bless, my friend.

Bill Watterson

Van Gogh would’ve sold more than one painting if he’d put tigers in them.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect; it made them a faction.

Harvey Johnson

Mrs. Knox will be produced at the proper time.

Del Harris

We'll find out, won't we? It has produced 60 wins. But we all know that's not the ultimate goal.

John H. Reagan

The irrepressible conflict propounded by abolitionism has produced now its legitimate fruits - disunion.

Richard Hatch

It's rare to get a really truly wonderfully written, acted and produced sci-fi show, period.

Lisa Ellis

Simple sugars are absorbed into the bloodstream rapidly and used up quickly.

Anna Akana

One thing that I really like to do is, I'll look in the mirror, and I'll imagine that I'm rapidly aging, until I'm just a skull.

Conrad Burns

I am seriously troubled by the proposed rapid consolidation in the telecommunications marketplace.

Ronald Schmelzer

We see very rapid consolidation in this market.

Adi Godrej

When you are growing at a rapid rate, there is bound to be some inflation. I think a 5% rate of inflation is something that we should take in our stride.

Jack Cheevers

We are working rapidly ... to remedy the situation.

Betsy Beers

I'm not interested in overexpanding rapidly for expansion's sake.

Cecilia Zalkind

We have some strong reservations about doing it as rapidly as it's being proposed.

Lynn Coady

The thing about relationships is, the stronger they get, the more rapidly the realm of romance starts to overlap with the domestic.

Charles Caleb Colton

Those who have resources within themselves, who can dare to live alone, want friends the least, but, at the same time, best know how to prize them the most. But no company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.

John Roberts

Trivial facts are often the best hints to what is going on.

Edith Wharton

Society soon grows used to any state of things which is imposed upon it without explanation.

Ed Koch

In a neighborhood, as in life, a clean bandage is much, much better than a raw or festering wound.

Charles Lamb

He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to society.

Arthur Balfour

Society, dead or alive, can have no charm without intimacy and no intimacy without an interest in trifles.

J. B. Priestley

Like its politicians and its war, society has the teenagers it deserves.

Lee Hall

I don't think theatre has changed; it's society that has changed.

Boman Irani

The day we learn to allow an ambulance to pass through in traffic, might be the first step towards being a truly responsible society.

Dave Barry

It would be hard to conceive of any activity more useless than stamp collecting.

Charles Bukowski

And don't forget: time is meant to be wasted, love fails and death is useless.

Edward Abbey

Without courage, all other virtues are useless.

Ben Horowitz

Planning is valuable, tho the plan is usually useless.

Dominique de Villepin

Accusations are useless.

Aaron Copland

The main thing is to be satisfied with your work yourself. It's useless to have an audience happy if you are not happy.

Warda Tahir

When together, an ocean. When separate, a useless drop.

Abu Bakr

Without knowledge action is useless and knowledge without action is futile.

Aldo Leopold

At first blush I am tempted to conclude that a satisfactory hobby must be in large degree useless, inefficient, laborious, or irrelevant.