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.\n-- Mark Twain
A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read.\n-- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature"
A horse!  A horse!  My kingdom for a horse!\n-- 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.\n-- Harry Thurston Peck (Editor of "The Bookman"), January 1901.
A is for Apple.\n-- Hester Pryne
A kind of Batman of contemporary letters.\n-- Philip Larkin on Anthony Burgess
A light wife doth make a heavy husband.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain
After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations.\n-- H.L. Mencken, on Shakespeare
Alas, how love can trifle with itself!\n-- William Shakespeare, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"
All generalizations are false, including this one.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
"... all the modern inconveniences ..."\n-- Mark Twain
All things that are, are with more spirit chased than enjoyed.\n-- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice"
Always do right.  This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.\n-- Mark Twain
Always the dullness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits.\n-- William Shakespeare, "As You Like It"
"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often picturesque liar."\n-- Mark Twain
An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain
April 1 This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.\n-- Shakespeare, "King Lear"
As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
AWAKE! FEAR! FIRE! FOES! AWAKE!\nFEAR! FIRE! FOES!\nAWAKE! AWAKE!\n-- J. R. R. Tolkien
Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.\n-- 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."\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Big book, big bore.\n-- Callimachus
But, for my own part, it was Greek to me.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity.  Another man's, I mean.\n-- Mark Twain
Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.\n-- Mark Twain
Clothes make the man.  Naked people have little or no influence on society.\n-- Mark Twain
Condense soup, not books!
Conscience doth make cowards of us all.\n-- Shakespeare
Consider well the proportions of things.  It is better to be a young June-bug than an old bird of paradise.\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Delay not, Caesar.  Read it instantly.\n-- 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.]
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.  The world owes you nothing.  It was here first.\n-- Mark Twain
"Elves and Dragons!" I says to him.  "Cabbages and potatoes are better for you and me."\n-- J. R. R. Tolkien
English literature's performing flea.\n-- Sean O'Casey on P.G. Wodehouse
Every cloud engenders not a storm.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
Every why hath a wherefore.\n-- William Shakespeare, "A Comedy of Errors"
Extreme fear can neither fight nor fly.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain
Familiarity breeds contempt -- and children.\n-- Mark Twain
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.\n-- "Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
For a light heart lives long.\n-- Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
For courage mounteth with occasion.\n-- 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.\n-- 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?\n-- 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.\n-- Justin Richardson.
Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both yes and no.\n-- J.R.R. Tolkien
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.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- 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?\n-- Mark Twain, "Huckleberry Finn"
Harp not on that string.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom.\n-- Mark Twain
Having nothing, nothing can he lose.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
He draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
He hath eaten me out of house and home.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
He is now rising from affluence to poverty.\n-- Mark Twain
He jests at scars who never felt a wound.\n-- Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet, II. 2"
He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom.\n-- J.R.R. Tolkien
He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.\n-- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
He was part of my dream, of course -- but then I was part of his dream too.\n-- Lewis Carroll
Hell is empty and all the devils are here.\n-- Wm. Shakespeare, "The Tempest"
How apt the poor are to be proud.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Twelfth-Night"
I do desire we may be better strangers.\n-- 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.\n-- J. R. R. Tolkien
I dote on his very absence.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.\n-- Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad"
I think we are in Rats' Alley where the dead men lost their bones.\n-- T.S. Eliot
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.\n-- Mark Twain
I'll burn my books.\n-- 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.\n-- Shakespeare
If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.\n-- J.R.R. Tolkien
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.\n-- Oscar Wilde
If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it.\n-- Ernest Hemingway
If you laid all of our laws end to end, there would be no end.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.\n-- 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."\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain
In the first place, God made idiots; this was for practice; then he made school boards.\n-- Mark Twain
In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.\n-- Mark Twain, on New England weather
It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.\n-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Case of Identity"
It is a wise father that knows his own child.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- Samuel Beckett, "Malone Dies"
It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.\n-- Mark Twain
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse-races.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain
Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can read.\n-- Mark Twain
Kiss me, Kate, we will be married o' Sunday.\n-- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
Lay on, MacDuff, and curs'd be him who first cries, "Hold, enough!".\n-- Shakespeare
Let him choose out of my files, his projects to accomplish.\n-- Shakespeare, "Coriolanus"
Let me take you a button-hole lower.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Lord, what fools these mortals be!\n-- William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer-Night's Dream"
Man is the only animal that blushes -- or needs to.\n-- Mark Twain
Many a writer seems to think he is never profound except when he can't understand his own meaning.\n-- George D. Prentice
Many pages make a thick book, except for pocket Bibles which are on very very thin paper.
Many pages make a thick book.
Must I hold a candle to my shames?\n-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
My only love sprung from my only hate! Too early seen unknown, and known too late!\n-- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet"
Never laugh at live dragons.\n-- Bilbo Baggins [J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Hobbit"]
No group of professionals meets except to conspire against the public at large.\n-- Mark Twain
No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you!  Consider the furniture!\n-- Sherlock Holmes
Noise proves nothing.  Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.\n-- Mark Twain
