fortune-teller 0.1.2 → 0.3.0

package/fortunes/literature

@@ -1,1257 +0,0 @@
-A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining
-and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-A classic is something that everyone wants to have read
-and nobody wants to read.
-		-- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature"
-%
-A horse!  A horse!  My kingdom for a horse!
-		-- Wm. Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
-%
-A hundred years from now it is very likely that [of Twain's works] "The
-Jumping Frog" alone will be remembered.
-		-- Harry Thurston Peck (Editor of "The Bookman"), January 1901.
-%
-A is for Apple.
-		-- Hester Pryne
-%
-A kind of Batman of contemporary letters.
-		-- Philip Larkin on Anthony Burgess
-%
-A light wife doth make a heavy husband.
-		-- Wm. Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
-%
-	A man was reading The Canterbury Tales one Saturday morning, when his
-wife asked "What have you got there?"  Replied he, "Just my cup and Chaucer."
-%
-... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he
-was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)
-	-- by Charles Dickens
-
-	A lawyer who looks like a French Nobleman is executed in his place.
-
-The Metamorphosis LITE(tm)
-	-- by Franz Kafka
-
-	A man turns into a bug and his family gets annoyed.
-
-Lord of the Rings LITE(tm)
-	-- by J.R.R. Tolkien
-
-	Some guys take a long vacation to throw a ring into a volcano.
-
-Hamlet LITE(tm)
-	-- by Wm. Shakespeare
-
-	A college student on vacation with family problems, a screwy
-	girl-friend and a mother who won't act her age.
-%
-A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)
-	-- by Charles Dickens
-
-	A man in love with a girl who loves another man who looks just
-	like him has his head chopped off in France because of a mean
-	lady who knits.
-
-Crime and Punishment LITE(tm)
-	-- by Fyodor Dostoevski
-
-	A man sends a nasty letter to a pawnbroker, but later
-	feels guilty and apologizes.
-
-The Odyssey LITE(tm)
-	-- by Homer
-
-	After working late, a valiant warrior gets lost on his way home.
-%
-After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.
-		-- H.L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
-%
-Alas, how love can trifle with itself!
-		-- William Shakespeare, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"
-%
-All generalizations are false, including this one.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that
-makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and 
-an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.
-		-- Samuel Beckett
-%
-All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to come from
-the mouths of people who have had to live.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-"... all the modern inconveniences ..."
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.
-		-- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice"
-%
-Always do right.  This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
-%
-"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often
-picturesque liar."
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
-%
-And do you think (fop that I am) that I could be the Scarlet Pumpernickel?
-%
-Anyone who has had a bull by the tail knows five or six more things
-than someone who hasn't.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-April 1
-
-This is the day upon which we are reminged of what we are on the other three
-hundred and sixty-four.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.
-		-- Shakespeare, "King Lear"
-%
-As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement,
-especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously
--- I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being
-in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
-after fact and reason.
-		-- John Keats
-%
-AWAKE! FEAR! FIRE! FOES! AWAKE!
-	FEAR! FIRE! FOES!
-		AWAKE! AWAKE!
-		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
-%
-Awash with unfocused desire, Everett twisted the lobe of his one remaining
-ear and felt the presence of somebody else behind him, which caused terror
-to push through his nervous system like a flash flood roaring down the
-mid-fork of the Feather River before the completion of the Oroville Dam
-in 1959.
-		-- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton
-		   bad fiction contest.
-%
-Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Behold, the fool saith, "Put not all thine eggs in the one basket"--which is
-but a manner of saying, "Scatter your money and your attention;" but the wise
-man saith, "Put all your eggs in the one basket and--WATCH THAT BASKET."
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Big book, big bore.
-		-- Callimachus
-%
-But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
-%
-By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity.  Another man's, I mean.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on society.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Condense soup, not books!
-%
-Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
-		-- Shakespeare
-%
-Consider well the proportions of things.  It is better to be a young June-bug
-than an old bird of paradise.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear.  Except a
-creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely
-a loose misapplication of the word.  Consider the flea!--incomparably the
-bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. 
-Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact
-that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth
-to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the
-very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more
-afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by
-an earthquake ten centuries before.  When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam
-as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and
-put him at the head of the procession.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Delay not, Caesar.  Read it instantly.
-		-- Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" 3,1
- 
-Here is a letter, read it at your leisure.
-		-- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice" 5,1
- 
-	[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
-	 referring to I/O system services.]
-%
-Delores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever
-skipping along smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious
-to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an
-overdose of flouride as a child which caused her to suffer from chronic
-apathy, doomed herself to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless
-as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred pound barbell in a
-steroid-free fitness center.
-		-- Winning sentence, 1990 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
-%
-Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.  The world owes you
-nothing.  It was here first.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-"Elves and Dragons!" I says to him.  "Cabbages and potatoes are better
-for you and me."
-		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
-%
-English literature's performing flea.
-		-- Sean O'Casey on P.G. Wodehouse
-%
-Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to be at
-fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great caution.  Take
-the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman; if you have witnesses, you will
-find she did it with a knife; but if you take simply the aspect of the pencil,
-you will say that she did it with her teeth.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Every cloud engenders not a storm.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
-%
-Every why hath a wherefore.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "A Comedy of Errors"
-%
-Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "The Rape of Lucrece"
-%
-F.S. Fitzgerald to Hemingway:
-	"Ernest, the rich are different from us."
-Hemingway:
-	"Yes.  They have more money."
-%
-Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is
-oblivion.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
-		-- "Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-For a light heart lives long.
-		-- Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
-%
-For courage mounteth with occasion.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "King John"
-%
-For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels,
-each delved into a hill, and about each was set a wall, and in each wall
-was a gate.
-		-- J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Return of the King"
-
-	[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
-	 referring to system overview.]
- 
-%
-For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel.  And if one can
-neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?
-		-- Virginia Woolf, "To the Lighthouse"
-
-	[Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4, when
-	 referring to powerfail recovery.]
-%
-For years a secret shame destroyed my peace--
-I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
-But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
-Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
-		-- Justin Richardson.
-%
-Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no.
-		-- J.R.R. Tolkien
-%
-Gone With The Wind LITE(tm)
-	-- by Margaret Mitchell
-
-	A woman only likes men she can't have and the South gets trashed.
-
-Gift of the Magi LITE(tm)
-	-- by O. Henry
-
-	A husband and wife forget to register their gift preferences.
-
-The Old Man and the Sea LITE(tm)
-	-- by Ernest Hemingway
-
-	An old man goes fishing, but doesn't have much luck.
-
-Diary of a Young Girl LITE(tm)
-	-- by Anne Frank
-
-	A young girl hides in an attic but is discovered.
-%
-Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. 
-You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy
-officials have gone by.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must
-have somebody to divide it with.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed
-down-stairs a step at a time.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
-%
-Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side?  And hain't that a big
-enough majority in any town?
-		-- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn"
-%
-Harp not on that string.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
-%
-Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not
-advice, it is merely custom.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Having nothing, nothing can he lose.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
-%
-He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his
-argument.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
-%
-He hath eaten me out of house and home.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
-%
-He is now rising from affluence to poverty.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-He jests at scars who never felt a wound.
-		-- Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet, II. 2"
-%
-He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.
-		-- J.R.R. Tolkien
-%
-He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
-%
-He was part of my dream, of course -- but then I was part of his dream too.
-		-- Lewis Carroll
-%
-Hell is empty and all the devils are here.
-		-- Wm. Shakespeare, "The Tempest"
-%
-His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god.  He preferred
-to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam.  He never
-claimed to be a god.  But then, he never claimed not to be a god.  Circum-
-stances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit.
-Silence, though, could.  It was in the days of the rains that their prayers
-went up, not from the fingering of knotted prayer cords or the spinning of
-prayer wheels, but from the great pray-machine in the monastery of Ratri,
-goddess of the Night.  The high-frequency prayers were directed upward through
-the atmosphere and out beyond it, passing into that golden cloud called the
-Bridge of the Gods, which circles the entire world, is seen as a bronze
-rainbow at night and is the place where the red sun becomes orange at midday.
-Some of the monks doubted the orthodoxy of this prayer technique...
-		-- Roger Zelazny, "Lord of Light"
-%
-How apt the poor are to be proud.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Twelfth-Night"
-%
-I do desire we may be better strangers.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
-%
-I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less
-than half of you half as well as you deserve.
-		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
-%
-I dote on his very absence.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
-%
-I fell asleep reading a dull book, and I dreamt that I was reading on,
-so I woke up from sheer boredom.
-%
-I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a
-week sometimes to make it up.
-		-- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
-%
-I reverently believe that the maker who made us all  makes everything in New
-England, but the weather.  I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be
-raw apprentices in the weather-clerks factory who experiment and learn how, in
-New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for
-countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere
-if they don't get it.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-I think we are in Rats' Alley where the dead men lost their bones.
-		-- T.S. Eliot
-%
-I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.  I
-will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.  The Spirits of all
-Three shall strive within me.  I will not shut out the lessons that they
-teach.  Oh, tell me that I may sponge away the writing on this stone!
-		-- Charles Dickens
-%
-"I wonder", he said to himself, "what's in a book while it's closed.  Oh, I 
-know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must 
-be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people 
-I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures and battles."
-		-- Bastian B. Bux
-%
-I'll burn my books.
-		-- Christopher Marlowe
-%
-I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;
-And from that full meridian of my glory
-I haste now to my setting.  I shall fall,
-Like a bright exhalation in the evening
-And no man see me more.
-		-- Shakespeare
-%
-If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would
-be a merrier world.
-		-- J.R.R. Tolkien
-%
-If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use
-in reading it at all.
-		-- Oscar Wilde
-%
-If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it.
-		-- Ernest Hemingway
-%
-If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. 
-This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-In a museum in Havana, there are two skulls of Christopher Columbus,
-"one when he was a boy and one when he was a man."
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into
-use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather
-which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-In Marseilles they make half the toilet soap we consume in America, but
-the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they
-have obtained from books of travel.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-In the first place, God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made
-school boards.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and
-struggled and had lots of children.  There was a Frenchman who talked funny
-and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the
-crunch he was all courage.  Those novels would make you retch.
-		-- Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, on the generic Canadian
-		   novel.
-%
-In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has
-shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles.  Therefore ... in the Old
-Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred
-thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the
-Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long.  ... There is
-something fascinating about science.  One gets such wholesome returns of
-conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of
-24 hours.
-		-- Mark Twain, on New England weather
-%
-It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely
-the most important.
-		-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity"
-%
-It is a wise father that knows his own child.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
-%
-It is by the fortune of God that, in this country, we have three benefits:
-freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition.  There was once a man
-who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that
-there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-It is often the case that the man who can't tell a lie thinks he is the best
-judge of one.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-It is right that he too should have his little chronicle, his memories,
-his reason, and be able to recognize the good in the bad, the bad in the
-worst, and so grow gently old all down the unchanging days and die one
-day like any other day, only shorter.
-		-- Samuel Beckett, "Malone Dies"
-%
-It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion
-that makes horse-races.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Its name is Public Opinion.  It is held in reverence.  It settles everything.
-Some think it is the voice of God.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
-%
-Lay on, MacDuff, and curs'd be him who first cries, "Hold, enough!".
-		-- Shakespeare
-%
-Let him choose out of my files, his projects to accomplish.
-		-- Shakespeare, "Coriolanus"
-%
-Let me take you a button-hole lower.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
-%
-Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be
-sorry.
-		-- Maek Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek,
-shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm
-as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like
-bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood;
-she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a
-man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the
-right road: a man like Alf Romeo.
-		-- Rachel Sheeley, winner
-
-The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never
-see her little dog Pritzi again.
-		-- Claudia Fields, runner-up
-
-It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a
-tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but after a thorough neurological exam it
-was determined that Byron was simply a jerk.
-		-- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up
-
-Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest.  The contest is
-named after the author of the immortal lines:  "It was a dark and stormy
-night."  The object of the contest is to write the opening sentence of the
-worst possible novel.
-%
-Lord, what fools these mortals be!
-		-- William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"
-%
-Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Many a writer seems to think he is never profound except when he can't
-understand his own meaning.
-		-- George D. Prentice
-%
-Many enraged psychiatrists are inciting a weary butcher.  The butcher is
-weary and tired because he has cut meat and steak and lamb for hours and
-weeks.  He does not desire to chant about anything with raving psychiatrists,
-but he sings about his gingivectomist, he dreams about a single cosmologist,
-he thinks about his dog.  The dog is named Herbert.
-		-- Racter, "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed"
-%
-Many pages make a thick book, except for pocket Bibles which are on very
-very thin paper.
-%
-Many pages make a thick book.
-%
-Mind!  I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is
-particularly dead about a door-nail.  I might have been inclined, myself,
-to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.
-But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands
-shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for.  You will therefore permit
-me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
-		-- Charles Dickens, "A Christmas Carol"
-%
-Must I hold a candle to my shames?
-		-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
-%
-	My dear People.
-	My dear Bagginses and Boffins, and my dear Tooks and Brandybucks,
-and Grubbs, and Chubbs, and Burrowses, and Hornblowers, and Bolgers,
-Bracegirdles, Goodbodies, Brockhouses and Proudfoots.  Also my good
-Sackville Bagginses that I welcome back at last to Bag End.  Today is my
-one hundred and eleventh birthday: I am eleventy-one today!"
-		-- J. R. R. Tolkien
-%
-My only love sprung from my only hate!
-Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet"
-%
-Never laugh at live dragons.
-		-- Bilbo Baggins [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Hobbit"]
-%
-No group of professionals meets except to conspire against the public at large.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of
-absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.
-Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness
-within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.
-Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and
-doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone
-of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
-		-- Shirley Jackson, "The Haunting of Hill House"
-%
-No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you!  Consider the furniture!
-		-- Sherlock Holmes
-%
-Noise proves nothing.  Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles
-as if she laid an asteroid.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-"Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none."
-		-- Shakespeare
-%
-Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-O, it is excellent
-To have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous
-To use it like a giant.
-		-- Shakespeare, "Measure for Measure", II, 2
-%
-October 12, the Discovery.
-
-It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss
-it.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-October.
-
-This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks in.
-
-The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June,
-December, August, and February.
-
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
-		-- Shakespeare
-%
-One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has
-only nine lives.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Patch griefs with proverbs.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"
-%
-Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we ourselves
-possess.
-		-- Gandalf the Grey [J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"]
-%
-Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
-persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting
-to find a plot in it will be shot.  By Order of the Author
-		-- Mark Twain, "Tom Sawyer"
-%
-question = ( to ) ? be : ! be;
-		-- Wm. Shakespeare
-%
-Reader, suppose you were an idiot.  And suppose you were a member of
-Congress.  But I repeat myself.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
-%
-Remark of Dr. Baldwin's concerning upstarts: We don't care to eat toadstools
-that think they are truffles.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-ROMEO:		Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
-MERCUTIO:	No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide
-			as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
-%
-Seeing that death, a necessary end,
-Will come when it will come.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
-%
-She is not refined.  She is not unrefined.  She keeps a parrot.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Sheriff Chameleotoptor sighed with an air of weary sadness, and then
-turned to Doppelgutt and said 'The Senator must really have been on a
-bender this time -- he left a party in Cleveland, Ohio, at 11:30 last
-night, and they found his car this morning in the smokestack of a British
-aircraft carrier in the Formosa Straits.'
-		-- Grand Panjandrum's Special Award, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton
-		   bad fiction contest.
-%
-Small things make base men proud.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
-%
-So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie;
-and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head
-into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently
-married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand
-Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all
-fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran
-out at the heels of their boots.
-		-- Samuel Foote
-%
-So so is good, very good, very excellent good:
-and yet it is not; it is but so so.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
-%
-Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more
-deadly in the long run.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Something's rotten in the state of Denmark.
-		-- Shakespeare
-%
-Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind.  Then it passes off and I'm
-as intelligent as ever.
-		-- Samuel Beckett, "Endgame"
-%
-"Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though
-ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak,
-mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee.  Of all divers,
-thou has dived the deepest.  That head upon which the upper sun now gleams has
-moved amid the world's foundations.  Where unrecorded names and navies rust,
-and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate
-earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful
-water-land, there was thy most familiar home.  Thou hast been where bell or
-diver never went; has slept by many a sailer's side, where sleepless mothers
-would give their lives to lay them down.  Thou saw'st the locked lovers when
-leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting
-wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them.  Thou saw'st the
-murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell
-into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed
-on unharmed -- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would
-have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms.  O head! thou has
-seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one
-syllable is thine!"
-		-- H. Melville, "Moby Dick"
-%
-Steady movement is more important than speed, much of the time.  So long
-as there is a regular progression of stimuli to get your mental hooks
-into, there is room for lateral movement.  Once this begins, its rate is
-a matter of discretion.
-		-- Corwin, Prince of Amber
-%
-Stop!  There was first a game of blindman's buff.  Of course there was.
-And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes
-in his boots.  My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and
-Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it.  The
-way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage
-on the credulity of human nature.
-%
-Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.
-		-- Wm. Shakespeare
-%
-Swerve me?  The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails,
-whereon my soul is grooved to run.  Over unsounded gorges, through
-the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush!
-		-- Captain Ahab, "Moby Dick"
-%
-Talkers are no good doers.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
-%
-Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Tempt not a desperate man.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet"
-%
-The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
-%
-The bay-trees in our country are all wither'd
-And meteors fright the fixed stars of heaven;
-The pale-faced moon looks bloody on the earth
-And lean-look'd prophets whisper fearful change.
-These signs forerun the death or fall of kings.
-		-- Wm. Shakespeare, "Richard II"
-%
-The better part of valor is discretion.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
-%
-The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first
-half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and
-pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who
-hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice
-for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time
-during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it
-but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
-		-- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
-%
-The Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest is held ever year at San Jose State
-Univ.  by Professor Scott Rice.  It is held in memory of Edward George
-Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a rather prolific and popular (in his
-time) novelist.  He is best known today for having written "The Last
-Days of Pompeii."
-
-Whenever Snoopy starts typing his novel from the top of his doghouse,
-beginning "It was a dark and stormy night..." he is borrowing from Lord
-Bulwer-Lytton.  This was the line that opened his novel, "Paul Clifford,"
-written in 1830.  The full line reveals why it is so bad:
-
-	It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents -- except
-	at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of
-	wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene
-	lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty
-	flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.
-%
-The camel died quite suddenly on the second day, and Selena fretted
-sullenly and, buffing her already impeccable nails -- not for the first
-time since the journey begain -- pondered snidely if this would dissolve
-into a vignette of minor inconveniences like all the other holidays spent
-with Basil.
-		-- Winning sentence, 1983 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
-%
-The countdown had stalled at 'T' minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first
-female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick,
-rubbery lips unmistakably -- the first of many such advances during what
-would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my
-career.
-		-- Winning sentence, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
-%
-The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
-%
-The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference
-between a mermaid and a seal.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the
-difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"
-%
-The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
-		-- Wm. Shakespeare, "Henry VI", Part IV
-%
-The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and
-enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to
-lend money.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that
-procession but carrying a banner.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
-		-- Blaise Pascal
-%
-The Least Perceptive Literary Critic
-	The most important critic in our field of study is Lord Halifax.  A
-most individual judge of poetry, he once invited Alexander Pope round to
-give a public reading of his latest poem.
-	Pope, the leading poet of his day, was greatly surprised when Lord
-Halifax stopped him four or five times and said, "I beg your pardon, Mr.
-Pope, but there is something in that passage that does not quite please me."
-	Pope was rendered speechless, as this fine critic suggested sizeable
-and unwise emendations to his latest masterpiece.  "Be so good as to mark
-the place and consider at your leisure.  I'm sure you can give it a better
-turn."
-	After the reading, a good friend of Lord Halifax, a certain Dr.
-Garth, took the stunned Pope to one side.  "There is no need to touch the
-lines," he said.  "All you need do is leave them just as they are, call on
-Lord Halifax two or three months hence, thank him for his kind observation
-on those passages, and then read them to him as altered.  I have known him
-much longer than you have, and will be answerable for the event."
-	Pope took his advice, called on Lord Halifax and read the poem
-exactly as it was before.  His unique critical faculties had lost none of
-their edge.  "Ay", he commented, "now they are perfectly right.  Nothing can
-be better."
-		-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
-%
-The Least Successful Collector
-	Betsy Baker played a central role in the history of collecting.  She
-was employed as a servant in the house of John Warburton (1682-1759) who had
-amassed a fine collection of 58 first edition plays, including most of the
-works of Shakespeare.
-	One day Warburton returned home to find 55 of them charred beyond
-legibility.  Betsy had either burned them or used them as pie bottoms.  The
-remaining three folios are now in the British Museum.
-	The only comparable literary figure was the maid who in 1835 burned
-the manuscript of the first volume of Thomas Carlyle's "The Hisory of the
-French Revolution", thinking it was wastepaper.
-		-- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures"
-%
-The lovely woman-child Kaa was mercilessly chained to the cruel post of
-the warrior-chief Beast, with his barbarian tribe now stacking wood at
-her nubile feet, when the strong clear voice of the poetic and heroic
-Handsomas roared, 'Flick your Bic, crisp that chick, and you'll feel my
-steel through your last meal!'
-		-- Winning sentence, 1984 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
-%
-The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,
-Are of imagination all compact...
-		-- Wm. Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
-%
-The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that
-will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
-%
-	"...The name of the song is called 'Haddocks' Eyes'!"
-	"Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?" Alice said, trying to
-feel interested.
-	"No, you don't understand," the Knight said, looking a little
-vexed.  "That's what the name is called.  The name really is, 'The Aged
-Aged Man.'"
-	"Then I ought to have said "That's what the song is called'?"
-Alice corrected herself.
-	"No, you oughtn't: that's quite another thing!  The song is
-called 'Ways and Means':  but that's only what it is called you know!"
-	"Well, what is the song then?" said Alice, who was by this
-time completely bewildered.
-	"I was coming to that," the Knight said.  "The song really is
-"A-sitting on a Gate": and the tune's my own invention."
-		--Lewis Carroll, "Through the Looking Glass"
-%
-The notes blatted skyward as they rose over the Canada geese, feathered
-rumps mooning the day, webbed appendages frantically pedaling unseen
-bicycles in their search for sustenance, driven by cruel Nature's maxim,
-'Ya wanna eat, ya gotta work,' and at last I knew Pittsburgh.
-		-- Winning sentence, 1987 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
-%
-The only people for me are the mad ones -- the ones who are mad to live,
-mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,
-the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn
-like fabulous yellow Roman candles.
-		-- Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"
-%
-The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what
-you don't like, and do what you'd rather not.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-	The Priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly.
-I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.
-	A voice, sweetened and sustained, called to him from the sea.
-Turning the curve he waved his hand.  A sleek brown head, a seal's, far
-out on the water, round.  Usurper.
-		-- James Joyce, "Ulysses"
-%
-The Public is merely a multiplied "me."
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-The ripest fruit falls first.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"
-%
-The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-The smallest worm will turn being trodden on.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
-%
-The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned with
-commoner things.  It is chief of the world's luxuries, king by the grace of God
-over all the fruits of the earth.  When one has tasted it, he knows what the
-angels eat.  It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because
-she repented.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-There are more things in heaven and earth,
-Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
-		-- Wm. Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
-%
-There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a
-rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of his books; 2,
-to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him to let you read the
-manuscript of his forthcoming book.  No. 1 admits you to his respect; No. 2
-admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-There is a great discovery still to be made in Literature: that of
-paying literary men by the quantity they do NOT write.
-%
-There is always one thing to remember: writers are always selling somebody out.
-		-- Joan Didion, "Slouching Towards Bethlehem"
-%
-There is an old time toast which is golden for its beauty.
-"When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend."
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by
-ridicule, howsoever poor and witless.  Observe the ass, for instance: his
-character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler
-animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to.  Instead of feeling
-complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted
-armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
-		-- Ernest Hemingway
-%
-There's small choice in rotten apples.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
-%
-They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
-%
-They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy".  Foreigners
-always spell better than they pronounce.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Things past redress and now with me past care.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"
-%
-This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future, which is a
-little ironic since we may not have one.
-		-- Arthur Clarke
-%
-This night methinks is but the daylight sick.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
-%
-This was the most unkindest cut of all.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
-%
-To be or not to be.
-		-- Shakespeare
-To do is to be.
-		-- Nietzsche
-To be is to do.
-		-- Sartre
-Do be do be do.
-		-- Sinatra
-%
-Too much is just enough.
-		-- Mark Twain, on whiskey
-%
-Training is everything.  The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is
-nothing but cabbage with a college education.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Unless hours were cups of sack, and minutes capons, and clocks the tongues
-of bawds, and dials the signs of leaping houses, and the blessed sun himself
-a fair, hot wench in flame-colored taffeta, I see no reason why thou shouldst
-be so superfluous to demand the time of the day.  I wasted time and now doth
-time waste me.
-		-- William Shakespeare
-%
-Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Water, taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the
-bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster.  It seems
-almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the
-oyster.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is
-in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot
-stove-lid.  She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that
-is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.  But there was
-also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a
-French restaurant. [...]
-	I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk
-white BMW and her Jordache smile.  There had been a fight.  I had punched her
-boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls.  Everyone told him, "You ride the
-bull, senor.  You do not fight it."  But he was lean and tough like a bad
-rib-eye and he fought the bull.  And then he fought me.  And when we finished
-there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...]
-	"Stop the car," the girl said.
-	There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes.  She knew about the
-woman of the tollway.  I knew not how.  I started to speak, but she raised an
-arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.
-	"I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway
-belle's for thee."
-	The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie.
-Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey
-onto my granola and faced a new day.
-		-- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
-		   Competition
-%
-Well, anyway, I was reading this James Bond book, and right away I realized
-that like most books, it had too many words.  The plot was the same one that
-all James Bond books have: An evil person tries to blow up the world, but
-James Bond kills him and his henchmen and makes love to several attractive
-women.  There, that's it: 24 words.  But the guy who wrote the book took
-*thousands* of words to say it.
-	Or consider "The Brothers Karamazov", by the famous Russian alcoholic
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky.  It's about these two brothers who kill their father.
-Or maybe only one of them kills the father.  It's impossible to tell because
-what they mostly do is talk for nearly a thousand pages.  If all Russians talk
-as much as the Karamazovs did, I don't see how they found time to become a
-major world power.
-	I'm told that Dostoyevsky wrote "The Brothers Karamazov" to raise
-the question of whether there is a God.  So why didn't he just come right
-out and say: "Is there a God? It sure beats the heck out of me."
-	Other famous works could easily have been summarized in a few words:
-
-* "Moby Dick" -- Don't mess around with large whales because they symbolize
-  nature and will kill you.
-* "A Tale of Two Cities" -- French people are crazy.
-		-- Dave Barry
-%
-What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?
-		-- Nero Wolfe, "The League of Frightened Men"
-%
-What I tell you three times is true.
-		-- Lewis Carroll
-%
-What no spouse of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working
-when he's staring out the window.
-%
-When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know who have gone
-to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened
-or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I
-cannot remember any but the things that never happened.  It is sad to
-go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-When in doubt, tell the truth.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.
-		-- Dylan Thomas
-%
-When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all.
-		-- Roger Zelazny, "Doorways in the Sand"
-%
-Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last
-you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his
-Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
-		-- Mark Twain "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court"
-%
-Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
-to reform.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt
-of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race.  He
-brought death into the world.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral?  It is because we
-are not the person involved.
-		-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
-%
-Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do.
-Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
-		-- Mark Twain
-%
-Writing is easy; all you do is sit staring at the blank sheet of paper until
-drops of blood form on your forehead.
-		-- Gene Fowler
-%
-Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.
-		-- J.P. Donleavy
-%
-"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."
-		-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"
-%
-	"You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"
-	"The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as --"
-	"My blushes, Watson," Holmes murmured, in a deprecating voice.
-	"I was about to say 'as he is unknown to the public.'"
-		-- A. Conan Doyle, "The Valley of Fear"
-%
-You may my glories and my state dispose,
-But not my griefs; still am I king of those.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"
-%
-You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the
-obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and
-an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.
-		-- Sherlock Holmes, "The Norwood Builder"
-%
-You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night
-to write.
-		-- Saul Bellow
-%
-You see, I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty
-attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.  A fool
-takes in all the lumber of every sort he comes across, so that the knowledge
-which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with
-a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
-Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his
-brain-attic.  He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing
-his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect
-order.  It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and
-can distend to any extent.  Depend upon it there comes a time when for every
-addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before.  It is of
-the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out
-the useful ones.
-		-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"
-%
-You tread upon my patience.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
-%
-	You will remember, Watson, how the dreadful business of the
-Abernetty family was first brought to my notice by the depth which the
-parsley had sunk into the butter upon a hot day.
-		-- Sherlock Holmes
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-Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not
-original and the part that is original is not good.
-		-- Samuel Johnson
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-Zounds!  I was never so bethumped with words
-since I first called my brother's father dad.
-		-- William Shakespeare, "Kind John"
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