fortune_gem 0.0.5

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Files changed (4) hide show
  1. data/bin/fortune_gem +7 -0
  2. data/lib/fortune_gem.rb +19 -0
  3. data/lib/fortunes +2815 -0
  4. metadata +70 -0
data/bin/fortune_gem ADDED
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
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+ #!/usr/bin/env ruby
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+
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+ require 'fortune_gem'
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+
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+ print "\n"
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+ print FortuneGem.give_fortune(:max_length => ARGV.first)
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+ print "\n"
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
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+ module FortuneGem
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+
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+ FORTUNES = File.open("#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/fortunes").read.split("%").map{|f| f.sub("\n", "").strip }
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+
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+ # Pass an option of :max_length if you want to limit length of fortunes #
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+ def self.give_fortune(options = {:max_length => nil})
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+ fortune = nil
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+
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+ if options[:max_length]
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+ short_listed = FORTUNES.find_all{|f| f.length <= options[:max_length].to_i}
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+ fortune = short_listed[rand(short_listed.length)]
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+ else
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+ fortune = FORTUNES[rand(FORTUNES.length)]
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+ end
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+
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+ fortune
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+ end
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+
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+ end
data/lib/fortunes ADDED
@@ -0,0 +1,2815 @@
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+ A day for firm decisions!!!!! Or is it?
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+ %
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+ A few hours grace before the madness begins again.
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+ %
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+ A gift of a flower will soon be made to you.
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+ %
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+ A long-forgotten loved one will appear soon.
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+ %
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+ Buy the negatives at any price.
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+ %
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+ A tall, dark stranger will have more fun than you.
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+ %
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+ A visit to a fresh place will bring strange work.
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+ %
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+ A visit to a strange place will bring fresh work.
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+ %
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+ A vivid and creative mind characterizes you.
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+ %
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+ Abandon the search for Truth; settle for a good fantasy.
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+ %
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+ Accent on helpful side of your nature. Drain the moat.
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+ %
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+ Advancement in position.
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+ %
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+ After your lover has gone you will still have PEANUT BUTTER!
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+ %
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+ Afternoon very favorable for romance. Try a single person for a change.
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+ %
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+ Alimony and bribes will engage a large share of your wealth.
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+ %
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+ All the troubles you have will pass away very quickly.
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+ %
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+ Among the lucky, you are the chosen one.
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+ %
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+ An avocado-tone refrigerator would look good on your resume.
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+ %
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+ An exotic journey in downtown Newark is in your future.
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+ %
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+ Another good night not to sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
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+ %
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+ Are you a turtle?
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+ %
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+ Are you ever going to do the dishes? Or will you change your major to biology?
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+ %
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+ Are you making all this up as you go along?
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+ %
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+ Are you sure the back door is locked?
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+ %
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+ Artistic ventures highlighted. Rob a museum.
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+ %
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+ Avert misunderstanding by calm, poise, and balance.
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+ %
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+ Avoid gunfire in the bathroom tonight.
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+ %
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+ Avoid reality at all costs.
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+ %
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+ Bank error in your favor. Collect $200.
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+ %
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+ Be careful! Is it classified?
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+ %
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+ Be careful! UGLY strikes 9 out of 10!
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+ %
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+ Be cautious in your daily affairs.
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+ %
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+ Be cheerful while you are alive.
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+ -- Phathotep, 24th Century B.C.
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+ %
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+ Be different: conform.
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+ %
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+ Be free and open and breezy! Enjoy! Things won't get any better so
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+ get used to it.
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+ %
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+ Be security conscious -- National defense is at stake.
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+ %
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+ Beauty and harmony are as necessary to you as the very breath of life.
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+ %
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+ Best of all is never to have been born. Second best is to die soon.
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+ %
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+ Better hope the life-inspector doesn't come around while you have your
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+ life in such a mess.
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+ %
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+ Beware of a dark-haired man with a loud tie.
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+ %
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+ Beware of a tall black man with one blond shoe.
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+ %
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+ Beware of a tall blond man with one black shoe.
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+ %
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+ Beware of Bigfoot!
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+ %
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+ Beware of low-flying butterflies.
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+ %
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+ Beware the one behind you.
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+ %
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+ Blow it out your ear.
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+ %
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+ Break into jail and claim police brutality.
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+ %
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+ Bridge ahead. Pay troll.
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+ %
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+ Caution: breathing may be hazardous to your health.
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+ %
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+ Caution: Keep out of reach of children.
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+ %
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+ Celebrate Hannibal Day this year. Take an elephant to lunch.
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+ %
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+ Change your thoughts and you change your world.
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+ %
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+ Cheer Up! Things are getting worse at a slower rate.
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+ %
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+ Chess tonight.
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+ %
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+ Chicken Little only has to be right once.
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+ %
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+ Chicken Little was right.
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+ %
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+ Cold hands, no gloves.
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+ %
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+ Communicate! It can't make things any worse.
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+ %
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+ Courage is your greatest present need.
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+ %
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+ Day of inquiry. You will be subpoenaed.
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+ %
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+ Do not overtax your powers.
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+ %
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+ Do not sleep in a eucalyptus tree tonight.
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+ %
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+ Do nothing unless you must, and when you must act -- hesitate.
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+ %
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+ Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.
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+ %
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+ Do what comes naturally. Seethe and fume and throw a tantrum.
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+ %
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+ Domestic happiness and faithful friends.
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+ %
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+ Don't feed the bats tonight.
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+ %
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+ Don't get stuck in a closet -- wear yourself out.
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+ %
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+ Don't get to bragging.
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+ %
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+ Don't go surfing in South Dakota for a while.
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+ %
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+ Don't hate yourself in the morning -- sleep till noon.
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+ %
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+ Don't kiss an elephant on the lips today.
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+ %
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+ Don't let your mind wander -- it's too little to be let out alone.
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+ %
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+ Don't look back, the lemmings are gaining on you.
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+ %
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+ Don't look now, but the man in the moon is laughing at you.
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+ %
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+ Don't look now, but there is a multi-legged creature on your shoulder.
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+ %
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+ Don't plan any hasty moves. You'll be evicted soon anyway.
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+ %
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+ Don't read any sky-writing for the next two weeks.
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+ %
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+ Don't read everything you believe.
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+ %
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+ Don't relax! It's only your tension that's holding you together.
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+ %
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+ Don't tell any big lies today. Small ones can be just as effective.
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+ %
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+ Don't worry so loud, your roommate can't think.
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+ %
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+ Don't Worry, Be Happy.
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+ -- Meher Baba
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+ %
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+ Don't worry. Life's too long.
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+ -- Vincent Sardi, Jr.
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+ %
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+ Don't you feel more like you do now than you did when you came in?
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+ %
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+ Don't you wish you had more energy... or less ambition?
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+ %
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+ Everything that you know is wrong, but you can be straightened out.
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+ %
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+ Everything will be just tickety-boo today.
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+ %
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+ Excellent day for putting Slinkies on an escalator.
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+ %
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+ Excellent day to have a rotten day.
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+ %
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+ Excellent time to become a missing person.
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+ %
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+ Executive ability is prominent in your make-up.
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+ %
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+ Exercise caution in your daily affairs.
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+ %
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+ Expect a letter from a friend who will ask a favor of you.
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+ %
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+ Expect the worst, it's the least you can do.
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+ %
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+ Fine day for friends.
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+ So-so day for you.
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+ %
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+ Fine day to work off excess energy. Steal something heavy.
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+ %
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+ Fortune: You will be attacked next Wednesday at 3:15 p.m. by six samurai
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+ sword wielding purple fish glued to Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
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+
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+ Oh, and have a nice day!
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+ -- Bryce Nesbitt '84
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+ %
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+ Future looks spotty. You will spill soup in late evening.
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+ %
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+ Generosity and perfection are your everlasting goals.
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+ %
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+ Give him an evasive answer.
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+ Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to
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+ a new town.
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+ %
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+ Give your very best today. Heaven knows it's little enough.
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+ %
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+ Go to a movie tonight. Darkness becomes you.
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+ %
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+ Good day for a change of scene. Repaper the bedroom wall.
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+ %
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+ Good day for overcoming obstacles. Try a steeplechase.
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+ %
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+ Good day to deal with people in high places; particularly lonely stewardesses.
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+ %
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+ Good day to let down old friends who need help.
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+ %
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+ %
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+ Good news from afar can bring you a welcome visitor.
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+ %
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+ Good news. Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty good day.
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+ %
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+ Good night to spend with family, but avoid arguments with your mate's
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+ new lover.
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+ %
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+ Green light in A.M. for new projects. Red light in P.M. for traffic tickets.
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+ %
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+ Hope that the day after you die is a nice day.
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+ %
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+ If you can read this, you're too close.
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+ %
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+ If you learn one useless thing every day, in a single year you'll learn
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+ 365 useless things.
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+ %
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+ If you sow your wild oats, hope for a crop failure.
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+ %
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+ If you stand on your head, you will get footprints in your hair.
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+ %
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+ If you think last Tuesday was a drag, wait till you see what happens tomorrow!
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+ %
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+ If your life was a horse, you'd have to shoot it.
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+ %
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+ In the stairway of life, you'd best take the elevator.
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+ %
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+ Increased knowledge will help you now. Have mate's phone bugged.
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+ %
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+ Is that really YOU that is reading this?
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+ %
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+ Is this really happening?
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+ %
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+ It is so very hard to be an
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+ on-your-own-take-care-of-yourself-because-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you
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+ grown-up.
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+ %
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+ It may or may not be worthwhile, but it still has to be done.
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+ %
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+ It was all so different before everything changed.
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+ %
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+ It's a very *__UN*lucky week in which to be took dead.
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+ -- Churchy La Femme
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+ %
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+ It's all in the mind, ya know.
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+ %
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+ It's lucky you're going so slowly, because you're going in the wrong direction.
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+ %
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+ Just because the message may never be received does not mean it is
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+ not worth sending.
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+ %
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+ Just to have it is enough.
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+ %
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+ Keep emotionally active. Cater to your favorite neurosis.
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+ %
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+ Keep it short for pithy sake.
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+ %
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+ Lady Luck brings added income today. Lady friend takes it away tonight.
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+ %
286
+ Learn to pause -- or nothing worthwhile can catch up to you.
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+ %
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+ Let me put it this way: today is going to be a learning experience.
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+ %
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+ Life is to you a dashing and bold adventure.
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+ %
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+ "Life, loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it."
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+ -- Marvin, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
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+ %
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+ Live in a world of your own, but always welcome visitors.
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+ %
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+ Living your life is a task so difficult, it has never been attempted before.
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+ %
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+ Long life is in store for you.
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+ %
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+ Look afar and see the end from the beginning.
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+ %
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+ Love is in the offing. Be affectionate to one who adores you.
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+ %
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+ Make a wish, it might come true.
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+ %
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+ Many changes of mind and mood; do not hesitate too long.
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+ %
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+ Never be led astray onto the path of virtue.
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+ %
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+ Never commit yourself! Let someone else commit you.
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+ %
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+ Never give an inch!
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+ %
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+ Never look up when dragons fly overhead.
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+ %
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+ Never reveal your best argument.
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+ %
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+ Next Friday will not be your lucky day. As a matter of fact, you don't
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+ have a lucky day this year.
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+ %
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+ Of course you have a purpose -- to find a purpose.
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+ %
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+ People are beginning to notice you. Try dressing before you leave the house.
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+ %
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+ Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.
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+ %
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+ Questionable day.
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+
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+ Ask somebody something.
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+ %
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+ Reply hazy, ask again later.
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+ %
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+ Save energy: be apathetic.
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+ %
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+ Ships are safe in harbor, but they were never meant to stay there.
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+ %
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+ Slow day. Practice crawling.
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+ %
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+ Snow Day -- stay home.
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+ %
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+ So this is it. We're going to die.
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+ %
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+ So you're back... about time...
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+ %
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+ Someone is speaking well of you.
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+ %
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+ Someone is speaking well of you.
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+
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+ How unusual!
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+ %
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+ Someone whom you reject today, will reject you tomorrow.
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+ %
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+ Stay away from flying saucers today.
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+ %
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+ Stay away from hurricanes for a while.
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+ %
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+ Stay the curse.
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+ %
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+ That secret you've been guarding, isn't.
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+ %
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+ The time is right to make new friends.
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+ %
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+ The whole world is a tuxedo and you are a pair of brown shoes.
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+ -- George Gobel
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+ %
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+ There is a 20% chance of tomorrow.
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+ %
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+ There is a fly on your nose.
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+ %
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+ There was a phone call for you.
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+ %
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+ There will be big changes for you but you will be happy.
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+ %
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+ Things will be bright in P.M. A cop will shine a light in your face.
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+ %
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+ Think twice before speaking, but don't say "think think click click".
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+ %
379
+ This life is yours. Some of it was given to you; the rest, you made yourself.
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+ %
381
+ This will be a memorable month -- no matter how hard you try to forget it.
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+ %
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+ Time to be aggressive. Go after a tattooed Virgo.
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+ %
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+ Today is National Existential Ennui Awareness Day.
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+ %
387
+ Today is the first day of the rest of the mess.
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+ %
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+ Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
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+ %
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+ Today is the last day of your life so far.
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+ %
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+ Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.
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+ %
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+ Today is what happened to yesterday.
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+ %
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+ Today's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why.
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+ -- Hunter S. Thompson
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+ %
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+ Tomorrow will be cancelled due to lack of interest.
401
+ %
402
+ Tomorrow, this will be part of the unchangeable past but fortunately,
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+ it can still be changed today.
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+ %
405
+ Tomorrow, you can be anywhere.
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+ %
407
+ Tonight you will pay the wages of sin; Don't forget to leave a tip.
408
+ %
409
+ Tonight's the night: Sleep in a eucalyptus tree.
410
+ %
411
+ Troubled day for virgins over 16 who are beautiful and wealthy and live
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+ in eucalyptus trees.
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+ %
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+ Truth will out this morning. (Which may really mess things up.)
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+ %
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+ Try the Moo Shu Pork. It is especially good today.
417
+ %
418
+ Try to get all of your posthumous medals in advance.
419
+ %
420
+ Try to have as good a life as you can under the circumstances.
421
+ %
422
+ Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.
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+ -- Ashleigh Brilliant
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+ %
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+ Try to value useful qualities in one who loves you.
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+ %
427
+ Tuesday After Lunch is the cosmic time of the week.
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+ %
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+ Tuesday is the Wednesday of the rest of your life.
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+ %
431
+ What happened last night can happen again.
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+ %
433
+ While you recently had your problems on the run, they've regrouped and
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+ are making another attack.
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+ %
436
+ Write yourself a threatening letter and pen a defiant reply.
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+ %
438
+ You are a bundle of energy, always on the go.
439
+ %
440
+ You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
441
+ %
442
+ You are a very redundant person, that's what kind of person you are.
443
+ %
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+ You are always busy.
445
+ %
446
+ You are as I am with You.
447
+ %
448
+ You are capable of planning your future.
449
+ %
450
+ You are confused; but this is your normal state.
451
+ %
452
+ You are deeply attached to your friends and acquaintances.
453
+ %
454
+ You are destined to become the commandant of the fighting men of the
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+ department of transportation.
456
+ %
457
+ You are dishonest, but never to the point of hurting a friend.
458
+ %
459
+ You are fairminded, just and loving.
460
+ %
461
+ You are farsighted, a good planner, an ardent lover, and a faithful friend.
462
+ %
463
+ You are fighting for survival in your own sweet and gentle way.
464
+ %
465
+ You are going to have a new love affair.
466
+ %
467
+ You are magnetic in your bearing.
468
+ %
469
+ You are not dead yet. But watch for further reports.
470
+ %
471
+ You are number 6! Who is number one?
472
+ %
473
+ You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
474
+ %
475
+ You are scrupulously honest, frank, and straightforward. Therefore you
476
+ have few friends.
477
+ %
478
+ You are sick, twisted and perverted. I like that in a person.
479
+ %
480
+ You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
481
+ %
482
+ You are standing on my toes.
483
+ %
484
+ You are taking yourself far too seriously.
485
+ %
486
+ You are the only person to ever get this message.
487
+ %
488
+ You are wise, witty, and wonderful, but you spend too much time reading
489
+ this sort of trash.
490
+ %
491
+ You attempt things that you do not even plan because of your extreme stupidity.
492
+ %
493
+ You can create your own opportunities this week. Blackmail a senior executive.
494
+ %
495
+ You can do very well in speculation where land or anything to do with dirt
496
+ is concerned.
497
+ %
498
+ You can rent this space for only $5 a week.
499
+ %
500
+ You could live a better life, if you had a better mind and a better body.
501
+ %
502
+ You definitely intend to start living sometime soon.
503
+ %
504
+ You dialed 5483.
505
+ %
506
+ You display the wonderful traits of charm and courtesy.
507
+ %
508
+ You don't become a failure until you're satisfied with being one.
509
+ %
510
+ You enjoy the company of other people.
511
+ %
512
+ You feel a whole lot more like you do now than you did when you used to.
513
+ %
514
+ You fill a much-needed gap.
515
+ %
516
+ You get along very well with everyone except animals and people.
517
+ %
518
+ You had some happiness once, but your parents moved away, and you had to
519
+ leave it behind.
520
+ %
521
+ You have a deep appreciation of the arts and music.
522
+ %
523
+ You have a deep interest in all that is artistic.
524
+ %
525
+ You have a reputation for being thoroughly reliable and trustworthy.
526
+ A pity that it's totally undeserved.
527
+ %
528
+ You have a strong appeal for members of the opposite sex.
529
+ %
530
+ You have a strong appeal for members of your own sex.
531
+ %
532
+ You have a strong desire for a home and your family interests come first.
533
+ %
534
+ You have a truly strong individuality.
535
+ %
536
+ You have a will that can be influenced by all with whom you come in contact.
537
+ %
538
+ You have an ability to sense and know higher truth.
539
+ %
540
+ You have an ambitious nature and may make a name for yourself.
541
+ %
542
+ You have an unusual equipment for success. Be sure to use it properly.
543
+ %
544
+ You have an unusual magnetic personality. Don't walk too close to
545
+ metal objects which are not fastened down.
546
+ %
547
+ You have an unusual understanding of the problems of human relationships.
548
+ %
549
+ You have been selected for a secret mission.
550
+ %
551
+ You have Egyptian flu: you're going to be a mummy.
552
+ %
553
+ You have had a long-term stimulation relative to business.
554
+ %
555
+ You have literary talent that you should take pains to develop.
556
+ %
557
+ You have many friends and very few living enemies.
558
+ %
559
+ You have no real enemies.
560
+ %
561
+ You have taken yourself too seriously.
562
+ %
563
+ You have the body of a 19 year old. Please return it before it gets wrinkled.
564
+ %
565
+ You have the capacity to learn from mistakes. You'll learn a lot today.
566
+ %
567
+ You have the power to influence all with whom you come in contact.
568
+ %
569
+ You learn to write as if to someone else because NEXT YEAR YOU WILL BE
570
+ "SOMEONE ELSE."
571
+ %
572
+ You like to form new friendships and make new acquaintances.
573
+ %
574
+ You look like a million dollars. All green and wrinkled.
575
+ %
576
+ You look tired.
577
+ %
578
+ You love peace.
579
+ %
580
+ You love your home and want it to be beautiful.
581
+ %
582
+ You may be gone tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that you weren't here today.
583
+ %
584
+ You may be infinitely smaller than some things, but you're infinitely
585
+ larger than others.
586
+ %
587
+ You may be recognized soon. Hide.
588
+ %
589
+ You may get an opportunity for advancement today. Watch it!
590
+ %
591
+ You may worry about your hair-do today, but tomorrow much peanut butter will
592
+ be sold.
593
+ %
594
+ You need more time; and you probably always will.
595
+ %
596
+ You need no longer worry about the future. This time tomorrow you'll be dead.
597
+ %
598
+ You never hesitate to tackle the most difficult problems.
599
+ %
600
+ You never know how many friends you have until you rent a house on the beach.
601
+ %
602
+ You now have Asian Flu.
603
+ %
604
+ You own a dog, but you can only feed a cat.
605
+ %
606
+ You plan things that you do not even attempt because of your extreme caution.
607
+ %
608
+ You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained.
609
+ %
610
+ You prefer the company of the opposite sex, but are well liked by your own.
611
+ %
612
+ You recoil from the crude; you tend naturally toward the exquisite.
613
+ %
614
+ You seek to shield those you love and you like the role of the provider.
615
+ %
616
+ You shall be rewarded for a dastardly deed.
617
+ %
618
+ You should emulate your heros, but don't carry it too far. Especially
619
+ if they are dead.
620
+ %
621
+ You should go home.
622
+ %
623
+ You single-handedly fought your way into this hopeless mess.
624
+ %
625
+ You teach best what you most need to learn.
626
+ %
627
+ You too can wear a nose mitten.
628
+ %
629
+ You two ought to be more careful--your love could drag on for years and years.
630
+ %
631
+ You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.
632
+ %
633
+ You will always have good luck in your personal affairs.
634
+ %
635
+ You will attract cultured and artistic people to your home.
636
+ %
637
+ You will be a winner today. Pick a fight with a four-year-old.
638
+ %
639
+ You will be advanced socially, without any special effort on your part.
640
+ %
641
+ You will be aided greatly by a person whom you thought to be unimportant.
642
+ %
643
+ You will be attacked by a beast who has the body of a wolf, the tail of
644
+ a lion, and the face of Donald Duck.
645
+ %
646
+ You will be audited by the Internal Revenue Service.
647
+ %
648
+ You will be awarded a medal for disregarding safety in saving someone.
649
+ %
650
+ You will be awarded some great honor.
651
+ %
652
+ You will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize... posthumously.
653
+ %
654
+ You will be called upon to help a friend in trouble.
655
+ %
656
+ You will be divorced within a year.
657
+ %
658
+ You will be given a post of trust and responsibility.
659
+ %
660
+ You will be held hostage by a radical group.
661
+ %
662
+ You will be honored for contributing your time and skill to a worthy cause.
663
+ %
664
+ You will be imprisoned for contributing your time and skill to a bank robbery.
665
+ %
666
+ You will be married within a year, and divorced within two.
667
+ %
668
+ You will be married within a year.
669
+ %
670
+ You will be misunderstood by everyone.
671
+ %
672
+ You will be recognized and honored as a community leader.
673
+ %
674
+ You will be reincarnated as a toad; and you will be much happier.
675
+ %
676
+ You will be run over by a beer truck.
677
+ %
678
+ You will be run over by a bus.
679
+ %
680
+ You will be singled out for promotion in your work.
681
+ %
682
+ You will be successful in love.
683
+ %
684
+ You will be surprised by a loud noise.
685
+ %
686
+ You will be surrounded by luxury.
687
+ %
688
+ You will be the last person to buy a Chrysler.
689
+ %
690
+ You will be the victim of a bizarre joke.
691
+ %
692
+ You will be Told about it Tomorrow. Go Home and Prepare Thyself.
693
+ %
694
+ You will be traveling and coming into a fortune.
695
+ %
696
+ You will be winged by an anti-aircraft battery.
697
+ %
698
+ You will become rich and famous unless you don't.
699
+ %
700
+ You will contract a rare disease.
701
+ %
702
+ You will engage in a profitable business activity.
703
+ %
704
+ You will experience a strong urge to do good; but it will pass.
705
+ %
706
+ You will feel hungry again in another hour.
707
+ %
708
+ You will forget that you ever knew me.
709
+ %
710
+ You will gain money by a fattening action.
711
+ %
712
+ You will gain money by a speculation or lottery.
713
+ %
714
+ You will gain money by an illegal action.
715
+ %
716
+ You will gain money by an immoral action.
717
+ %
718
+ You will get what you deserve.
719
+ %
720
+ You will give someone a piece of your mind, which you can ill afford.
721
+ %
722
+ You will have a long and boring life.
723
+ %
724
+ You will have a long and unpleasant discussion with your supervisor.
725
+ %
726
+ You will have domestic happiness and faithful friends.
727
+ %
728
+ You will have good luck and overcome many hardships.
729
+ %
730
+ You will have long and healthy life.
731
+ %
732
+ You will hear good news from one you thought unfriendly to you.
733
+ %
734
+ You will inherit millions of dollars.
735
+ %
736
+ You will inherit some money or a small piece of land.
737
+ %
738
+ You will live a long, healthy, happy life and make bags of money.
739
+ %
740
+ You will live to see your grandchildren.
741
+ %
742
+ You will lose your present job and have to become a door to door mayonnaise
743
+ salesman.
744
+ %
745
+ You will meet an important person who will help you advance professionally.
746
+ %
747
+ You will never know hunger.
748
+ %
749
+ You will not be elected to public office this year.
750
+ %
751
+ You will obey or molten silver will be poured into your ears.
752
+ %
753
+ You will outgrow your usefulness.
754
+ %
755
+ You will overcome the attacks of jealous associates.
756
+ %
757
+ You will pass away very quickly.
758
+ %
759
+ You will pay for your sins. If you have already paid, please disregard
760
+ this message.
761
+ %
762
+ You will pioneer the first Martian colony.
763
+ %
764
+ You will probably marry after a very brief courtship.
765
+ %
766
+ You will reach the highest possible point in your business or profession.
767
+ %
768
+ You will receive a legacy which will place you above want.
769
+ %
770
+ You will remember something that you should not have forgotten.
771
+ %
772
+ You will soon forget this.
773
+ %
774
+ You will soon meet a person who will play an important role in your life.
775
+ %
776
+ You will step on the night soil of many countries.
777
+ %
778
+ You will stop at nothing to reach your objective, but only because your
779
+ brakes are defective.
780
+ %
781
+ You will triumph over your enemy.
782
+ %
783
+ You will visit the Dung Pits of Glive soon.
784
+ %
785
+ You will win success in whatever calling you adopt.
786
+ %
787
+ You will wish you hadn't.
788
+ %
789
+ You work very hard. Don't try to think as well.
790
+ %
791
+ You worry too much about your job. Stop it. You are not paid enough to worry.
792
+ %
793
+ You would if you could but you can't so you won't.
794
+ %
795
+ You'd like to do it instantaneously, but that's too slow.
796
+ %
797
+ You'll be called to a post requiring ability in handling groups of people.
798
+ %
799
+ You'll be sorry...
800
+ %
801
+ You'll feel devilish tonight. Toss dynamite caps under a flamenco dancer's
802
+ heel.
803
+ %
804
+ You'll feel much better once you've given up hope.
805
+ %
806
+ You'll never be the man your mother was!
807
+ %
808
+ You'll never see all the places, or read all the books, but fortunately,
809
+ they're not all recommended.
810
+ %
811
+ You'll wish that you had done some of the hard things when they were easier
812
+ to do.
813
+ %
814
+ You're a card which will have to be dealt with.
815
+ %
816
+ You're almost as happy as you think you are.
817
+ %
818
+ You're at the end of the road again.
819
+ %
820
+ You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.
821
+ %
822
+ You're currently going through a difficult transition period called "Life."
823
+ %
824
+ You're definitely on their list. The question to ask next is what list it is.
825
+ %
826
+ You're growing out of some of your problems, but there are others that
827
+ you're growing into.
828
+ %
829
+ You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!!
830
+ %
831
+ You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny.
832
+ %
833
+ You're working under a slight handicap. You happen to be human.
834
+ %
835
+ You've been leading a dog's life. Stay off the furniture.
836
+ %
837
+ Your aim is high and to the right.
838
+ %
839
+ Your aims are high, and you are capable of much.
840
+ %
841
+ Your analyst has you mixed up with another patient. Don't believe a
842
+ thing he tells you.
843
+ %
844
+ Your best consolation is the hope that the things you failed to get weren't
845
+ really worth having.
846
+ %
847
+ Your boss climbed the corporate ladder, wrong by wrong.
848
+ %
849
+ Your boss is a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
850
+ %
851
+ Your boyfriend takes chocolate from strangers.
852
+ %
853
+ Your business will assume vast proportions.
854
+ %
855
+ Your business will go through a period of considerable expansion.
856
+ %
857
+ Your depth of comprehension may tend to make you lax in worldly ways.
858
+ %
859
+ Your domestic life may be harmonious.
860
+ %
861
+ Your fly might be open (but don't check it just now).
862
+ %
863
+ Your goose is cooked.
864
+ (Your current chick is burned up too!)
865
+ %
866
+ Your heart is pure, and your mind clear, and your soul devout.
867
+ %
868
+ Your ignorance cramps my conversation.
869
+ %
870
+ Your life would be very empty if you had nothing to regret.
871
+ %
872
+ Your love life will be happy and harmonious.
873
+ %
874
+ Your love life will be... interesting.
875
+ %
876
+ Your lover will never wish to leave you.
877
+ %
878
+ Your lucky color has faded.
879
+ %
880
+ Your lucky number has been disconnected.
881
+ %
882
+ Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere.
883
+ %
884
+ Your mode of life will be changed for the better because of good news soon.
885
+ %
886
+ Your mode of life will be changed for the better because of new developments.
887
+ %
888
+ Your motives for doing whatever good deed you may have in mind will be
889
+ misinterpreted by somebody.
890
+ %
891
+ Your nature demands love and your happiness depends on it.
892
+ %
893
+ Your object is to save the world, while still leading a pleasant life.
894
+ %
895
+ Your own qualities will help prevent your advancement in the world.
896
+ %
897
+ Your present plans will be successful.
898
+ %
899
+ Your reasoning is excellent -- it's only your basic assumptions that are wrong.
900
+ %
901
+ Your reasoning powers are good, and you are a fairly good planner.
902
+ %
903
+ Your sister swims out to meet troop ships.
904
+ %
905
+ Your society will be sought by people of taste and refinement.
906
+ %
907
+ Your step will soil many countries.
908
+ %
909
+ Your supervisor is thinking about you.
910
+ %
911
+ Your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded.
912
+ %
913
+ Your temporary financial embarrassment will be relieved in a surprising manner.
914
+ %
915
+ Your true value depends entirely on what you are compared with.
916
+ %
917
+ A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
918
+ and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
919
+ -- Mark Twain
920
+ %
921
+ A classic is something that everyone wants to have read
922
+ and nobody wants to read.
923
+ -- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature"
924
+ %
925
+ A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!
926
+ -- Wm. Shakespeare, "Richard III"
927
+ %
928
+ A hundred years from now it is very likely that [of Twain's works] "The
929
+ Jumping Frog" alone will be remembered.
930
+ -- Harry Thurston Peck (Editor of "The Bookman"), January 1901.
931
+ %
932
+ A is for Apple.
933
+ -- Hester Pryne
934
+ %
935
+ A kind of Batman of contemporary letters.
936
+ -- Philip Larkin on Anthony Burgess
937
+ %
938
+ A light wife doth make a heavy husband.
939
+ -- Wm. Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
940
+ %
941
+ A man was reading The Canterbury Tales one Saturday morning, when his
942
+ wife asked "What have you got there?" Replied he, "Just my cup and Chaucer."
943
+ %
944
+ ... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he
945
+ was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
946
+ -- Mark Twain
947
+ %
948
+ A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)
949
+ -- by Charles Dickens
950
+
951
+ A lawyer who looks like a French Nobleman is executed in his place.
952
+
953
+ The Metamorphosis LITE(tm)
954
+ -- by Franz Kafka
955
+
956
+ A man turns into a bug and his family gets annoyed.
957
+
958
+ Lord of the Rings LITE(tm)
959
+ -- by J. R. R. Tolkien
960
+
961
+ Some guys take a long vacation to throw a ring into a volcano.
962
+
963
+ Hamlet LITE(tm)
964
+ -- by Wm. Shakespeare
965
+
966
+ A college student on vacation with family problems, a screwy
967
+ girl-friend and a mother who won't act her age.
968
+ %
969
+ A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)
970
+ -- by Charles Dickens
971
+
972
+ A man in love with a girl who loves another man who looks just
973
+ like him has his head chopped off in France because of a mean
974
+ lady who knits.
975
+
976
+ Crime and Punishment LITE(tm)
977
+ -- by Fyodor Dostoevski
978
+
979
+ A man sends a nasty letter to a pawnbroker, but later
980
+ feels guilty and apologizes.
981
+
982
+ The Odyssey LITE(tm)
983
+ -- by Homer
984
+
985
+ After working late, a valiant warrior gets lost on his way home.
986
+ %
987
+ After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
988
+ -- H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
989
+ %
990
+ Alas, how love can trifle with itself!
991
+ -- William Shakespeare, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"
992
+ %
993
+ All generalizations are false, including this one.
994
+ -- Mark Twain
995
+ %
996
+ All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that
997
+ makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and
998
+ an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
999
+ -- Samuel Beckett
1000
+ %
1001
+ All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to come from
1002
+ the mouths of people who have had to live.
1003
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1004
+ %
1005
+ "... all the modern inconveniences ..."
1006
+ -- Mark Twain
1007
+ %
1008
+ All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.
1009
+ -- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice"
1010
+ %
1011
+ Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
1012
+ -- Mark Twain
1013
+ %
1014
+ Always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.
1015
+ -- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
1016
+ %
1017
+ "... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
1018
+ picturesque liar."
1019
+ -- Mark Twain
1020
+ %
1021
+ An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.
1022
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
1023
+ %
1024
+ And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?
1025
+ %
1026
+ Anyone who has had a bull by the tail knows five or six more things
1027
+ than someone who hasn't.
1028
+ -- Mark Twain
1029
+ %
1030
+ April 1
1031
+
1032
+ This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three
1033
+ hundred and sixty-four.
1034
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1035
+ %
1036
+ As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.
1037
+ -- Shakespeare, "King Lear"
1038
+ %
1039
+ As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
1040
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1041
+ %
1042
+ At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement,
1043
+ especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously
1044
+ -- I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being
1045
+ in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
1046
+ after fact and reason.
1047
+ -- John Keats
1048
+ %
1049
+ AWAKE! FEAR! FIRE! FOES! AWAKE!
1050
+ FEAR! FIRE! FOES!
1051
+ AWAKE! AWAKE!
1052
+ -- J. R. R. Tolkien
1053
+ %
1054
+ Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining
1055
+ ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror
1056
+ to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the
1057
+ mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam
1058
+ in 1959.
1059
+ -- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton
1060
+ bad fiction contest.
1061
+ %
1062
+ Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
1063
+ -- Mark Twain
1064
+ %
1065
+ Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"--which is
1066
+ but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention;" but the wise
1067
+ man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and--WATCH THAT BASKET."
1068
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1069
+ %
1070
+ Big book, big bore.
1071
+ -- Callimachus
1072
+ %
1073
+ But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.
1074
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
1075
+ %
1076
+ By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
1077
+ -- Mark Twain
1078
+ %
1079
+ Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
1080
+ -- Mark Twain
1081
+ %
1082
+ Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.
1083
+ -- Mark Twain
1084
+ %
1085
+ Condense soup, not books!
1086
+ %
1087
+ Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
1088
+ -- Shakespeare
1089
+ %
1090
+ Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young June-bug
1091
+ than an old bird of paradise.
1092
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1093
+ %
1094
+ Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a
1095
+ creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely
1096
+ a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!--incomparably the
1097
+ bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.
1098
+ Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact
1099
+ that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth
1100
+ to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the
1101
+ very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more
1102
+ afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by
1103
+ an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam
1104
+ as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and
1105
+ put him at the head of the procession.
1106
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1107
+ %
1108
+ Delay not, Caesar. Read it instantly.
1109
+ -- Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" 3,1
1110
+
1111
+ Here is a letter, read it at your leisure.
1112
+ -- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice" 5,1
1113
+
1114
+ [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
1115
+ referring to I/O system services.]
1116
+ %
1117
+ Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever
1118
+ skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious
1119
+ to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an
1120
+ overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic
1121
+ apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless
1122
+ as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a
1123
+ steroid-free fitness center.
1124
+ -- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
1125
+ %
1126
+ Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you
1127
+ nothing. It was here first.
1128
+ -- Mark Twain
1129
+ %
1130
+ "Elves and Dragons!" I says to him. "Cabbages and potatoes are better
1131
+ for you and me."
1132
+ -- J. R. R. Tolkien
1133
+ %
1134
+ English literature's performing flea.
1135
+ -- Sean O'Casey on P. G. Wodehouse
1136
+ %
1137
+ Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at
1138
+ fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution. Take
1139
+ the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will
1140
+ find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil,
1141
+ you will say that she did it with her teeth.
1142
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1143
+ %
1144
+ Every cloud engenders not a storm.
1145
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
1146
+ %
1147
+ Every why hath a wherefore.
1148
+ -- William Shakespeare, "A Comedy of Errors"
1149
+ %
1150
+ Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.
1151
+ -- William Shakespeare, "The Rape of Lucrece"
1152
+ %
1153
+ F.S. Fitzgerald to Hemingway:
1154
+ "Ernest, the rich are different from us."
1155
+ Hemingway:
1156
+ "Yes. They have more money."
1157
+ %
1158
+ Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is
1159
+ oblivion.
1160
+ -- Mark Twain
1161
+ %
1162
+ Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
1163
+ -- Mark Twain
1164
+ %
1165
+ Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
1166
+ -- "Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1167
+ %
1168
+ For a light heart lives long.
1169
+ -- Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
1170
+ %
1171
+ For courage mounteth with occasion.
1172
+ -- William Shakespeare, "King John"
1173
+ %
1174
+ For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels,
1175
+ each delved into a hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each wall
1176
+ was a gate.
1177
+ -- J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Return of the King"
1178
+
1179
+ [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
1180
+ referring to system overview.]
1181
+
1182
+ %
1183
+ For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel. And if one can
1184
+ neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?
1185
+ -- Virginia Woolf, "To the Lighthouse"
1186
+
1187
+ [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
1188
+ referring to powerfail recovery.]
1189
+ %
1190
+ For years a secret shame destroyed my peace--
1191
+ I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
1192
+ But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
1193
+ Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
1194
+ -- Justin Richardson.
1195
+ %
1196
+ Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no.
1197
+ -- J.R.R. Tolkien
1198
+ %
1199
+ Gone With The Wind LITE(tm)
1200
+ -- by Margaret Mitchell
1201
+
1202
+ A woman only likes men she can't have and the South gets trashed.
1203
+
1204
+ Gift of the Magi LITE(tm)
1205
+ -- by O. Henry
1206
+
1207
+ A husband and wife forget to register their gift preferences.
1208
+
1209
+ The Old Man and the Sea LITE(tm)
1210
+ -- by Ernest Hemingway
1211
+
1212
+ An old man goes fishing, but doesn't have much luck.
1213
+ %
1214
+ Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession.
1215
+ You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy
1216
+ officials have gone by.
1217
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1218
+ %
1219
+ Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must
1220
+ have somebody to divide it with.
1221
+ -- Mark Twain
1222
+ %
1223
+ Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed
1224
+ down-stairs a step at a time.
1225
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
1226
+ %
1227
+ Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big
1228
+ enough majority in any town?
1229
+ -- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn"
1230
+ %
1231
+ Harp not on that string.
1232
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
1233
+ %
1234
+ Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not
1235
+ advice, it is merely custom.
1236
+ -- Mark Twain
1237
+ %
1238
+ Having nothing, nothing can he lose.
1239
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
1240
+ %
1241
+ He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his
1242
+ argument.
1243
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
1244
+ %
1245
+ He hath eaten me out of house and home.
1246
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
1247
+ %
1248
+ He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
1249
+ -- Mark Twain
1250
+ %
1251
+ He jests at scars who never felt a wound.
1252
+ -- Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet, II. 2"
1253
+ %
1254
+ He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
1255
+ -- J.R.R. Tolkien
1256
+ %
1257
+ He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.
1258
+ -- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
1259
+ %
1260
+ He was part of my dream, of course -- but then I was part of his dream too.
1261
+ -- Lewis Carroll
1262
+ %
1263
+ Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
1264
+ -- Wm. Shakespeare, "The Tempest"
1265
+ %
1266
+ His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred
1267
+ to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never
1268
+ claimed to be a god. But then, he never claimed not to be a god. Circum-
1269
+ stances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit.
1270
+ Silence, though, could. It was in the days of the rains that their prayers
1271
+ went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of
1272
+ prayer wheels, but from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri,
1273
+ goddess of the Night. The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through
1274
+ the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud called the
1275
+ Bridge of the Gods, which circles the entire world, is seen as a bronze
1276
+ rainbow at night and is the place where the red sun becomes orange at midday.
1277
+ Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique...
1278
+ -- Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"
1279
+ %
1280
+ How apt the poor are to be proud.
1281
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Twelfth-Night"
1282
+ %
1283
+ I do desire we may be better strangers.
1284
+ -- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
1285
+ %
1286
+ I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less
1287
+ than half of you half as well as you deserve.
1288
+ -- J. R. R. Tolkien
1289
+ %
1290
+ I dote on his very absence.
1291
+ -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
1292
+ %
1293
+ I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on,
1294
+ so I woke up from sheer boredom.
1295
+ %
1296
+ I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
1297
+ -- Mark Twain
1298
+ %
1299
+ I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
1300
+ week sometimes to make it up.
1301
+ -- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
1302
+ %
1303
+ I reverently believe that the maker who made us all makes everything in New
1304
+ England, but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be
1305
+ raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in
1306
+ New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for
1307
+ countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere
1308
+ if they don't get it.
1309
+ -- Mark Twain
1310
+ %
1311
+ I think we are in Rats' Alley where the dead men lost their bones.
1312
+ -- T.S. Eliot
1313
+ %
1314
+ I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
1315
+ -- Mark Twain
1316
+ %
1317
+ I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I
1318
+ will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all
1319
+ Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they
1320
+ teach. Oh, tell me that I may sponge away the writing on this stone!
1321
+ -- Charles Dickens
1322
+ %
1323
+ "I wonder", he said to himself, "what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I
1324
+ know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must
1325
+ be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people
1326
+ I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures and battles."
1327
+ -- Bastian B. Bux
1328
+ %
1329
+ I'll burn my books.
1330
+ -- Christopher Marlowe
1331
+ %
1332
+ I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
1333
+ And from that full meridian of my glory
1334
+ I haste now to my setting. I shall fall,
1335
+ Like a bright exhalation in the evening
1336
+ And no man see me more.
1337
+ -- Shakespeare
1338
+ %
1339
+ If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would
1340
+ be a merrier world.
1341
+ -- J.R.R. Tolkien
1342
+ %
1343
+ If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use
1344
+ in reading it at all.
1345
+ -- Oscar Wilde
1346
+ %
1347
+ If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it.
1348
+ -- Ernest Hemingway
1349
+ %
1350
+ If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end.
1351
+ -- Mark Twain
1352
+ %
1353
+ If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you.
1354
+ This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
1355
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1356
+ %
1357
+ If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
1358
+ -- Mark Twain
1359
+ %
1360
+ In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
1361
+ "one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."
1362
+ -- Mark Twain
1363
+ %
1364
+ In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into
1365
+ use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather
1366
+ which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
1367
+ -- Mark Twain
1368
+ %
1369
+ In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but
1370
+ the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they
1371
+ have obtained from books of travel.
1372
+ -- Mark Twain
1373
+ %
1374
+ In the first place, God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made
1375
+ school boards.
1376
+ -- Mark Twain
1377
+ %
1378
+ In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and
1379
+ struggled and had lots of children. There was a Frenchman who talked funny
1380
+ and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the
1381
+ crunch he was all courage. Those novels would make you retch.
1382
+ -- Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, on the generic Canadian
1383
+ novel.
1384
+ %
1385
+ In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
1386
+ shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old
1387
+ Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred
1388
+ thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the
1389
+ Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is
1390
+ something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of
1391
+ conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
1392
+ -- Mark Twain
1393
+ %
1394
+ In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of
1395
+ 24 hours.
1396
+ -- Mark Twain, on New England weather
1397
+ %
1398
+ It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely
1399
+ the most important.
1400
+ -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity"
1401
+ %
1402
+ It is a wise father that knows his own child.
1403
+ -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
1404
+ %
1405
+ It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits:
1406
+ freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
1407
+ -- Mark Twain
1408
+ %
1409
+ It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man
1410
+ who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that
1411
+ there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
1412
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1413
+ %
1414
+ It is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best
1415
+ judge of one.
1416
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1417
+ %
1418
+ It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories,
1419
+ his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the
1420
+ worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one
1421
+ day like any other day, only shorter.
1422
+ -- Samuel Beckett, "Malone Dies"
1423
+ %
1424
+ It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
1425
+ -- Mark Twain
1426
+ %
1427
+ It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion
1428
+ that makes horse-races.
1429
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1430
+ %
1431
+ Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything.
1432
+ Some think it is the voice of God.
1433
+ -- Mark Twain
1434
+ %
1435
+ Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.
1436
+ -- Mark Twain
1437
+ %
1438
+ Kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday.
1439
+ -- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
1440
+ %
1441
+ Lay on, MacDuff, and curs'd be him who first cries, "Hold, enough!".
1442
+ -- Shakespeare
1443
+ %
1444
+ Let him choose out of my files, his projects to accomplish.
1445
+ -- Shakespeare, "Coriolanus"
1446
+ %
1447
+ Let me take you a button-hole lower.
1448
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
1449
+ %
1450
+ Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be
1451
+ sorry.
1452
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1453
+ %
1454
+ Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek,
1455
+ shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm
1456
+ as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like
1457
+ bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood;
1458
+ she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a
1459
+ man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the
1460
+ right road: a man like Alf Romeo.
1461
+ -- Rachel Sheeley, winner
1462
+
1463
+ The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never
1464
+ see her little dog Pritzi again.
1465
+ -- Claudia Fields, runner-up
1466
+
1467
+ It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a
1468
+ tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it
1469
+ was determined that Byron was simply a jerk.
1470
+ -- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up
1471
+
1472
+ Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest. The contest is
1473
+ named after the author of the immortal lines: "It was a dark and stormy
1474
+ night." The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the
1475
+ worst possible novel.
1476
+ %
1477
+ Lord, what fools these mortals be!
1478
+ -- William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"
1479
+ %
1480
+ Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
1481
+ -- Mark Twain
1482
+ %
1483
+ Many a writer seems to think he is never profound except when he can't
1484
+ understand his own meaning.
1485
+ -- George D. Prentice
1486
+ %
1487
+ Many enraged psychiatrists are inciting a weary butcher. The butcher is
1488
+ weary and tired because he has cut meat and steak and lamb for hours and
1489
+ weeks. He does not desire to chant about anything with raving psychiatrists,
1490
+ but he sings about his gingivectomist, he dreams about a single cosmologist,
1491
+ he thinks about his dog. The dog is named Herbert.
1492
+ -- Racter, "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed"
1493
+ %
1494
+ Many pages make a thick book, except for pocket Bibles which are on very
1495
+ very thin paper.
1496
+ %
1497
+ Many pages make a thick book.
1498
+ %
1499
+ Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is
1500
+ particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself,
1501
+ to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.
1502
+ But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands
1503
+ shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit
1504
+ me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
1505
+ -- Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol"
1506
+ %
1507
+ Must I hold a candle to my shames?
1508
+ -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
1509
+ %
1510
+ My dear People.
1511
+ My dear Bagginses and Boffins, and my dear Tooks and Brandybucks,
1512
+ and Grubbs, and Chubbs, and Burrowses, and Hornblowers, and Bolgers,
1513
+ Bracegirdles, Goodbodies, Brockhouses and Proudfoots. Also my good
1514
+ Sackville Bagginses that I welcome back at last to Bag End. Today is my
1515
+ one hundred and eleventh birthday: I am eleventy-one today!"
1516
+ -- J. R. R. Tolkien
1517
+ %
1518
+ My only love sprung from my only hate!
1519
+ Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
1520
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet"
1521
+ %
1522
+ Never laugh at live dragons.
1523
+ -- Bilbo Baggins [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Hobbit"]
1524
+ %
1525
+ No group of professionals meets except to conspire against the public at large.
1526
+ -- Mark Twain
1527
+ %
1528
+ No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of
1529
+ absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.
1530
+ Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness
1531
+ within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.
1532
+ Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and
1533
+ doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone
1534
+ of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
1535
+ -- Shirley Jackson, "The Haunting of Hill House"
1536
+ %
1537
+ No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you! Consider the furniture!
1538
+ -- Sherlock Holmes
1539
+ %
1540
+ Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles
1541
+ as if she laid an asteroid.
1542
+ -- Mark Twain
1543
+ %
1544
+ "Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none."
1545
+ -- Shakespeare
1546
+ %
1547
+ Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
1548
+ -- Mark Twain
1549
+ %
1550
+ Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
1551
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1552
+ %
1553
+ O, it is excellent
1554
+ To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
1555
+ To use it like a giant.
1556
+ -- Shakespeare, "Measure for Measure", II, 2
1557
+ %
1558
+ October 12, the Discovery.
1559
+
1560
+ It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss
1561
+ it.
1562
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1563
+ %
1564
+ October.
1565
+
1566
+ This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in.
1567
+
1568
+ The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June,
1569
+ December, August, and February.
1570
+
1571
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1572
+ %
1573
+ O, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive.
1574
+ -- Sir Walter Scott, "Marmion"
1575
+ %
1576
+ One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has
1577
+ only nine lives.
1578
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1579
+ %
1580
+ Patch griefs with proverbs.
1581
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"
1582
+ %
1583
+ Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we ourselves
1584
+ possess.
1585
+ -- Gandalf the Grey [J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"]
1586
+ %
1587
+ Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
1588
+ persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting
1589
+ to find a plot in it will be shot. By Order of the Author
1590
+ -- Mark Twain, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"
1591
+ %
1592
+ question = ( to ) ? be : ! be;
1593
+ -- Wm. Shakespeare
1594
+ %
1595
+ Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of
1596
+ Congress. But I repeat myself.
1597
+ -- Mark Twain
1598
+ %
1599
+ Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.
1600
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
1601
+ %
1602
+ Remark of Dr. Baldwin's concerning upstarts: We don't care to eat toadstools
1603
+ that think they are truffles.
1604
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1605
+ %
1606
+ Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.
1607
+ -- Mark Twain
1608
+ %
1609
+ ROMEO: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
1610
+ MERCUTIO: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide
1611
+ as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
1612
+ %
1613
+ Seeing that death, a necessary end,
1614
+ Will come when it will come.
1615
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
1616
+ %
1617
+ She is not refined. She is not unrefined. She keeps a parrot.
1618
+ -- Mark Twain
1619
+ %
1620
+ Sheriff Chameleotoptor sighed with an air of weary sadness, and then
1621
+ turned to Doppelgutt and said 'The Senator must really have been on a
1622
+ bender this time -- he left a party in Cleveland, Ohio, at 11:30 last
1623
+ night, and they found his car this morning in the smokestack of a British
1624
+ aircraft carrier in the Formosa Straits.'
1625
+ -- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton
1626
+ bad fiction contest.
1627
+ %
1628
+ Small things make base men proud.
1629
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
1630
+ %
1631
+ So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie;
1632
+ and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head
1633
+ into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently
1634
+ married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand
1635
+ Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all
1636
+ fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran
1637
+ out at the heels of their boots.
1638
+ -- Samuel Foote
1639
+ %
1640
+ So so is good, very good, very excellent good:
1641
+ and yet it is not; it is but so so.
1642
+ -- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
1643
+ %
1644
+ Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more
1645
+ deadly in the long run.
1646
+ -- Mark Twain
1647
+ %
1648
+ Something's rotten in the state of Denmark.
1649
+ -- Shakespeare
1650
+ %
1651
+ Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind. Then it passes off and I'm
1652
+ as intelligent as ever.
1653
+ -- Samuel Beckett, "Endgame"
1654
+ %
1655
+ "Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though
1656
+ ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak,
1657
+ mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers,
1658
+ thou has dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams has
1659
+ moved amid the world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust,
1660
+ and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate
1661
+ earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful
1662
+ water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or
1663
+ diver never went; has slept by many a sailer's side, where sleepless mothers
1664
+ would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when
1665
+ leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting
1666
+ wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the
1667
+ murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell
1668
+ into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed
1669
+ on unharmed -- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would
1670
+ have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has
1671
+ seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one
1672
+ syllable is thine!"
1673
+ -- H. Melville, "Moby Dick"
1674
+ %
1675
+ Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time. So long
1676
+ as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks
1677
+ into, there is room for lateral movement. Once this begins, its rate is
1678
+ a matter of discretion.
1679
+ -- Corwin, Prince of Amber
1680
+ %
1681
+ Stop! There was first a game of blindman's buff. Of course there was.
1682
+ And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes
1683
+ in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and
1684
+ Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The
1685
+ way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage
1686
+ on the credulity of human nature.
1687
+ %
1688
+ Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.
1689
+ -- Wm. Shakespeare
1690
+ %
1691
+ Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails,
1692
+ whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through
1693
+ the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush!
1694
+ -- Captain Ahab, "Moby Dick"
1695
+ %
1696
+ Talkers are no good doers.
1697
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
1698
+ %
1699
+ Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick.
1700
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1701
+ %
1702
+ Tempt not a desperate man.
1703
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet"
1704
+ %
1705
+ The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.
1706
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
1707
+ %
1708
+ The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd
1709
+ And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
1710
+ The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
1711
+ And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change.
1712
+ These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.
1713
+ -- Wm. Shakespeare, "Richard II"
1714
+ %
1715
+ The better part of valor is discretion.
1716
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
1717
+ %
1718
+ The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first
1719
+ half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and
1720
+ pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who
1721
+ hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice
1722
+ for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time
1723
+ during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it
1724
+ but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
1725
+ -- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
1726
+ %
1727
+ The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is held ever year at San Jose State
1728
+ Univ. by Professor Scott Rice. It is held in memory of Edward George
1729
+ Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather prolific and popular (in his
1730
+ time) novelist. He is best known today for having written "The Last
1731
+ Days of Pompeii."
1732
+
1733
+ Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel from the top of his doghouse,
1734
+ beginning "It was a dark and stormy night..." he is borrowing from Lord
1735
+ Bulwer-Lytton. This was the line that opened his novel, "Paul Clifford,"
1736
+ written in 1830. The full line reveals why it is so bad:
1737
+
1738
+ It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except
1739
+ at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of
1740
+ wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene
1741
+ lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty
1742
+ flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
1743
+ %
1744
+ The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and Selena fretted
1745
+ sullenly and, buffing her already impeccable nails -- not for the first
1746
+ time since the journey begain -- pondered snidely if this would dissolve
1747
+ into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other holidays spent
1748
+ with Basil.
1749
+ -- Winning sentence, 1983 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
1750
+ %
1751
+ The countdown had stalled at 'T' minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first
1752
+ female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick,
1753
+ rubbery lips unmistakably -- the first of many such advances during what
1754
+ would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my
1755
+ career.
1756
+ -- Winning sentence, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
1757
+ %
1758
+ The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
1759
+ -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
1760
+ %
1761
+ The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference
1762
+ between a mermaid and a seal.
1763
+ -- Mark Twain
1764
+ %
1765
+ The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the
1766
+ difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
1767
+ -- Mark Twain
1768
+ %
1769
+ The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
1770
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"
1771
+ %
1772
+ The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
1773
+ -- Wm. Shakespeare, "Henry VI", Part IV
1774
+ %
1775
+ The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and
1776
+ enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to
1777
+ lend money.
1778
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1779
+ %
1780
+ The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
1781
+ -- Mark Twain
1782
+ %
1783
+ The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
1784
+ procession but carrying a banner.
1785
+ -- Mark Twain
1786
+ %
1787
+ The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
1788
+ -- Blaise Pascal
1789
+ %
1790
+ The Least Perceptive Literary Critic
1791
+ The most important critic in our field of study is Lord Halifax. A
1792
+ most individual judge of poetry, he once invited Alexander Pope round to
1793
+ give a public reading of his latest poem.
1794
+ Pope, the leading poet of his day, was greatly surprised when Lord
1795
+ Halifax stopped him four or five times and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr.
1796
+ Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me."
1797
+ Pope was rendered speechless, as this fine critic suggested sizeable
1798
+ and unwise emendations to his latest masterpiece. "Be so good as to mark
1799
+ the place and consider at your leisure. I'm sure you can give it a better
1800
+ turn."
1801
+ After the reading, a good friend of Lord Halifax, a certain Dr.
1802
+ Garth, took the stunned Pope to one side. "There is no need to touch the
1803
+ lines," he said. "All you need do is leave them just as they are, call on
1804
+ Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observation
1805
+ on those passages, and then read them to him as altered. I have known him
1806
+ much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."
1807
+ Pope took his advice, called on Lord Halifax and read the poem
1808
+ exactly as it was before. His unique critical faculties had lost none of
1809
+ their edge. "Ay", he commented, "now they are perfectly right. Nothing can
1810
+ be better."
1811
+ -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
1812
+ %
1813
+ The Least Successful Collector
1814
+ Betsy Baker played a central role in the history of collecting. She
1815
+ was employed as a servant in the house of John Warburton (1682-1759) who had
1816
+ amassed a fine collection of 58 first edition plays, including most of the
1817
+ works of Shakespeare.
1818
+ One day Warburton returned home to find 55 of them charred beyond
1819
+ legibility. Betsy had either burned them or used them as pie bottoms. The
1820
+ remaining three folios are now in the British Museum.
1821
+ The only comparable literary figure was the maid who in 1835 burned
1822
+ the manuscript of the first volume of Thomas Carlyle's "The Hisory of the
1823
+ French Revolution", thinking it was wastepaper.
1824
+ -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
1825
+ %
1826
+ The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of
1827
+ the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe now stacking wood at
1828
+ her nubile feet, when the strong clear voice of the poetic and heroic
1829
+ Handsomas roared, 'Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my
1830
+ steel through your last meal!'
1831
+ -- Winning sentence, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
1832
+ %
1833
+ The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
1834
+ Are of imagination all compact...
1835
+ -- Wm. Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
1836
+ %
1837
+ The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that
1838
+ will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
1839
+ -- Mark Twain
1840
+ %
1841
+ The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt.
1842
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
1843
+ %
1844
+ "...The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!"
1845
+ "Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to
1846
+ feel interested.
1847
+ "No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little
1848
+ vexed. "That's what the name is called. The name really is, 'The Aged
1849
+ Aged Man.'"
1850
+ "Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
1851
+ Alice corrected herself.
1852
+ "No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing! The song is
1853
+ called 'Ways and Means': but that's only what it is called you know!"
1854
+ "Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this
1855
+ time completely bewildered.
1856
+ "I was coming to that," the Knight said. "The song really is
1857
+ "A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
1858
+ -- Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
1859
+ %
1860
+ The notes blatted skyward as they rose over the Canada geese, feathered
1861
+ rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically pedaling unseen
1862
+ bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by cruel Nature's maxim,
1863
+ 'Ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,' and at last I knew Pittsburgh.
1864
+ -- Winning sentence, 1987 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
1865
+ %
1866
+ The only people for me are the mad ones -- the ones who are mad to live,
1867
+ mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,
1868
+ the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn
1869
+ like fabulous yellow Roman candles.
1870
+ -- Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"
1871
+ %
1872
+ The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what
1873
+ you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.
1874
+ -- Mark Twain
1875
+ %
1876
+ The Priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly.
1877
+ I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
1878
+ A voice, sweetened and sustained, called to him from the sea.
1879
+ Turning the curve he waved his hand. A sleek brown head, a seal's, far
1880
+ out on the water, round. Usurper.
1881
+ -- James Joyce, "Ulysses"
1882
+ %
1883
+ The Public is merely a multiplied "me."
1884
+ -- Mark Twain
1885
+ %
1886
+ The ripest fruit falls first.
1887
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"
1888
+ %
1889
+ The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.
1890
+ -- Mark Twain
1891
+ %
1892
+ The smallest worm will turn being trodden on.
1893
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
1894
+ %
1895
+ The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
1896
+ -- Mark Twain
1897
+ %
1898
+ The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with
1899
+ commoner things. It is chief of the world's luxuries, king by the grace of God
1900
+ over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it, he knows what the
1901
+ angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because
1902
+ she repented.
1903
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1904
+ %
1905
+ The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
1906
+ -- Mark Twain
1907
+ %
1908
+ There are more things in heaven and earth,
1909
+ Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
1910
+ -- Wm. Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
1911
+ %
1912
+ There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a
1913
+ rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2,
1914
+ to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the
1915
+ manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2
1916
+ admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.
1917
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1918
+ %
1919
+ There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
1920
+ paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
1921
+ %
1922
+ There is always one thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.
1923
+ -- Joan Didion, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"
1924
+ %
1925
+ There is an old time toast which is golden for its beauty.
1926
+ "When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend."
1927
+ -- Mark Twain
1928
+ %
1929
+ There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by
1930
+ ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his
1931
+ character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler
1932
+ animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling
1933
+ complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.
1934
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1935
+ %
1936
+ There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
1937
+ -- Mark Twain
1938
+ %
1939
+ There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted
1940
+ armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
1941
+ -- Ernest Hemingway
1942
+ %
1943
+ There's small choice in rotten apples.
1944
+ -- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
1945
+ %
1946
+ They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.
1947
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
1948
+ %
1949
+ They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy". Foreigners
1950
+ always spell better than they pronounce.
1951
+ -- Mark Twain
1952
+ %
1953
+ Things past redress and now with me past care.
1954
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"
1955
+ %
1956
+ This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future, which is a
1957
+ little ironic since we may not have one.
1958
+ -- Arthur Clarke
1959
+ %
1960
+ This night methinks is but the daylight sick.
1961
+ -- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
1962
+ %
1963
+ This was the most unkindest cut of all.
1964
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
1965
+ %
1966
+ To be or not to be.
1967
+ -- Shakespeare
1968
+ To do is to be.
1969
+ -- Nietzsche
1970
+ To be is to do.
1971
+ -- Sartre
1972
+ Do be do be do.
1973
+ -- Sinatra
1974
+ %
1975
+ Too much is just enough.
1976
+ -- Mark Twain, on whiskey
1977
+ %
1978
+ Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is
1979
+ nothing but cabbage with a college education.
1980
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
1981
+ %
1982
+ Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
1983
+ -- Mark Twain
1984
+ %
1985
+ Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues
1986
+ of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping houses, and the blessed sun himself
1987
+ a fair, hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst
1988
+ be so superfluous to demand the time of the day. I wasted time and now doth
1989
+ time waste me.
1990
+ -- William Shakespeare
1991
+ %
1992
+ Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
1993
+ -- Mark Twain
1994
+ %
1995
+ Water, taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody.
1996
+ -- Mark Twain
1997
+ %
1998
+ We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the
1999
+ bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems
2000
+ almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the
2001
+ oyster.
2002
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
2003
+ %
2004
+ We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is
2005
+ in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot
2006
+ stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that
2007
+ is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
2008
+ -- Mark Twain
2009
+ %
2010
+ We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But there was
2011
+ also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a
2012
+ French restaurant. [...]
2013
+ I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk
2014
+ white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had punched her
2015
+ boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him, "You ride the
2016
+ bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough like a bad
2017
+ rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when we finished
2018
+ there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...]
2019
+ "Stop the car," the girl said.
2020
+ There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew about the
2021
+ woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but she raised an
2022
+ arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.
2023
+ "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway
2024
+ belle's for thee."
2025
+ The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie.
2026
+ Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey
2027
+ onto my granola and faced a new day.
2028
+ -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
2029
+ Competition
2030
+ %
2031
+ Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized
2032
+ that like most books, it had too many words. The plot was the same one that
2033
+ all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but
2034
+ James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive
2035
+ women. There, that's it: 24 words. But the guy who wrote the book took
2036
+ *thousands* of words to say it.
2037
+ Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic
2038
+ Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It's about these two brothers who kill their father.
2039
+ Or maybe only one of them kills the father. It's impossible to tell because
2040
+ what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages. If all Russians talk
2041
+ as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a
2042
+ major world power.
2043
+ I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise
2044
+ the question of whether there is a God. So why didn't he just come right
2045
+ out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."
2046
+ Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:
2047
+
2048
+ * "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize
2049
+ nature and will kill you.
2050
+ * "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.
2051
+ -- Dave Barry
2052
+ %
2053
+ What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?
2054
+ -- Nero Wolfe, "The League of Frightened Men"
2055
+ %
2056
+ What I tell you three times is true.
2057
+ -- Lewis Carroll
2058
+ %
2059
+ What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working
2060
+ when he's staring out the window.
2061
+ %
2062
+ When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
2063
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
2064
+ %
2065
+ When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know who have gone
2066
+ to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
2067
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
2068
+ %
2069
+ When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
2070
+ or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
2071
+ cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to
2072
+ go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
2073
+ -- Mark Twain
2074
+ %
2075
+ When in doubt, tell the truth.
2076
+ -- Mark Twain
2077
+ %
2078
+ When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.
2079
+ -- Dylan Thomas
2080
+ %
2081
+ When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all.
2082
+ -- Roger Zelazny, "Doorways in the Sand"
2083
+ %
2084
+ Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
2085
+ you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
2086
+ Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
2087
+ -- Mark Twain "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
2088
+ %
2089
+ Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
2090
+ to reform.
2091
+ -- Mark Twain
2092
+ %
2093
+ Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt
2094
+ of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He
2095
+ brought death into the world.
2096
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
2097
+ %
2098
+ Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we
2099
+ are not the person involved.
2100
+ -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
2101
+ %
2102
+ Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do.
2103
+ Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
2104
+ -- Mark Twain
2105
+ %
2106
+ Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
2107
+ -- Mark Twain
2108
+ %
2109
+ Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at the blank sheet of paper until
2110
+ drops of blood form on your forehead.
2111
+ -- Gene Fowler
2112
+ %
2113
+ Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.
2114
+ -- J.P. Donleavy
2115
+ %
2116
+ "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."
2117
+ -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"
2118
+ %
2119
+ "You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"
2120
+ "The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as --"
2121
+ "My blushes, Watson," Holmes murmured, in a deprecating voice.
2122
+ "I was about to say 'as he is unknown to the public.'"
2123
+ -- A. Conan Doyle, "The Valley of Fear"
2124
+ %
2125
+ You may my glories and my state dispose,
2126
+ But not my griefs; still am I king of those.
2127
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"
2128
+ %
2129
+ You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the
2130
+ obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and
2131
+ an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.
2132
+ -- Sherlock Holmes, "The Norwood Builder"
2133
+ %
2134
+ You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night
2135
+ to write.
2136
+ -- Saul Bellow
2137
+ %
2138
+ You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty
2139
+ attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool
2140
+ takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge
2141
+ which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with
2142
+ a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
2143
+ Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his
2144
+ brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing
2145
+ his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect
2146
+ order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and
2147
+ can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every
2148
+ addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of
2149
+ the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out
2150
+ the useful ones.
2151
+ -- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"
2152
+ %
2153
+ You tread upon my patience.
2154
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
2155
+ %
2156
+ You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the
2157
+ Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the
2158
+ parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.
2159
+ -- Sherlock Holmes
2160
+ %
2161
+ Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not
2162
+ original and the part that is original is not good.
2163
+ -- Samuel Johnson
2164
+ %
2165
+ Zounds! I was never so bethumped with words
2166
+ since I first called my brother's father dad.
2167
+ -- William Shakespeare, "Kind John"
2168
+ %
2169
+ The mind is its own place, and in itself
2170
+ Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
2171
+ -- John Milton
2172
+ %
2173
+ "I understand this is your first dead client," Sabian was saying. The
2174
+ absurdity of the statement made me want to laugh but they don't call me
2175
+ Deadpan Allie and lie.
2176
+ -- Pat Cadigan, "Mindplayers"
2177
+ %
2178
+ A morgue is a morgue is a morgue. They can paint the walls with aggressively
2179
+ cheerful primary colors and splashy bold graphics, but it's still a holding
2180
+ place for the dead until they can be parted out to organ banks. Not that I
2181
+ would have cared normally but my viewpoint was skewed. The relentless
2182
+ pleasance of the room I sat in seemed only grotesque.
2183
+ -- Pat Cadigan, "Mindplayers"
2184
+ %
2185
+ "What's this? Trix? Aunt! Trix? You? You're after the prize! What
2186
+ is it?" He picked up the box and studied the back. "A glow-in-the-dark
2187
+ squid! Have you got it out of there yet?" He tilted the box, angling the
2188
+ little colored balls of cereal so as to see the bottom, and nearly spilling
2189
+ them onto the table top. "Here it is!" He hauled out a little cream-colored,
2190
+ glitter-sprinkled squid, three-inches long and made out of rubbery plastic.
2191
+ -- James P. Blaylock, "The Last Coin"
2192
+ %
2193
+ "Good afternoon, madam. How may I help you?"
2194
+
2195
+ "Good afternoon. I'd like a FrintArms HandCannon, please."
2196
+
2197
+ "A--? Oh, now, that's an awfully big gun for such a lovely lady. I
2198
+ mean, not everybody thinks ladies should carry guns at all, though I
2199
+ say they have a right to. But I think... I might... Let's have a look
2200
+ down here. I might have just the thing for you. Yes, here we are!
2201
+ Look at that, isn't it neat? Now that is a FrintArms product as well,
2202
+ but it's what's called a laser -- a light-pistol some people call
2203
+ them. Very small, as you see; fits easily into a pocket or bag; won't
2204
+ spoil the line of a jacket; and you won't feel you're lugging half a
2205
+ tonne of iron around with you. We do a range of matching accessories,
2206
+ including -- if I may say so -- a rather saucy garter holster. Wish I
2207
+ got to do the fitting for that! Ha -- just my little joke. And
2208
+ there's *even*... here we are -- this special presentation pack: gun,
2209
+ charged battery, charging unit, beautiful glider-hide shoulder holster
2210
+ with adjustable fitting and contrast stitching, and a discount on your
2211
+ next battery. Full instructions, of course, and a voucher for free
2212
+ lessons at your local gun club or range. Or there's the *special*
2213
+ presentation pack; it has all the other one's got but with *two*
2214
+ charged batteries and a night-sight, too. Here, feel that -- don't
2215
+ worry, it's a dummy battery -- isn't it neat? Feel how light it is?
2216
+ Smooth, see? No bits to stick out and catch on your clothes, *and*
2217
+ beautifully balanced. And of course the beauty of a laser is, there's
2218
+ no recoil. Because it's shooting light, you see? Beautiful gun,
2219
+ beautiful gun; my wife has one. Really. That's not a line, she
2220
+ really has. Now, I can do you that one -- with a battery and a free
2221
+ charge -- for ninety-five; or the presentation pack on a special
2222
+ offer for one-nineteen; or this, the special presentation pack, for
2223
+ one-forty-nine."
2224
+
2225
+ "I'll take the special."
2226
+
2227
+ "Sound choice, madam, *sound* choice. Now, do--?"
2228
+
2229
+ "And a HandCannon, with the eighty-mill silencer, five GP clips, three
2230
+ six-five AP/wire-fl'echettes clips, two bipropellant HE clips, and a
2231
+ Special Projectile Pack if you have one -- the one with the embedding
2232
+ rounds, not the signalers. I assume the night-sight on this toy is
2233
+ compatible?"
2234
+
2235
+ "Aah... yes, And how does madam wish to pay?"
2236
+
2237
+ She slapped her credit card on the counter. "Eventually."
2238
+
2239
+ -- Iain M. Banks, "Against a Dark Background"
2240
+ %
2241
+ I got a hint of things to come when I overheard my boss lamenting, 'The
2242
+ books are done and we still don't have an author! I must sign someone
2243
+ today!
2244
+ -- Tamim Ansary, "Edutopia Magazine, Issue 2, November 2004"
2245
+ on the topic of school textbooks
2246
+ %
2247
+ FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #13
2248
+ A: Doc, Happy, Bashful, Dopey, Sneezy, Sleepy, & Grumpy
2249
+ Q: Who were the Democratic presidential candidates?
2250
+ %
2251
+ FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #15
2252
+ A: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
2253
+ Q: What was the greatest achievement in taxidermy?
2254
+ %
2255
+ FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #19
2256
+ A: To be or not to be.
2257
+ Q: What is the square root of 4b^2?
2258
+ %
2259
+ FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #21
2260
+ A: Dr. Livingston I. Presume.
2261
+ Q: What's Dr. Presume's full name?
2262
+ %
2263
+ FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #31
2264
+ A: Chicken Teriyaki.
2265
+ Q: What is the name of the world's oldest kamikaze pilot?
2266
+ %
2267
+ FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #4
2268
+ A: Go west, young man, go west!
2269
+ Q: What do wabbits do when they get tiwed of wunning awound?
2270
+ %
2271
+ FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #5
2272
+ A: The Halls of Montezuma and the Shores of Tripoli.
2273
+ Q: Name two families whose kids won't join the Marines.
2274
+ %
2275
+ Knock, knock!
2276
+ Who's there?
2277
+ Sam and Janet.
2278
+ Sam and Janet who?
2279
+ Sam and Janet Evening...
2280
+ %
2281
+ Knucklehead: "Knock, knock"
2282
+ Pee Wee: "Who's there?"
2283
+ Knucklehead: "Little ol' lady."
2284
+ Pee Wee: "Liddle ol' lady who?"
2285
+ Knucklehead: "I didn't know you could yodel"
2286
+ %
2287
+ Q: "What is the burning question on the mind of every dyslexic
2288
+ existentialist?"
2289
+ A: "Is there a dog?"
2290
+ %
2291
+ Q: Are we not men?
2292
+ A: We are Vaxen.
2293
+ %
2294
+ Q: Do you know what the death rate around here is?
2295
+ A: One per person.
2296
+ %
2297
+ Q: How can you tell when a Burroughs salesman is lying?
2298
+ A: When his lips move.
2299
+ %
2300
+ Q: How did you get into artificial intelligence?
2301
+ A: Seemed logical -- I didn't have any real intelligence.
2302
+ %
2303
+ Q: How do you catch a unique rabbit?
2304
+ A: Unique up on it!
2305
+
2306
+ Q: How do you catch a tame rabbit?
2307
+ A: The tame way!
2308
+ %
2309
+ Q: How do you keep a moron in suspense?
2310
+ %
2311
+ Q: How do you play religious roulette?
2312
+ A: You stand around in a circle and blaspheme and see who gets
2313
+ struck by lightning first.
2314
+ %
2315
+ Q: How do you save a drowning lawyer?
2316
+ A: Throw him a rock.
2317
+ %
2318
+ Q: How do you shoot a blue elephant?
2319
+ A: With a blue-elephant gun.
2320
+
2321
+ Q: How do you shoot a pink elephant?
2322
+ A: Twist its trunk until it turns blue, then shoot it with
2323
+ a blue-elephant gun.
2324
+ %
2325
+ Q: How do you stop an elephant from charging?
2326
+ A: Take away his credit cards.
2327
+ %
2328
+ Q: How does a hacker fix a function which
2329
+ doesn't work for all of the elements in its domain?
2330
+ A: He changes the domain.
2331
+ %
2332
+ Q: How does the Polish Constitution differ from the American?
2333
+ A: Under the Polish Constitution citizens are guaranteed freedom of
2334
+ speech, but under the United States constitution they are
2335
+ guaranteed freedom after speech.
2336
+ -- being told in Poland, 1987
2337
+ %
2338
+ Q: How many Bell Labs Vice Presidents does it take to change a light bulb?
2339
+ A: That's proprietary information. Answer available from AT&T on payment
2340
+ of license fee (binary only).
2341
+ %
2342
+ Q: How many bureaucrats does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2343
+ A: Two. One to assure everyone that everything possible is being
2344
+ done while the other screws the bulb into the water faucet.
2345
+ %
2346
+ Q: How many Californians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2347
+ A: Five. One to screw in the light bulb and four to share the
2348
+ experience. (Actually, Californians don't screw in
2349
+ light bulbs, they screw in hot tubs.)
2350
+
2351
+ Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2352
+ A: Three. One to screw in the light bulb and two to fend off all
2353
+ those Californians trying to share the experience.
2354
+ %
2355
+ Q: How many college football players does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2356
+ A: Only one, but he gets three credits for it.
2357
+ %
2358
+ Q: How many DEC repairman does it take to fix a flat?
2359
+ A: Five; four to hold the car up and one to swap tires.
2360
+
2361
+ Q: How long does it take?
2362
+ A: It's indeterminate.
2363
+ It will depend upon how many flats they've brought with them.
2364
+
2365
+ Q: What happens if you've got TWO flats?
2366
+ A: They replace your generator.
2367
+ %
2368
+ Q: How many elephants can you fit in a VW Bug?
2369
+ A: Four. Two in the front, two in the back.
2370
+
2371
+ Q: How can you tell if an elephant is in your refrigerator?
2372
+ A: There's a footprint in the mayo.
2373
+
2374
+ Q: How can you tell if two elephants are in your refrigerator?
2375
+ A: There's two footprints in the mayo.
2376
+
2377
+ Q: How can you tell if three elephants are in your refrigerator?
2378
+ A: The door won't shut.
2379
+
2380
+ Q: How can you tell if four elephants are in your refrigerator?
2381
+ A: There's a VW Bug in your driveway.
2382
+ %
2383
+ Q: How many existentialists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2384
+ A: Two. One to screw it in and one to observe how the light bulb
2385
+ itself symbolizes a single incandescent beacon of subjective
2386
+ reality in a netherworld of endless absurdity reaching out toward a
2387
+ maudlin cosmos of nothingness.
2388
+ %
2389
+ Q: How many gradual (sorry, that's supposed to be "graduate") students
2390
+ does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2391
+ A: "I'm afraid we don't know, but make my stipend tax-free, give my
2392
+ advisor a $30,000 grant of the taxpayer's money, and I'm sure he
2393
+ can tell me how to do the gruntwork for him so he can take the
2394
+ credit for answering this incredibly vital question."
2395
+ %
2396
+ Q: How many hardware engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
2397
+ A: None. We'll fix it in software.
2398
+
2399
+ Q: How many system programmers does it take to change a light bulb?
2400
+ A: None. The application can work around it.
2401
+
2402
+ Q: How many software engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
2403
+ A: None. We'll document it in the manual.
2404
+
2405
+ Q: How many tech writers does it take to change a light bulb?
2406
+ A: None. The user can figure it out.
2407
+ %
2408
+ Q: How many Harvard MBA's does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2409
+ A: Just one. He grasps it firmly and the universe revolves around him.
2410
+ %
2411
+ Q: How many IBM 370's does it take to execute a job?
2412
+ A: Four, three to hold it down, and one to rip its head off.
2413
+ %
2414
+ Q: How many IBM CPU's does it take to do a logical right shift?
2415
+ A: 33. 1 to hold the bits and 32 to push the register.
2416
+ %
2417
+ Q: How many IBM types does it take to change a light bulb?
2418
+ A: Fifteen. One to do it, and fourteen to write document number
2419
+ GC7500439-0001, Multitasking Incandescent Source System Facility,
2420
+ of which 10% of the pages state only "This page intentionally
2421
+ left blank", and 20% of the definitions are of the form "A:.....
2422
+ consists of sequences of non-blank characters separated by blanks".
2423
+ %
2424
+ Q: How many journalists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2425
+ A: Three. One to report it as an inspired government program to bring
2426
+ light to the people, one to report it as a diabolical government plot
2427
+ to deprive the poor of darkness, and one to win a Pulitzer prize for
2428
+ reporting that Electric Company hired a light bulb-assassin to break
2429
+ the bulb in the first place.
2430
+ %
2431
+ Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
2432
+ A: One. Only it's his light bulb when he's done.
2433
+ %
2434
+ Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
2435
+ A: Whereas the party of the first part, also known as "Lawyer", and the
2436
+ party of the second part, also known as "Light Bulb", do hereby and forthwith
2437
+ agree to a transaction wherein the party of the second part shall be removed
2438
+ from the current position as a result of failure to perform previously agreed
2439
+ upon duties, i.e., the lighting, elucidation, and otherwise illumination of
2440
+ the area ranging from the front (north) door, through the entryway, terminating
2441
+ at an area just inside the primary living area, demarcated by the beginning of
2442
+ the carpet, any spillover illumination being at the option of the party of the
2443
+ second part and not required by the aforementioned agreement between the
2444
+ parties.
2445
+ The aforementioned removal transaction shall include, but not be
2446
+ limited to, the following. The party of the first part shall, with or without
2447
+ elevation at his option, by means of a chair, stepstool, ladder or any other
2448
+ means of elevation, grasp the party of the second part and rotate the party
2449
+ of the second part in a counter-clockwise direction, this point being tendered
2450
+ non-negotiable. Upon reaching a point where the party of the second part
2451
+ becomes fully detached from the receptacle, the party of the first part shall
2452
+ have the option of disposing of the party of the second part in a manner
2453
+ consistent with all relevant and applicable local, state and federal statutes.
2454
+ Once separation and disposal have been achieved, the party of the first part
2455
+ shall have the option of beginning installation. Aforesaid installation shall
2456
+ occur in a manner consistent with the reverse of the procedures described in
2457
+ step one of this self-same document, being careful to note that the rotation
2458
+ should occur in a clockwise direction, this point also being non-negotiable.
2459
+ The above described steps may be performed, at the option of the party of the
2460
+ first part, by any or all agents authorized by him, the objective being to
2461
+ produce the most possible revenue for the Partnership.
2462
+ %
2463
+ Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?
2464
+ A: You won't find a lawyer who can change a light bulb. Now, if
2465
+ you're looking for a lawyer to screw a light bulb...
2466
+ %
2467
+ Q: How many marketing people does it take to change a light bulb?
2468
+ A: I'll have to get back to you on that.
2469
+ %
2470
+ Q: How many Martians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2471
+ A: One and a half.
2472
+ %
2473
+ Q: How many Marxists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2474
+ A: None: The light bulb contains the seeds of its own revolution.
2475
+ %
2476
+ Q: How many mathematicians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2477
+ A: One. He gives it to six Californians, thereby reducing the problem
2478
+ to the earlier joke.
2479
+ %
2480
+ Q: How many members of the U.S.S. Enterprise does it take to change a
2481
+ light bulb?
2482
+ A: Seven. Scotty has to report to Captain Kirk that the light bulb in
2483
+ the Engineering Section is getting dim, at which point Kirk will send
2484
+ Bones to pronounce the bulb dead (although he'll immediately claim
2485
+ that he's a doctor, not an electrician). Scotty, after checking
2486
+ around, realizes that they have no more new light bulbs, and complains
2487
+ that he "canna" see in the dark. Kirk will make an emergency stop at
2488
+ the next uncharted planet, Alpha Regula IV, to procure a light bulb
2489
+ from the natives, who, are friendly, but seem to be hiding something.
2490
+ Kirk, Spock, Bones, Yeoman Rand and two red shirt security officers
2491
+ beam down to the planet, where the two security officers are promply
2492
+ killed by the natives, and the rest of the landing party is captured.
2493
+ As something begins to develop between the Captain and Yeoman Rand,
2494
+ Scotty, back in orbit, is attacked by a Klingon destroyer and must
2495
+ warp out of orbit. Although badly outgunned, he cripples the Klingon
2496
+ and races back to the planet in order to rescue Kirk et. al. who have
2497
+ just saved the natives' from an awful fate and, as a reward, been
2498
+ given all light bulbs they can carry. The new bulb is then inserted
2499
+ and the Enterprise continues on its five year mission.
2500
+ %
2501
+ Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2502
+ A: Three. One to screw in the light bulb and two to fend off all those
2503
+ Californians trying to share the experience.
2504
+ %
2505
+ Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?
2506
+ A: Only one, but it takes a long time, and the light bulb has
2507
+ to really want to change.
2508
+ %
2509
+ Q: How many supply-siders does it take to change a light bulb?
2510
+ A: None. The darkness will cause the light bulb to change by itself.
2511
+ %
2512
+ Q: How many surrealists does it take to change a light bulb?
2513
+ A: Two, one to hold the giraffe, and the other to fill the bathtub
2514
+ with brightly colored machine tools.
2515
+
2516
+ [Surrealist jokes just aren't my cup of fur. Ed.]
2517
+ %
2518
+ Q: How many WASPs does it take to change a light bulb?
2519
+ A: One.
2520
+ %
2521
+ Q: How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
2522
+ A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master stays out
2523
+ of the way.
2524
+ %
2525
+ Q: How much does it cost to ride the Unibus?
2526
+ A: 2 bits.
2527
+ %
2528
+ Q: How was Thomas J. Watson buried?
2529
+ A: 9 edge down.
2530
+ %
2531
+ Q: Know what the difference between your latest project
2532
+ and putting wings on an elephant is?
2533
+ A: Who knows? The elephant *might* fly, heh, heh...
2534
+ %
2535
+ Q: Minnesotans ask, "Why aren't there more pharmacists from Alabama?"
2536
+ A: Easy. It's because they can't figure out how to get the little
2537
+ bottles into the typewriter.
2538
+ %
2539
+ Q: What did Tarzan say when he saw the elephants coming over the hill?
2540
+ A: "The elephants are coming over the hill."
2541
+
2542
+ Q: What did he say when saw them coming over the hill wearing
2543
+ sunglasses?
2544
+ A: Nothing, for he didn't recognize them.
2545
+ %
2546
+ Q: What do agnostic, insomniac dyslexics do at night?
2547
+ A: Stay awake and wonder if there's a dog.
2548
+ %
2549
+ Q: What do little WASPs want to be when they grow up?
2550
+ A: The very best person they can possibly be.
2551
+ %
2552
+ Q: What do monsters eat?
2553
+ A: Things.
2554
+
2555
+ Q: What do monsters drink?
2556
+ A: Coke. (Because Things go better with Coke.)
2557
+ %
2558
+ Q: What do they call the alphabet in Arkansas?
2559
+ A: The impossible dream.
2560
+ %
2561
+ Q: What do Winnie the Pooh and John the Baptist have in common?
2562
+ A: The same middle name.
2563
+ %
2564
+ Q: What do you call 15 blondes in a circle?
2565
+ A: A dope ring.
2566
+
2567
+ Q: Why do blondes put their hair in ponytails?
2568
+ A: To cover up the valve stem.
2569
+ %
2570
+ Q: What do you call a blind pre-historic animal?
2571
+ A: Diyathinkhesaurus.
2572
+
2573
+ Q: What do you call a blind pre-historic animal with a dog?
2574
+ A: Diyathinkhesaurus Rex.
2575
+ %
2576
+ Q: What do you call a blind, deaf-mute, quadraplegic Virginian?
2577
+ A: Trustworthy.
2578
+ %
2579
+ Q: What do you call a boomerang that doesn't come back?
2580
+ A: A stick.
2581
+ %
2582
+ Q: What do you call a half-dozen Indians with Asian flu?
2583
+ A: Six sick Sikhs (sic).
2584
+ %
2585
+ Q: What do you call a principal female opera singer whose high C
2586
+ is lower than those of other principal female opera singers?
2587
+ A: A deep C diva.
2588
+ %
2589
+ Q: What do you call a WASP who doesn't work for his father, isn't a
2590
+ lawyer, and believes in social causes?
2591
+ A: A failure.
2592
+ %
2593
+ Q: What do you call the money you pay to the government when
2594
+ you ride into the country on the back of an elephant?
2595
+ A: A howdah duty.
2596
+ %
2597
+ Q: What do you call the scratches that you get when a female
2598
+ sheep bites you?
2599
+ A: Ewe nicks.
2600
+ %
2601
+ Q: What do you get when you cross a mobster with an international standard?
2602
+ A: You get someone who makes you an offer that you can't understand!
2603
+ %
2604
+ Q: What do you get when you cross the Godfather with an attorney?
2605
+ A: An offer you can't understand.
2606
+ %
2607
+ Q: What do you have when you have a lawyer buried up to his neck in sand?
2608
+ A: Not enough sand.
2609
+ %
2610
+ Q: What do you say to a New Yorker with a job?
2611
+ A: Big Mac, fries and a Coke, please!
2612
+ %
2613
+ Q: What does a WASP Mom make for dinner?
2614
+ A: A crisp salad, a hearty soup, a lovely entree, followed by
2615
+ a delicious dessert.
2616
+ %
2617
+ Q: What does it say on the bottom of Coke cans in North Dakota?
2618
+ A: Open other end.
2619
+ %
2620
+ Q: What happens when four WASPs find themselves in the same room?
2621
+ A: A dinner party.
2622
+ %
2623
+ Q: What is green and lives in the ocean?
2624
+ A: Moby Pickle.
2625
+ %
2626
+ Q: What is orange and goes "click, click?"
2627
+ A: A ball point carrot.
2628
+ %
2629
+ Q: What is printed on the bottom of beer bottles in Minnesota?
2630
+ A: Open other end.
2631
+ %
2632
+ Q: What is purple and commutes?
2633
+ A: An Abelian grape.
2634
+ %
2635
+ Q: What is purple and conquered the world?
2636
+ A: Alexander the Grape.
2637
+ %
2638
+ Q: What is the difference between a duck?
2639
+ A: One leg is both the same.
2640
+ %
2641
+ Q: What is the difference between Texas and yogurt?
2642
+ A: Yogurt has culture.
2643
+ %
2644
+ Q: What is the sound of one cat napping?
2645
+ A: Mu.
2646
+ %
2647
+ Q: What lies on the bottom of the ocean and twitches?
2648
+ A: A nervous wreck.
2649
+ %
2650
+ Q: What looks like a cat, flies like a bat, brays like a donkey, and
2651
+ plays like a monkey?
2652
+ A: Nothing.
2653
+ %
2654
+ Q: What's a light-year?
2655
+ A: One-third less calories than a regular year.
2656
+ %
2657
+ Q: What's a WASP's idea of open-mindedness?
2658
+ A: Dating a Canadian.
2659
+ %
2660
+ Q: What's buried in Grant's tomb?
2661
+ A: A corpse.
2662
+ %
2663
+ Q: What's hard going in and soft and sticky coming out?
2664
+ A: Chewing gum.
2665
+ %
2666
+ Q: What's tan and black and looks great on a lawyer?
2667
+ A: A doberman.
2668
+ %
2669
+ Q: What's the contour integral around Western Europe?
2670
+ A: Zero, because all the Poles are in Eastern Europe!
2671
+
2672
+ Addendum: Actually, there ARE some Poles in Western Europe, but they
2673
+ are removable!
2674
+
2675
+ Q: An English mathematician (I forgot who) was asked by his
2676
+ very religious colleague: Do you believe in one God?
2677
+ A: Yes, up to isomorphism!
2678
+
2679
+ Q: What is a compact city?
2680
+ A: It's a city that can be guarded by finitely many near-sighted
2681
+ policemen!
2682
+ -- Peter Lax
2683
+ %
2684
+ Q: What's the difference betweeen USL and the Graf Zeppelin?
2685
+ A: The Graf Zeppelin represented cutting edge technology for its time.
2686
+ %
2687
+ Q: What's the difference between a dead dog in the road and a dead
2688
+ lawyer in the road?
2689
+ A: There are skid marks in front of the dog.
2690
+ %
2691
+ Q: What's the difference between a duck and an elephant?
2692
+ A: You can't get down off an elephant.
2693
+ %
2694
+ Q: What's the difference between a Mac and an Etch-a-Sketch?
2695
+ A: You don't have to shake the Mac to clear the screen.
2696
+ %
2697
+ Q: What's the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish wake?
2698
+ A: One less drunk.
2699
+ %
2700
+ Q: What's the difference between Bell Labs and the Boy Scouts of America?
2701
+ A: The Boy Scouts have adult supervision.
2702
+ %
2703
+ Q: What's the difference between the 1950's and the 1980's?
2704
+ A: In the 80's, a man walks into a drugstore and states loudly, "I'd
2705
+ like some condoms," and then, leaning over the counter, whispers,
2706
+ "and some cigarettes."
2707
+ %
2708
+ Q: What's the difference between USL and the Titanic?
2709
+ A: The Titanic had a band.
2710
+ %
2711
+ Q: What's tiny and yellow and very, very, dangerous?
2712
+ A: A canary with the super-user password.
2713
+ %
2714
+ Q: What's yellow, and equivalent to the Axiom of Choice?
2715
+ A: Zorn's Lemon.
2716
+ %
2717
+ Q: Where's the Lone Ranger take his garbage?
2718
+ A: To the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump!
2719
+
2720
+ Q: What's the Pink Panther say when he steps on an ant hill?
2721
+ A: Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant dead ant dead ant...
2722
+ %
2723
+ Q: Who cuts the grass on Walton's Mountain?
2724
+ A: Lawn Boy.
2725
+ %
2726
+ Q: Why did Menachem Begin invade Lebanon?
2727
+ A: To impress Jodie Foster.
2728
+ %
2729
+ Q: Why did the astrophysicist order three hamburgers?
2730
+ A: Because he was hungry.
2731
+ %
2732
+ Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
2733
+ A: He was giving it last rites.
2734
+ %
2735
+ Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
2736
+ A: To see his friend Gregory peck.
2737
+
2738
+ Q: Why did the chicken cross the playground?
2739
+ A: To get to the other slide.
2740
+ %
2741
+ Q: Why did the germ cross the microscope?
2742
+ A: To get to the other slide.
2743
+ %
2744
+ Q: Why did the lone ranger kill Tonto?
2745
+ A: He found out what "kimosabe" really means.
2746
+ %
2747
+ Q: Why did the programmer call his mother long distance?
2748
+ A: Because that was her name.
2749
+ %
2750
+ Q: Why did the tachyon cross the road?
2751
+ A: Because it was on the other side.
2752
+ %
2753
+ Q: Why did the WASP cross the road?
2754
+ A: To get to the middle.
2755
+ %
2756
+ Q: Why do ducks have big flat feet?
2757
+ A: To stamp out forest fires.
2758
+
2759
+ Q: Why do elephants have big flat feet?
2760
+ A: To stamp out flaming ducks.
2761
+ %
2762
+ Q: Why do firemen wear red suspenders?
2763
+ A: To conform with departmental regulations concerning uniform dress.
2764
+ %
2765
+ Q: Why do mountain climbers rope themselves together?
2766
+ A: To prevent the sensible ones from going home.
2767
+ %
2768
+ Q: Why do people who live near Niagara Falls have flat foreheads?
2769
+ A: Because every morning they wake up thinking "What *is* that noise?
2770
+ Oh, right, *of course*!
2771
+ %
2772
+ Q: Why do the police always travel in threes?
2773
+ A: One to do the reading, one to do the writing, and the other keeps
2774
+ an eye on the two intellectuals.
2775
+ %
2776
+ Q: Why do WASPs play golf ?
2777
+ A: So they can dress like pimps.
2778
+ %
2779
+ Q: Why does Washington have the most lawyers per capita and
2780
+ New Jersey the most toxic waste dumps?
2781
+ A: God gave New Jersey first choice.
2782
+ %
2783
+ Q: Why don't lawyers go to the beach?
2784
+ A: The cats keep trying to bury them.
2785
+ %
2786
+ Q: Why don't Scotsmen ever have coffee the way they like it?
2787
+ A: Well, they like it with two lumps of sugar. If they drink
2788
+ it at home, they only take one, and if they drink it while
2789
+ visiting, they always take three.
2790
+ %
2791
+ Q: Why haven't you graduated yet?
2792
+ A: Well, Dad, I could have finished years ago, but I wanted
2793
+ my dissertation to rhyme.
2794
+ %
2795
+ Q: Why is Christmas just like a day at the office?
2796
+ A: You do all of the work and the fat guy in the suit
2797
+ gets all the credit.
2798
+ %
2799
+ Q: Why is it that the more accuracy you demand from an interpolation
2800
+ function, the more expensive it becomes to compute?
2801
+ A: That's the Law of Spline Demand.
2802
+ %
2803
+ Q: Why is Poland just like the United States?
2804
+ A: In the United States you can't buy anything for zlotys and in
2805
+ Poland you can't either, while in the U.S. you can get whatever
2806
+ you want for dollars, just as you can in Poland.
2807
+ -- being told in Poland, 1987
2808
+ %
2809
+ Q: Why should you always serve a Southern Carolina football man
2810
+ soup in a plate?
2811
+ A: 'Cause if you give him a bowl, he'll throw it away.
2812
+ %
2813
+ Q: Why was Stonehenge abandoned?
2814
+ A: It wasn't IBM compatible.
2815
+ %