The Quotations Archive currently contains 1744 quotations.

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People say "I want peace." If you remove I {ego}, and your want {desire}, you are left with peace.

-- Satya Sai Baba

Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.

-- Roger Babson

Let him who would enjoy a good future waste none of his present.

-- Roger Babson

Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgement will always be in demand under all conditions.

-- Roger Babson

Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.

-- Lauren Bacall

There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

-- Johann Sebastian Bach

You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make it come true.

-- Richard Bach

Many a man owes his success to his first wife and his second wife to his success.

-- Jim Backus

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

-- Francis Bacon

If we do not maintain Justice, Justice will not maintain us.

-- Francis Bacon

Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.

-- Francis Bacon

Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror.

-- Byrd Baggett

The main thing I like about New Yorkers is that they understand that their lives are a relentless circus of horrors, ending in death. As New Yorkers, we realize this, we resign ourselves to our fate, and we make sure that everyone else is as miserable as we are. Good town.

-- Kyle Baker, Why I Hate Saturn

Eternal boyhood is the dream of a depressing percentage of American males, and the locker room is the temple where they worship arrested development.

-- Russell Baker

Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three categories-- those that don't work, those that break down, and those that get lost.

-- Russell Baker

Is fuel efficiency really what we need most desperately? I say what we really need is a car that can be shot when it breaks down.

-- Russell Baker

People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out on the pleasure.

-- Russell Baker

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.

-- James Baldwin

Nobody is more dangerous than he who imagines himself pure in heart; for his purity, by definition, is unassailable.

-- James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name, 1961

Nothing matters very much, and little matters at all.

-- Lord Balfour

I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it, and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else; hard work and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.

-- Lucille Ball

Honeymoon: A short period of doting between dating and debting.

-- Ray Bandy

Never practice two vices at once.

-- Tallulah Bankhead

To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it more fit for its prime function of looking forward.

-- Margaret Fairless Barber

My initial response was to sue her for defamation of character, but then I realized that I had no character.

-- Charles Barkley, on hearing Tonya Harding proclaim herself "the Charles Barkley of figure skating", 1994

I have always dressed according to certain Basic Guy Fashion Rules, including:
* Both of your socks should always be the same color
* Or they should at least both be fairly dark

-- Dave Barry

In the past decade or so, the women's magazines have taken to running home-handyperson articles suggesting that women can learn to fix things just as well as men. These articles are apparently based on the ludicrous assumption that _men_ know how to fix things, when in fact all they know how to do is _look_ at things in a certain squinty-eyed manner, which they learned in Wood Shop; eventually, when enough things in the home are broken, they take a job requiring them to transfer to another home.

-- Dave Barry

Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.

-- Dave Barry

Most married couples, even though they love each other very much in theory, tend to view each other in practice as large teeming flaw colonies, the result being that they get on each other's nerves and regularly erupt into vicious emotional shouting matches over such issues as toaster settings.

-- Dave Barry

The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free information hot lines staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you ask them a real tax question, such as how you can cheat, they're useless. So, for guidance, you want to look to big business. Big business never pays a nickel in taxes, according to Ralph Nader, who represents a big consumer organization that never pays a nickel in taxes...

-- Dave Barry

These childhood memories - I have them often, but can usually keep them under control with the use of drugs.

-- Dave Barry

Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet.

-- Dave Barry

What I look forward to is continued immaturity followed by death.

-- Dave Barry

If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.

-- Lynda Barry

Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

-- Marion Barry, Mayor, Washington, D.C.

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a losttradition.

-- Jacques Barzun

Marriage is low down, but you spend the rest of your life paying for it.

-- Baskins

A sweetheart is a bottle of wine, a wife is a wine bottle.

-- Baudelaire

All you need is love.

-- The Beatles, song title

And in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.

-- The Beatles, The last lyric of their last song

We have only one person to blame, and that's each other.

-- Barry Beck, New York Ranger, on who started a fight furing a hockey game

Asking politicians to vote themselves out of power is like asking rabbits not to multiply, it ain't natural.

-- Bob Beckel, on term limits, CBS This Morning, 3/30/95

Now comes the mystery.

-- Henry Ward Beecher, dying words, March 8, 1887

Nobody ever died of laughter.

-- Max Beerbohm

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money usually costs a lot less.

-- Brendon Behan

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he's supposed to be doing at the moment.

-- Robert Benchley

When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home.

-- Betty Bender

It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.

-- Arnold Bennett

The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is.

-- Arnold Bennett

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.

-- Thomas Arnold Bennett

It is within the experience of everyone that when pleasure and pain reach a certain intensity they are indistinguishable.

-- Thomas Arnold Bennett

I think one of the reasons I'm popular again is because I'm wearing a tie. You have to be different.

-- Tony Bennett, 1995

I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body.

-- Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward

I believe that mink are raised for being turned into fur coats and if we didn't wear fur coats those little animals would never have been born. So is it better not to have been born or to have lived for a year or two to have been turned into a fur coat? I don't know.

-- Barbi Benton, former Playboy bunny

Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.

-- Ingmar Bergman

Happiness is good health and a bad memory.

-- Ingrid Bergman

I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor's sixth husband. I know what I'm supposed to do, but I don't know how to make it interesting.

-- Milton Berle, when called to the microphone at the 2nd Annual Comedians Hall of Fame Inductions

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

-- Hector Louis Berlioz

A hotel is a place that keeps the manufacturers of 25-watt bulbs in business.

-- Shelley Berman

If you want to recapture your youth, just cut off his allowance.

-- Al Bernstein

Ninety percent of the game is half mental.

-- Yogi Berra

No wonder nobody comes here--it's too crowded.

-- Yogi Berra

You can observe a lot by watching.

-- Yogi Berra

You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.

-- Yogi Berra

Patience with others is Love,
Patience with self is Hope,
Patience with God is Faith.

-- Adel Bestavros

The covers of this book are too far apart.

-- Ambrose Bierce

The world has suffered more from the ravages of ill-advised marriages than from virginity.

-- Ambrose Bierce

ARDOR, n. The quality that distinguishes love without knowledge.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

CAPITAL, n. The seat of misgovernment. That which provides the fire, the pot, the dinner, the table and the knife and fork for the anarchist; the part of the repast that himself supplies is the disgrace before meat.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder... It is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the patient.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

MARRIAGE, n. The state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all, two.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

NEIGHBOR, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

NOVEL, n. A short story padded.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

STORY, n. A narrative, commonly untrue.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

UGLINESS, n. A gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility.

-- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.

-- Josh Billings

Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.

-- Josh Billings

Every man has his follies - and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.

-- Josh Billings

Every man knows his follies and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.

-- Josh Billings

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

-- Josh Billings

Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.

-- Josh Billings

One of rarest things that a man ever does is to do the best he can.

-- Josh Billings

The best time to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.

-- Josh Billings

I date this girl for two years--and then the nagging starts: "I wanna know your name."

-- Mike Binder

Never moon a werewolf.

-- Mike Binder

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

-- Otto von Bismarck

I recently read that love is entirely a matter of chemistry. That must be why my wife treats me like toxic waste.

-- David Bissonette

I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.

-- Shirley Temple Black

He who kisses the joy is it flies lives in eternity's sunrise

-- William Blake

When nations grow old, the arts grow cold and commerce settles on every tree.

-- William Blake

Only positive consequences encourage good future performances.

-- Kenneth H. Blanchard

Love matches are made by people who are content, for a month of honey, to condemn themselves to a life of vinegar.

-- Countess of Blessington

Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner.

-- Amy Bloom

I have a great diet. You're allowed to eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people.

-- Ed Bluestone

Did you ever notice when you blow in a dog's face he gets mad at you? But when you take him in a car he sticks his head out the window.

-- Steve Bluestone

Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.

-- Paul Boese

There are trivial truths, and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.

-- Neils Bohr

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

-- Niels Bohr

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.

-- Niels Bohr

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

-- Niels Bohr

Limousines used to be reserved for the ruling class, or, on special occasions, for the working class. Today, limousines are like taxicabs with the door handles still intact.

-- Erma Bombeck

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

-- Erma Bombeck

Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.

-- Napoleon Bonaparte

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

-- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

You never see a man walking down the street with a woman who has a little pot belly and a bald spot.

-- Elayne Boosler

Ah Mozart! He was happily married - but his wife wasn't.

-- Victor Borge

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

-- Victor Borge

The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.

-- Joan Borysenko

In the blithe days of honeymoon,
With Kate's allurements smitten,
I lov'd her late, I lov'd her soon,
And call'd her dearest kitten.
But now my kitten's grown a cat,
And cross like other wives.
O! By my soul my honest Mat,
I fear she has nine lives.

-- James Boswell, Life of Johnson

I am about to--or I am going to--die; either expression is used.

-- Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian, dying words

It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.

-- Alec Bourne, A Doctor's Creed

Unfortunately, the media have trouble distinguishing between real science and propaganda cross-dressed as science.

-- Linda Bowles, political columnist

One survey found that ten percent of Americans thought Joan of Arc was Noah's wife....

-- Robert Boynton

The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

-- General Omar Bradley

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee.

-- Anne Bradstreet

Sure, it's going to kill a lot of people, but they may be dying of something else anyway.

-- Othal Brand, member of a Texas pesticide review board

Always behave like a duck--keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath.

-- Jacob Braude

The hard part about being a bartender is figuring out who is drunk and who is just stupid.

-- Richard Braunstein

He who laughs last has not yet heard the bad news.

-- Bertolt Brecht

Multimedia? As far as I'm concerned, it's reading with the radio on!

-- Rory Bremner

For a male and female to live continuously together is...biologically speaking, an extremely unnatural condition.

-- Robert Briffault

It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.

-- J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.

-- Phillip Brooks

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow.

-- Charles Brower

If someone offers you a breath mint, accept it.

-- H. Jackson Brown, Jr., Life's Little Treasure Book, on wisdom

The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life.

-- Andrew Brown

In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back.

-- Charlie Brown, character in "Peanuts" comic strip, created by Charles Schultz

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

-- H. Jackson Brown

He who dies a thousand deaths meets the final hour with the calmness of one who approaches a well remembered door.

-- Heywood Brown

The tragedy of life is not that man loses, but that he almost wins.

-- Heywood Brown

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars

-- Les Brown

The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you.

-- Rita Mae Brown

In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.

-- Lenny Bruce

My mother-in-law broke up my marriage. My wife came home from work one day and found me in bed with her.

-- Lenny Bruce

Never tell. Not if you love your wife... In fact, if your old lady walks in on you, deny it. Yeah. Just flat out and she'll believe it: "I'm tellin' ya. This chick came downstairs with a sign around her neck 'Lay on Top of Me Or I'll Die.' I didn't know what I was gonna do...."

-- Lenny Bruce

If people turn to look at you on the street, you are not well dressed.

-- Beau Brummel

Destiny is not a matter of chance; but a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, It is a thing to be acheived.

-- William Jennings Bryant

Husbands are awkward things to deal with; even keeping them in hot water will not make them tender.

-- Mary Buckley

Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

-- Buddha

Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.

-- Buddha

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

-- Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

We got to roll with the punches, play all of our hunches, make the best of whatever comes your way. Forget that blind ambition, learn to trust your intuition -- plowing straight ahead, come what may.

-- Jimmy Buffett, Cowboy in the Jungle (song)

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, / The pen is mightier than the sword.

-- Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu, II. ii

Art and science have their meeting point in method.

-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Destiny is but a phrase of the weak human heart - the dark apology for every error. The strong and virtuous admit no destiny. On earth conscience guides; in heaven God watches. And destiny is but the phantom we invoke to silence the one and dethrone the other.

-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.

-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man's observation, not overturning it.

-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

When people have no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.

-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton

I don't feel good.

-- Luther Burbank, dying words

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Snore and you sleep alone.

-- Anthony Burgess

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

-- Edmund Burke

Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head.

-- Carol Burnett

Too bad all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair.

-- George Burns

Sometimes paranoia's just having all the facts.

-- William S. Burroughs

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.

-- Leo Buscaglia

I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children they just about throw up.

-- Barbara Bush, first lady, 1989

[You reporters] should have printed what he meant, not what he said.

-- Earl Bush, press aide to Richard Daley

I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.

-- George Bush, U.S. president, 1990

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.

-- Samuel Butler

If the headache would only precede the intoxication, alcoholism would be a virtue.

-- Samuel Butler

In matrimony, to hesitate is sometimes to be saved.

-- Samuel Butler

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.

-- Samuel Butler

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

-- Samuel Butler

Never raise your hands to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.

-- Red Buttons

Since Eve ate the apple, much depends on dinner.

-- Lord Byron

The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.

-- Lord Byron

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

-- Honore de Balzac

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.

-- Honore de Balzac