Quotes ya just gotta share with the rest of us....

[Lady Sidhe]

"Beware of dissipating your powers; strive constantly to
concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees
others doing, but is sure to repent of every ill-judged
outlay."


Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832), author


Sidhe

[Lady Sidhe]

It is not lack of love but lack of friendship that makes
unhappy marriages.
--Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) German philosopher


Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who
could have acted, the indifference of those who should have
known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it
mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
--Halie Selassie


"It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when
you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
--H. L. Mencken, Reporter, columnist and editor

It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to
find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.
--Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC)


Sidhe

[Lady Sidhe]

I like these...


"Genius may have its
limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped."

--Elbert Hubbard
(1856-1915), American author.


"How rare is the truly dissenting voice, and how perilous the consequences of its utterance."

--John Norman


"You wouldn't be intelligent enough to understand anything
that I would be stupid enough to tell you anyways."

--Bill Merrill


Sidhe

[Lady Sidhe]

This is just damned funny...


ARISTOCRAT: Who is that ugly woman who just came in?

LORD NORTH: Oh, that is my wife.

ARISTOCRAT: Sir, I beg your pardon. I do not mean her. I mean
that shocking monster who is along with her.

LORD NORTH: That is my daughter.

--Lord Frederick North (1732-1792) British Prime Minister
(1770-82) Conversation


Sidhe

[Lady Sidhe]

Here are some from Hollywood I thought were cute. Enjoy.


On Julie Andrews: "Working with her is like being hit over
the head with a Valentine's card." -Christopher Plummer

On Marilyn Monroe: "It's like kissing Hitler." -Tony Curtis

On Margaret O'Brien: "If that child had been born in the
Middle Ages, she'd have been burned as a witch." -Lionel
Barrymore



Sidhe

[headsplice]

<see sig>
or,
"Everything in moderation, including moderation."
Sam Clemens

[Skunks]

Originally posted by headsplice's sig
"Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht?"

That's, directly translated:

"See, Father, you the prototype not?"

I think you're missing a verb.

edit: It occurs to me that there, uh, is a verb. This bodes well for my German test tomorrow.

(In my defense, the word order /is/ wacky, and it should probably be 'keinen' instead of 'nicht den'.)

[wolf]

Regular, everyday German word order is wacky.

Poetic German, more so.

And to understand the sig, you need to know a small amount of german mythology.

Elves are not nice, happy, helpful people in German Mythology.

EDIT TO ADD: The translation you were groping for is "Father, Don't YOU see the Erl-King?"

[wolf]

Erlkonig, (1780), Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind;
Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,
Er faßt ihn sicher, er hält ihn warm.

»Mein Sohn, was birgst du so bang dein Gesicht?« -
»Siehst, Vater, du den Erlkönig nicht?
Den Erlenkönig mit Kron und Schweif?« -
»Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif.« -

»Du liebes Kind, komm, geh mit mir!
Gar schöne Spiele spiel ich mit dir;
Manch bunte Blumen sind an dem Strand,
Meine Mutter hat manch gülden Gewand.«

»Mein Vater, mein Vater, und hörest du nicht,
Was Erlenkönig mir leise verspricht?« -
»Sie ruhig, bliebe ruhig, mein Kind:
In dürren Blättern säuselt der Wind.« -

»Willst, feiner Knabe, du mit mir gehn?
Meine Töchter sollen dich warten schön;
Meine Töchter führen den nächtlichen Reihn
Und wiegen und tanzen und singen dich ein.«

»Mein Vater, mein Vater, und siehst du nicht dort
Erlkönigs Töchter am düstern Ort?« -
»Mein Sohn, mein Sohn, ich seh es genau:
Es scheinen die altern Weiden so grau.« -

»Ich liebe dich, mich reizt deine schöne Gestalt;
Und bist du nicht willig, so brauch ich Gewalt.«
»Mein Vater, mein Vater, jetzt faßt er mich an!
Erlkönig hat mir ein Leids getan!« -

Dem Vater grausets, er reitet geschwind,
Er hält in Armen das ächzende Kind,
Erreicht den Hof mit Mühe und Not:
In seinen Armen das Kind war tot.

[wolf]

"The fucking whores in South Philly who can blow lunch out of their cunts are better mothers than you."

(quote from commitment paperwork.)

[Elspode]

What, no attribution, Wolf?

[wolf]

-- Crazy Guy to Wife who was attempting to commit him

[dar512]

My all time favorite

`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
`I don't much care where--' said Alice.
`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
`--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.
`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.'
- Lewis Carroll "Alice in Wonderland"

This I'm proud of because I made it up.

My office is a high entropy area. It moves toward chaos much faster than the rest of the universe.

A few others that I like:

"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong -- but that's the way to bet."
-- Damon Runyon

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity"
-- Hanlon's Razor

"Later in this talk, I intend to define the universe and give three examples."
-- Larry Wall (author of the Perl programming language)

"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord ask of you, but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"
-- Micah 6:8

"This calls for a subtle combination of mathematics and explosives."
-- Unknown

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside a dog it's too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx

"Ah! You have made a common mistake here...what you have there is a beet and you have confused it with food. Food is something like a ham sandwich or a bowl of chile."
-- Paul Hinrichs

"By diligent effort I seemed to be prolonging my adolescence into total absurdity."
-- John D. MacDonald - The Empty Copper Sea

"I'm not sure."
-- Werner Heisenberg

"The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne."
-- Chaucer

The early bird gets the worm. But the early worm gets eaten.

[Troubleshooter]

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid isle of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

H.P. Lovecraft

[ladysycamore]

Some funny ones that I enjoy:

Usenet is not sanitized for your
protection.

Too often, we lose sight of life's simple pleasures.
Remember, when someone annoys you it takes 42
muscles in your face to frown BUT, it only takes 4
muscles to extend your arm and bitch-slap the
motherfucker upside the head...

The longer I read about the Government, the more I'm
convinced that there's no problem in the Government that
can't be solved by the sun exploding.
-- Rodney Lee

Contraceptives should be used at every conceivable opportunity.

Childfree: Productive members of society as opposed to reproductive
members of society

"As far as papertowel skin goes, even leather can be cut with a knife." OnyxCougar
(I thought that was clever, so I made it into a sig. file)

Some others that I like:

If God brings you to it, He will bring you through it.
(never mind what you think about God,etc. *I* like it)

Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice.
It is not something to be waited for; but, rather something to be achieved.
(William Jennings Bryan)

Don't tell people to get over the past when it's still haunting their
present. "Jeff"

"When physical and mental health is secured, all of the energy that was tied up in one’s own illness and problems can be finally freed and directed toward living the life you truly want." David Briscoe

"Illness has this edge of grace. If the illness lifts, even for a few days, and one can enter the world again, all things shine with clarity and value." "Lydia Cassatt Reading The Morning Paper" by Harriet Scott Chessman

"The time is always right to do what is right" - Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
-President Dwight D. Eisenhower