Quoth the Raven,
"NEVERMORE!"
_____________
Quotes 7
_____________
"From all us Slackers to all you Boomers... HAHAHAHAHAHA! WE HAVE
SATELLITE MOUNTED RAIL-GUNS! HEH HEH. Who's laughing now?"
- S. Lang
"I always make sure and keep one slug in reserve... either for myself--or
the other poor jerk!"
- Chow Yun Fat, _The_Killer_
"You think you've got it rough?! When I'm a gangster, the cops want to kill
me. When I'm a cop, *everyone* wants to kill me. I'm scared to death!"
- Tony Leung, _Hard_Boiled_
"Death is whimsical today...."
- Stansfield, _The_Professional_
"There's nothing quite so off-putting at a wedding as a priest with a huge
erection."
- Charles, _4 Weddings_And_A_Funeral_
"If I cried me a river
Of all my confessions
Would I drown in my shallow regret?"
- Sarah McLachlan
"Life is a gamble at terrible odds--if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it."
- Tom Stoppard, _Rosencrantz_and_Guildenstern_Are_Dead_
"Be happy while you're living, for you're a long time dead."
- Scottish Proverb
"My dear girl, replied Candide, when a man is in love, jealous, and just
whipped by the Inquisition, he is no longer himself."
- Voltaire, _Candide_
"All of our final decisions are made in a state of mind that is not going
to last."
- Proust
"A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve."
- Joseph Joubert
"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
- Ernest Hemingway, _The_Garden_of_Eden_
"This is the nicest ship for a million kilometers, and they seem intent on
running around trying to find some space anomaly that will rip it into
pieces."
- Neelix, USS Voyager
"That's a six-four-three play if you're scoring at home, or even if you're
not getting any."
- Keith Obermann, ESPN Sportscenter
"Circuit City--We've got your new computer RIGHT HERE."
- actual Circuit City ad
"I was trying to leave telnet after it had locked up on me, so I typed 'Feh
dick bag' at the prompt... and it responded 'INVALID FEH COMMAND SYNTAX'."
- Wade 'Mr. Face' Craig
"Basically, Doom is a (violent) 3D arcade game where you run around in a
maze and kill things with shotguns and chainsaws.... After you get tired
of killing things, you can run it over a network and kill things together
with your friends. After you get tired of that, you can kill your friends.
"
- from the Doom faq
"Oh, you can't log into 'Darwin'? That's because DARWIN'S IN MY TRUCK."
- Bill Pemberton, providing user support
during his area's physical move
"...proving once and for all that she is NOT A FIGMENT OF MY DERANGED
IMAGINATION!!! Of course, that wouldn't prove that *I* wasn't a figment of
*her* deranged imagination. Hmm. But it's not my problem."
- Adam Elman
"In database design, as in life, integrity is the key to sound relationships."
- 'Inside FileMaker Pro' newsletter
"Anything worth knowing was learned in the last 60 days."
- W.R. Howell
"Microsoft: Bringing you yesterday's technology--tomorrow."
- traditional
"Indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to describe the history of the
computer industry for the past decade as a massive effort to keep up with
Apple."
- Byte, December 1994
"I heard that some non-drinkers even came last year, but I was too waxed to
notice."
- Will Morton, on Scramble Bands CyberFest I
"If the best we can do for 'T' is 'Titfucking'... I quit."
- M. Pitely, playing the Alphabet Game
"There's more than one way to skin a cat:
Way number 27--Use an electric sander."
- John T. Chapman
"The most terrifying thing in the world is your own life, the fact that
it's yours and nobody else's."
- John Updike
"Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no
one to blame."
- Erica Jong
"He's no failure. He's not dead yet."
- William Lloyd George
"Unless you're willing to have a go, fail miserably, and have another go,
success won't happen."
- Phillip Adams
"...this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the
staying down."
- Mary Pickford
"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were
to success when they gave up."
- Thomas Edison
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work."
- ibid
"There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees Heaven
and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes."
- Bertrand Russell
"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if
there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but
blind, pitiless indifference."
- Charles Darwin
"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster. And if you gaze long
into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes into you."
- Nietzsche
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay
any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose
any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
- Kennedy, Inagural Address
"Live Free Or Die."
- New Hampshire license plate
"The terms 'Sporting Purpose' and 'Hunting' are nowhere to be seen in the
Second Amendment. I checked twice."
- Martin P. Olsen
"Rights ARE rights, arms ARE arms and people ARE people."
- Tanya Metaksa, NRA
"I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward."
- Charlotte Bronte
"Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain."
- Mark Twain
"Nothing we are afraid to live without can be the source of our success."
- Guy Finley
"When a man's willing and eager, the gods join in."
- Aeschylus
"Glory gives herself only to those who always dreamed of her."
- Charles de Gaulle
"But it is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."
- Herman Melville
"No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it
goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale.
The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening
to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if
we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live
them."
- Alan Watts
"If you must play, decide on three things at the start: the rules of the
game, the stakes, and the quitting time"
- Chinese proverb
"Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite, and, furthermore,
always carry a small snake."
- W. C. Fields
"Someday I'm going to murder the bugler.
Someday they're going to find him dead.
I'll amputate his reveille
And step upon it heavily
And spend the rest of my life in bed."
- Irving Berlin, "Oh How I Hate To Get Up in the Morning"
"I think the person who takes a job in order to live--that is to say, for
the money--has turned himself into a slave."
- Joseph Campbell
"If you don't want to work, you have to work to earn enough money so that you
won't have to work"
- Ogden Nash
"It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is
work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he
can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight
hours is work."
- William Faulkner
"Money often costs too much."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."
- Henry David Thoreau
"I've been rich and I've been poor. Rich is better."
- Sophie Tucker
"Spring has returned. The earth is like a child that knows poems."
- Rainer Maria Rilke
"My mistake. *Four* coffins."
- The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood),
_A_Fistful_Of_Dollars_
"It's a bit like Doom meets home shopping."
- Mark Pesce, on Virtual Reality Modeling Language
"Ever since we convinced our boss that a site on the Internet was a good
idea, we have been under a certain amount of pressure to make that true."
- Kingswood Kranium
"Humankind has not woven the Web of Life. We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the Web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound
together. All things connect."
- Chief Seattle
"Information is the currency of democracy."
- Th. Jefferson
"That article and its poster have been canceled."
- David B. O'Donnell, Sysadmin, America OnLine
"The more things change, the more they suck."
- Butt-head
"Finally, after a long period of hating your family, your upbringing, the
fact that you grew up in the suburbs, finally you stand there to take full
responsibility for yourself. I think it's called maturity."
- Liz Phair
"Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Barry has said he wants local businesses to
create 5000 summer jobs for area youth. He also wants some crack."
- Saturday Night Live Weekend Update
"This show was brought to you by the Committee to Re-elect Marion
Barry--the only candidate who's all he's cracked up to be."
- Virginia Pep Band show that brought censure
and a threatened lawsuit
"Washington D.C. Mayor Marion Barry is on a 10 day visit to Africa. He says
he like everything about it--but he really misses crack."
- a later Saturday Night Live Weekend Update
"What are you doing giving drummers music? They're just going to eat it."
- SeanMike Whipkey, Virginia Pep Band
"On our LA roadtrip, a 'renegade faction' of the Band reached 'a new low in
tastelessness' when it 'rallied' the L.A. 'County' courthouse during the
O.J. Simpson murder 'trial.' These agents of chaos (tm) received national
attention and subsequent stern reprimands from both attorney Robert Shapiro
and our Athletic Department. We feel just terrible about it. Bad renegades.
No pudding for you."
- Mary Ringhoff, PR Woman,
Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band
"Beef: Good Fast Food from the Makers of Milk."
- Jeff Schwartz
"If it is all the same to you I won't be coming in to work.
The voices told me to clean all the guns today."
- Gregory S. Combs
"We can make it to the fence in two seconds, can you?"
- a yard sign picturing the silhouettes of two mastiffs
"I must apologize for the lack of bloodshed in tonight's program. We shall
try to do better next time."
- Alfred Hitchcock
"I don't care what anyone says. Call me Chicken Little, but the
motherfucking sky is falling."
- The Rev. Trashcan Man
"The Dead Tour is now officially over."
- Trashy, on the death of Jerry Garcia
"But groundless hope, like unconditional love, is the only kind worth having."
- EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow
"It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use
and authority of reason as to administer medication to the dead."
- Thomas Jefferson
"A man is too apt to forget that in this world he cannot have everything. A
choice is all that is left him."
- H. Mathews
"To gain that worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else."
- Bernadette Devlin
"Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love all year round, madam;
that is all there is to distinguish us from other animals."
- Pierre-Augustin Caron De Beaumarchais,
_The Marriage of Figaro_
"With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely a matter of
good manners. You may judge which is the more reliable."
- Prince Fizel, _Lawrence_of_Arabia_
"There is the path of light,
Of fire and day,
The path of the moon's bright fortnight
And the six months' journey
Of the sun to the north:
The knower of Brahman
Who takes this path
Goes to Brahman:
He does not return.
There is the path of night and smoke,
The path of the moon's dark fortnight
And the six months' journey
Of the sun to the south:
The yogi who takes this path
Will reach the lunar light:
This path leads back
To human birth, at last."
- The Bhagavad-Gita
"You know, I believe if there's any kind of god, it wouldn't be in any of
us--you or me... but just this little space in between. If there's any kind
of magic in this world, it must be in the attempt of understanding someone,
sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed, but--who
cares, really? The answer must be in the attempt."
- Celine, _Before_Sunrise_
"To make a fuss about sexual injustice is more than unfeminine; it is now
uncool. Feminist anger, or any form of social outrage, is dismissed
breezily--not because it lacks substance but because it lacks 'style'."
- Susan Faludi, _Backlash_
"Like a cat preparing for a leap, you can throw your heart into something
ahead and the rest of you catches up. However, what seems most important
is the muscle power available for the leap."
- Lucy Goodison, _Moving_Heaven_And_Earth_
"I know somebody and they call your name
A million times and still you never came
They go on loving you just the same."
- Chris Isaak
"No philosophy that he had ever heard or read gave any reasonable purpose
for man's existence, nor any rational clue to his proper conduct. Basking
in the sunshine might be as good a thing to do with one's life as any
other--but it was not for him and he knew it, even if he could not define
how he knew it."
- Robert A. Heinlein, _Methusalah's_Children_
"He sat very quietly, rubbing his hands against the soil of the
Moon and sensing the curiously light pressure of his body against the
ground. At long last there was peace in his heart. His hurts had ceased to
pain him. He *was* where he had longed to be--he had followed his need.
Over the western horizon hung the Earth at last quarter, a green-blue giant
moon. Overhead the Sun shone down from a black and starry sky. And
underneath the Moon, the soil of the Moon itself. He was on the Moon!
He lay back still while a bath of content flowed over him like a
tide at flood, and soaked to his very marrow.
His attention strayed momentarily, and he thought once again that
his name was called. Silly, he thought, I'm getting old--my mind wanders."
- Robert A. Heinlein, "Requiem," 1940
"What distinguished them from other men (aside from their terror of Social
Security cards and cedula de identidad) was their refusal to equate work
with life and an inability to stay anywhere for long. Some were Huck Finns;
some Nigger Jims. Others were Calibans, Stagerlees and John Henrys.
Anarchic, wandering, they read about their hometowns in the pages of
out-of-town newspapers."
- Toni Morrison, _Tar_Baby_
"PEOPLE ARE HELPLESS TO FATE, VICTIMS OF TIME--THEIR OWN EMOTIONS UNDO
THEM, AND SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS OF ALL KINDS FAIL THEM.... BELIEF IN GOD, OR
A BELIEF THAT--EVENTUALLY--*EVERYTHING* HAS TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES... EITHER
WAY, YOU DON'T LEAVE YOURSELF ANY ROOM FOR PHILOSOPHICAL DETACHMENT. EITHER
WAY, YOU'RE NOT BEING VERY CLEVER."
- Owen Meany, John Irving's _A_Prayer_For_Owen_Meany_
"WHAT I'M TELLING YOU IS, IF YOU WANT TO DO THINGS YOUR OWN WAY, YOU'RE
GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE A *DECISION*--YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO FIND A LITTLE
COURAGE.... IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT--IF YOU'RE
LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE
TO *LIVE* IT."
- ibid
"Somewhere in the notes Estraven wrote during our trek across the Gobrin
Ice he wonders why his companion is ashamed to cry. I could have told him
even then that it was not shame so much as fear. Now I went on through the
Sinoth Valley, through the evening of his death, into the cold country that
lies beyond fear. There I found you can weep all you like, but there's no
good in it."
- Ursula K. LeGuin, _The_Left_Hand_Of_Darkness_
"Ravenous fish and tasy plankton. Rain forests dripping with nameless
reptiles, birds gliding under canopies of leaves, insects buzzing like
electrons in an accelerator. Frost belts where voles and lemmings flourish
and diminish with tidy four-year periodicity in the face of nature's bloody
combat. The world makes a messy laboratory for ecologists, a cauldron of
five million interacting species. Or is it fifty million? Ecologists do not
actually know."
- James Gleick, _Chaos_
"As we begin to understand complex systems, we begin to understand that
we're part of an ever-changing, interlocking, nonlinear, kaleidoscopic
world. So the question is how you maneuver in a world like that. And the
answer is that you want to keep as many options open as possible. You go
for viability, something that's workable, rather than what's 'optimal'....
You observe the world very, very carefully, and you don't expect
circumstances to last."
- Brian Arthur, M. Mitchell Waldrop's _Complexity_
"We wait all these years to find someone who understands us, I thought,
someone who accepts us as we are, someone with a wizard's power to melt
stone to sunlight, who can bring us happiness in spite of trials, who can
face our dragons in the night, who can transform us into the soul we choose
to be. Just yesterday I found that magical Someone is the face we see in
the mirror: It's us and our homemade masks."
- Richard Bach, _Running_From_Safety_
"Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of
legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught
mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from
the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity.
Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and
constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...."
- William Gibson, _Neuromancer_
Thursday, September 14, 1995