You should make a point of trying every
experience once, except incest and folk-dancing (Anon)
Planning
is much easier than working (Anon)
If your feet smell, and
your nose runs, you are upside down (Anon)
Ettie (Lady
Desborough) has told enough white lies to ice a cake (Margot Asquith,
1865–1945)
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more
man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out (Francis
Bacon, 1561–1626)
For what were all these country patriots
born?/To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn? (Lord Byron,
1788–1824)
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be
conscious of none (Thomas Carlyle, 1795–1881)
'Twas brillig,
and the slithy toves/ Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;/ All mimsy
were the borogroves,/And the mome raths outgrabe (Lewis Carroll,
1832–1898)
Advice is seldom welcome; and those who want it
the most always like it the least (Earl of Chesterfield,
1694–1773)
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;/He
who would search for pearls must dive below (John Dryden, 1631–1700,
All for Love)
Bold knaves thrive without one grain of
sense,/But good men starve for want of impudence (Dryden, Constantine
the Great)
He was like a cock who thought the sun had
risen to hear him crow (George Eliot, 1819–1880, Adam Bede)
The
great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by
an ugly fact (TH Huxley, 1825–1895)
It is very strange, and
very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade
us ever to call hunting one of them (Dr Samuel Johnson,
1709–1784)
It is incident to physicians, I am afraid, beyond
all other men, to mistake subsequence for consequence (Dr
Johnson)
Let me smile with the wise and feed with the rich (Dr
Johnson)
Father, Mother, and Me/Sister and Auntie say/All the
people like us are We/And everyone else is They (Rudyard Kipling,
1865–1936)
If only people knew as much about painting as I
do, they would never buy my pictures (Sir Edwin Landseer,
1802–1873)
We read that we ought to forgive our enemies; but
we do not read that we ought to forgive our friends (Cosimo de
Medici, 1389–1464)
No more things should be presumed to
exist than are absolutely necessary (William Occam, c.1280–1349,
called 'Occam's Razor')
To see what is in front of one's nose
needs a constant struggle (George Orwell, 1903–1950)
At 50,
everyone has the face he deserves (Orwell)
God and the doctor
we alike adore,/But only when in danger, not before (John Owen,
1560?–1622)
Die, my dear Doctor, that's the last thing I
shall do! (Last words of Lord Palmerston, 1784–1865)
Winter
is icummen in,/ Lhude sing Goddamm,/Raineth drop and staineth
slop,/And how the wind doth ramm! (Ezra Pound, 1885–1972)
'Exploding
Snap, anyone?' said Fred, pulling out a pack of cards (JK Rowling,
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)
Hagrid had a point
... they were all right, really, dragons ... (JK Rowling, Harry
Potter and the Goblet of Fire)
Harry reached his wand just
in time. Lockhart had barely raised his, when Harry bellowed,
'Expelliarmus!' (JK Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of
Secrets)
'Oh, this is no use,' Hermione said, snapping
Weird Wizarding Dilemmas shut. 'Who on earth wants to make
their nose hair grow in ringlets?' (JK Rowling, Harry Potter and
the Goblet of Fire)
All science is either physics or stamp
collecting (Lord [Ernest] Rutherford, 1871–1937)
We haven't
the money, so we've got to think (Rutherford)
Trois heures,
c'est toujours trop tard ou trop tot pour tout ce qu'on veut faire
(Jean-Paul Sartre, 1905–1980)
As I grow older and older,/And
totter towards the tomb,/I find that I care less and less/Who goes to
bed with whom (Dorothy Sayers, 1893–1957)
From women's eyes
this doctrine I derive:/They are the ground, the books, the
academes,/From whence doth spring the true Promethean fire (William
Shakespeare, 1564–1616, Love's Labour's Lost)
'How
can what an Englishman believes be heresy? It is a contradiction in
terms'( GB Shaw, 1856–1950, St Joan
More people are
flattered into virtue than bullied out of vice (RS Surtees,
1803–1864)
Major Yammerton was rather a peculiar man
inasmuch as he was an ass, without being a fool (Surtees, Ask
Mamma)
Freedom of the press in Britain is freedom to print
such of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers don't object
to (Hannen Swaffer, 1879–1962)
Satire is a sort of glass,
wherein beholders generally discover everybody's face but their own
(Jonathan Swift, 1667–1745)
Laws are like cobwebs, which may
catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through (Swift)
4
in 2 goes twice as fast/If 2 and 4 change places;/But how can 2 and 3
make four/If 3 and 2 make faces? (D'Arcy Thompson, 'Crazy
Arithmetic')
What time he can spare from the adornment of his
person he devotes to the neglect of his duties (WH Thompson,
1810–1886)
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas (Lucky
is he who could understand the causes of things) (Virgil,
72–19BC)
Angling may be said to be so
like the mathematics, that it can never be fully learnt (Izaak
Walton, 1593–1683, The Compleat Angler)
Of all the
feelings of which the human heart is capable, the unworthiest is the
passion for revenge (Rex Warner, 1905–1986, The Young
Caesar)
Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the
questing vole (Evelyn Waugh, 1903–1966, Scoop)
'Turbot,
Sir,' said the waiter, placing before me two fishbones, two eyeballs
and a bit of black mackintosh (T Welby, The Dinner Knell)
O
may thy powerful word/Inspire the feeble worm/To rush into thy
kingdom, Lord,/And take it as by storm (The Wesleyan Hymn Book)