"Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none."\n-- Shakespeare
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.\n-- Mark Twain
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.\n-- Shakespeare
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Patch griefs with proverbs.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we ourselves possess.\n-- 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\n-- Mark Twain, "Tom Sawyer"
question = ( to ) ? be : ! be;\n-- Wm. Shakespeare
Reader, suppose you were an idiot.  And suppose you were a member of Congress.  But I repeat myself.\n-- Mark Twain
Rebellion lay in his way, and he found it.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
Remark of Dr. Baldwin's concerning upstarts: We don't care to eat toadstools that think they are truffles.\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Repartee is something we think of twenty-four hours too late.\n-- Mark Twain
ROMEO:		Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much. MERCUTIO:	No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide\nas a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve.
Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
She is not refined.  She is not unrefined.  She keeps a parrot.\n-- Mark Twain
Small things make base men proud.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
So so is good, very good, very excellent good|and yet it is not; it is but so so.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain
Something's rotten in the state of Denmark.\n-- Shakespeare
Sometimes I wonder if I'm in my right mind.  Then it passes off and I'm as intelligent as ever.\n-- Samuel Beckett, "Endgame"
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.\n-- Corwin, Prince of Amber
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.\n-- 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!\n-- Captain Ahab, "Moby Dick"
Talkers are no good doers.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick.\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Tempt not a desperate man.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet"
The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.\n-- 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.\n-- Wm. Shakespeare, "Richard II"
The better part of valor is discretion.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.\n-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and a seal.\n-- Mark Twain
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.\n-- Mark Twain
The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.\n-- Mark Twain
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.\n-- Mark Twain
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.\n-- Blaise Pascal
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact...\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain
The naked truth of it is, I have no shirt.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
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.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain
The Public is merely a multiplied "me."\n-- Mark Twain
The ripest fruit falls first.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Richard II"
The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in Heaven.\n-- Mark Twain
The smallest worm will turn being trodden on.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Henry VI"
The surest protection against temptation is cowardice.\n-- Mark Twain
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice.\n-- Mark Twain
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.\n-- Wm. Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
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.\n-- 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."\n-- Mark Twain
There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.\n-- 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.\n-- Ernest Hemingway
There's small choice in rotten apples.\n-- William Shakespeare, "The Taming of the Shrew"
They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy".  Foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.\n-- Mark Twain
Things past redress and now with me past care.\n-- 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.\n-- Arthur Clarke
This night methinks is but the daylight sick.\n-- William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
This was the most unkindest cut of all.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar"
To be or not to be.\n-- Shakespeare To do is to be. -- Nietzsche To be is to do. -- Sartre Do be do be do. -- Sinatra
Too much is just enough.\n-- Mark Twain, on whiskey
Training is everything.  The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.\n-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Truth is the most valuable thing we have -- so let us economize it.\n-- Mark Twain
Wagner's music is better than it sounds.\n-- Mark Twain
Water, taken in moderation cannot hurt anybody.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain
What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?\n-- Nero Wolfe, "The League of Frightened Men"
What I tell you three times is true.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain
When in doubt, tell the truth.\n-- Mark Twain
When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.\n-- Dylan Thomas
When you are about to die, a wombat is better than no company at all.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- Mark Twain
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.\n-- 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.\n-- Gene Fowler
Writing is turning one's worst moments into money.\n-- J.P. Donleavy
"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive."\n-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "A Study in Scarlet"
"You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"\n"The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as --"\n"My blushes, Watson," Holmes murmured, in a deprecating voice.\n"I was about to say 'as he is unknown to the public.'"\n-- 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.\n-- 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.\n-- Sherlock Holmes, "The Norwood Builder"
You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.\n-- Saul Bellow
You tread upon my patience.\n-- 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.\n-- Sherlock Holmes
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.\n-- Samuel Johnson
Zounds!  I was never so bethumped with words since I first called my brother's father dad.\n-- William Shakespeare, "Kind John"
The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.\n-- John Milton
"I understand this is your first dead client," Sabian was saying.  The absurdity of the statement made me want to laugh but they don't call me Deadpan Allie and lie.\n-- Pat Cadigan, "Mindplayers"
