The Quotations Archive currently contains 1744 quotations.

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Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.

-- Soren Kierkegaard

I will try to follow the advice that a university president once gave a prospective commencement speaker. "Think of yourself as the body at an Irish wake" he said. "They need you in order to have the party, but no one expects you to say very much."

-- Anthony Lake, national security advisor, at University of Massachusettes, Amhurst, Graduation 1995

Laywers, I suppose, were children once.

-- Charles Lamb

To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.

-- Lao Tzu

Practice random acts of kindness and sensless acts of beauty.

-- Adair Lara

Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana...The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two, but can't remember what they are.

-- Matt Lauer, on NBC's "Today" show, August 22, 1996

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision.

-- Lynn Lavner

Experience is the worst teacher; it gives the test before presenting the lesson.

-- Vernon Law

I'd wipe the machines off the face of the earth again, and end the industrial epoch absolutely, like a black mistake.

-- D. H. Lawrence

Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.

-- D.H. Lawrence

Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.

-- Stephen Leacock

Many a man in love with a dimple makes the mistake of marrying the whole girl.

-- Stephen Leacock

Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-five years and you pay it back and then -- one day -- you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then -- one day -- you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe.

-- Denis Leary

Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women it is merely a good excuse not to play football.

-- Fran Lebowitz

I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not.

-- Fran Lebowitz

Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast the disc jockey is not allowed to talk.

-- Fran Lebowitz

He who limps is still walking.

-- Stanislaw J. Lec

Intelligence, in diapers, is invisible. And when it matures, out the window it flies. We have to pounce on it earlier.

-- Stanislaw J. Lec

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?

-- Stanislaw J. Lec

Value your words. Each one may be the last.

-- Stanislaw J. Lec

You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.

-- Stanislaw J. Lec

Although the course may change sometimes, rivers always reach the sea.

-- Led Zeppelin, Ten Years Gone

Eh! Je suis leur chef, il fallait bien les suivre. (Ah well! I am their leader, I really ought to follow them.)

-- Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin

The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

-- Harper Lee

Live TV died in the late 1950s, electronic bulletin boards came along in the mid-1980s, meaning there was about a 25-year gap when it was difficult to put your foot in your mouth and have people all across the country know about it.

-- Mark Leeper

Power corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.

-- John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy, 1981-1987

Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things!

-- Tom Lehrer

I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up.

-- Tom Lehrer

I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.

-- Carol Leifer

New York: the only city where people make radio requests like "This is for Tina -- I'm sorry I stabbed you."

-- Carol Leifer

You can close your eyes to reality, but not to memories.

-- Stanislaw J. Lem

I went into a McDonald's yesterday and said, "I'd like some fries." The girl at the counter said, "Would you like some fries with that?"

-- Jay Leno

The difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.

-- Gloria Leonard

Every St. Patrick's Day every Irishman goes out to find another Irishman to make a speech to.

-- Shane Leslie

Based on what you know about him in history books, what do you think Abraham Lincoln would be doing if he were alive today?
1) Writing his memoirs of the Civil War.
2) Advising the President.
3) Desperately clawing at the inside of his coffin.

-- David Letterman

Fine art and pizza delivery: what we do falls neatly in between.

-- David Letterman

For the love of God, folks, don't do this at home.

-- David Letterman, CBS Late Show, demonstrating the Donut-o-pult, 1995

Love one another and you will be happy. It's as simple and as difficult as that.

-- Michael Leunig

Harpo, she's a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one.

-- Oscar Levant, to Harpo Marx upon meeting Harpo's fiancee

I envy people who drink -- at least they know what to blame everything on.

-- Oscar Levant

So little time, so little to do.

-- Oscar Levant

There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

-- Oscar Levant

Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.

-- Aaron Levenstein

Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist.

-- Michael Levine, Lessons at the Halfway Point

The speed of time is one second per second.

-- Kip Lewis

We are all either fools or undiscovered geniuses.

-- Bonnie Lin

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other one thing.

-- Abraham Lincoln

And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

-- Abraham Lincoln

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

-- Abraham Lincoln

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

-- Abraham Lincoln, discussing the issue of slavery

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

-- Abraham Lincoln

I have come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason, I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.

-- Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Mrs. O.H. Browning, April 1, 1838

If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business.

-- Abraham Lincoln

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

-- Abraham Lincoln

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. You may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

-- Abraham Lincoln

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

-- Abraham Lincoln

My father taught me to work; he did not teach me to love it.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

-- Abraham Lincoln

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

-- Abraham Lincoln

People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

-- Abraham Lincoln

The better part of one's life consists of his friendships.

-- Abraham Lincoln

The possibility that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.

-- Abraham Lincoln

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Whatever you are, be a good one.

-- Abraham Lincoln

With the catching end the pleasures of the chase.

-- Abraham Lincoln

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

-- Abraham Lincoln

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.

-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

It's not hard to tell we was poor--when you saw the toilet paper dryin' on the clothesline.

-- George Lindsey

Know thyself.

-- Linnaeus

Jimmy Carter as President is like Truman Capote marrying Dolly Parton. The job is just too big for him.

-- Rich Little

It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get back up.

-- Vince Lombardi

Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.

-- Vince Lombardi

Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

-- Lazarus Long

If you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.

-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth

It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice.

-- Trini Lopez

Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.

-- Konrad Lorenz

An act of love that fails is just as much a part of the divine life as an act of love that succeeds, for love is measured by fullness, not by reception.

-- Harold Loukes

It's true that I did get the girl, but then my grandfather always said, "Even a blind chicken finds a few grains of corn now and then."

-- Lyle Lovett, musician, upon marying actress Julia Roberts, 1994

Reputation is in itself only a farthing candle, of a wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.

-- James Russell Lowell

A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.

-- James Lowell

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time.

-- Sir J. Lubbock

We seek the comfort of another. Someone to share and share the life we choose. Someone to help us through the neverending attempt to understand ourselves. And in the end, someone to comfort us along the way.

-- Marlin Finch Lupus

There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage

-- Martin Luther

Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on Earth.

-- John Lyly

For the memory of love is sweet, though the love itself were in vain. And what I have lost of pleasure, assuage what I find of pain.

-- Lyster

In endowing us with memory, nature has revealed to us a truth utterly unimaginable to the unreflective creation, the truth of immortality....The most ideal human passion is love, which is also the most absolute and animal and one of the most ephemeral.

-- George Santayana, Reason in Religion