Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Caleb Colton

Shakespeare, Butler and Bacon have rendered it extremely difficult for all who come after them to be sublime, witty or profound.

Charles Simmons

Euphonic and harmonious expressions, forcible and just expressions, profound and comprehensive expressions, and especially apt and witty expressions, each have their specific influence upon different minds, and their common influence upon all minds.... It is therefore high time our most valuable aphorisms and paragraphs were put in order for frequent perusal, and for handy reference, as the circumstances of life call up subjects.

Dave Barry

A long memory is the most subversive idea in America. A tautology is a thing which is tautological. A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention. If your kids look like you, it's hereditory. If they look like the neighbor, it's the environment. Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.

Dave Barry

What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up with a terrific-ally witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at parties.

Dave Barry

You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

Dave Barry

I will vote for the first candidate who promises to use nuclear missiles against LinkedIn.

Dave Barry

Magnetism, as you recall from physics class, is a powerful force that causes certain items to be attracted to refrigerators.

Caroline Dhavernas

It's very witty and it's great to see teenage characters have control that way. And you can actually hear about sex and pot and it's okay, it's not completely bad and you can't say that to teenagers.

Catherine the Great

Your wits make others witty.

Charles Caleb Colton

No two things differ more than hurry and dispatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one. A weak man in office, like a squirrel in a cage, is laboring eternally, but to no purpose, and is in constant motion without getting on a job; like a turnstile, he is in everybody's way, but stops nobody; he talks a great deal, but says very little; looks into everything but sees nothing; and has a hundred irons in the fire, but very few of them are hot, and with those few that are, he only burns his fingers.

Charles Caleb Colton

Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one.

Charles Caleb Colton

He that aspires to be the head of a party will find it more difficult to please his friends than to perplex his foes. He must often act from false reasons which are weak, because he dares not avow the true reasons which are strong.

Charles Caleb Colton

The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus,--strong to execute, but blind to perceive.

Charles Caleb Colton

When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own.

Charles Caleb Colton

Strong as our passions are, they may be starved into submission, and conquered without being killed.

Charles Caleb Colton

Men of strong minds and who think for themselves, should not be discouraged on finding occasionally that some of their best ideas have been anticipated by former writers; they will neither anathematize others nor despair themselves. They will rather go on discovering things before discovered, until they are rewarded with a land hitherto unknown, an empire indisputably their own, both right of conquest and of discovery.

Charles Caleb Colton

Unity of opinion is indeed a glorious and desirable thing, and its circle cannot be too strong and extended, if the centre be truth; but if the centre be error, the greater the circumference, the greater the evil.

Charles Caleb Colton

No two things differ more than hurry and despatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind; despatch of a strong one.

Charles Dickens

There are many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their pockets.

David Sedaris

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

Dave Barry

England manufactures most of the world's airline food, as well as all the food you ever ate in your junior-high-school cafeteria.

Dave Barry

English history consists largely of royal people getting their heads chopped off...Needless to say, this brand of history was a hit with our son.

Dave Barry

The basic Roman ruin design is a pile of rocks with a little plaque saying "Roman Ruins" and a group of tourists frowning at it and wishing they were back at the hotel bar..

Dave Barry

The Romans spent the next 200 years using their great engineering skill to construct ruins all over Europe.

Dave Barry

One key lesson of history is that virtually anything, including afternoon or evening thundershowers, causes Germany to invade Belgium.

Dave Barry

Nevada has a very dynamic economy, with gambling being the number-one industry, followed closely by blood donorship.

Dave Barry

Europeans, like some Americans, drive on the right side of the road, except in England, where they drive on both sides of the road; Italy, where they drive on the sidewalk; and France, where if necessary they will follow you right into the hotel lobby.