Vila: "I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life." Orac: "It is unlikely.  I would predict there are far greater mistakes\nwaiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it."
Virtue does not always demand a heavy sacrifice -- only the willingness to make it when necessary.\n-- Frederick Dunn
Virtue is its own punishment.\n-- Denniston Righteous people terrify me ... virtue is its own punishment. -- Aneurin Bevan
Virtue is not left to stand alone.  He who practices it will have neighbors.\n-- Confucius
Virtue would go far if vanity did not keep it company.\n-- La Rochefoucauld
Visits always give pleasure: if not on arrival, then on the departure.\n-- Edouard Le Berquier, "Pensees des Autres"
Waking a person unnecessarily should not be considered a capital crime. For a first offense, that is.
Walk softly and carry a BFG-9000.
Walk softly and carry a big stick.\n-- Theodore Roosevelt
Walk softly and carry a megawatt laser.
We all dream of being the darling of everybody's darling.
We all know that no one understands anything that isn't funny.
We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon.\n-- Dr. Konrad Adenauer
We are all born mad.  Some remain so.\n-- Samuel Beckett
We are all dying -- and we're gonna be dead for a long time.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.\n-- Oscar Wilde
We are all so much together and yet we are all dying of loneliness.\n-- A. Schweitzer
We are anthill men upon an anthill world.\n-- Ray Bradbury
We ARE as gods and might as well get good at it.\n-- Whole Earth Catalog
We are each only one drop in a great ocean -- but some of the drops sparkle!
We are not loved by our friends for what we are; rather, we are loved in spite of what we are.\n-- Victor Hugo
We are so fond of each other because our ailments are the same.\n-- Jonathan Swift
We are stronger than our skin of flesh and metal, for we carry and share a spectrum of suns and lands that lends us legends as we craft our immortality and interweave our destinies of water and air, leaving shadows that gather color of their own, until they outshine the substance that cast them.
We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.\n-- La Rochefoucauld
We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from the machinations of the wicked.
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.\n-- Eric Hoffer
We may not return the affection of those who like us, but we always respect their good judgement.
We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.\n-- La Rouchefoucauld
We prefer to believe that the absence of inverted commas guarantees the originality of a thought, whereas it may be merely that the utterer has forgotten its source.\n-- Clifton Fadiman, "Any Number Can Play"
We prefer to speak evil of ourselves rather than not speak of ourselves at all.
We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears.
We read to say that we have read.
We really don't have any enemies.  It's just that some of our best friends are trying to kill us.
We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them.\n-- Thucydides
We seldom repent talking too little, but very often talking too much.\n-- Jean de la Bruyere
Well, I'm disenchanted too.  We're all disenchanted.\n-- James Thurber
Were it not for the presence of the unwashed and the half-educated, the formless, queer and incomplete, the unreasonable and absurd, the infinite shapes of the delightful human tadpole, the horizon would not wear so wide a grin.\n-- F.M. Colby, "Imaginary Obligations"
What good is it if you talk in flowers, and they think in pastry?\n-- Ashleigh Brilliant
What is tolerance? -- it is the consequence of humanity.  We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly -- that is the first law of nature.\n-- Voltaire
What makes us so bitter against people who outwit us is that they think themselves cleverer than we are.
What on earth would a man do with himself if something did not stand in his way?\n-- H.G. Wells
What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.\n-- Nietzsche
What we see depends on mainly what we look for.\n-- John Lubbock
What's the matter with the world?  Why, there ain't but one thing wrong with every one of us -- and that's "selfishness."\n-- The Best of Will Rogers
What's this stuff about people being "released on their own recognizance"? Aren't we all out on our own recognizance?
What, after all, is a halo?  It's only one more thing to keep clean.\n-- Christopher Fry
Whatever you may be sure of, be sure of this: that you are dreadfully like other people.\n-- James Russell Lowell, "My Study Windows"
Whatever you want to do, you have to do something else first.
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.\n-- Samuel Johnson
When a man you like switches from what he said a year ago, or four years ago, he is a broad-minded man who has courage enough to change his mind with changing conditions.  When a man you don't like does it, he is a liar who has broken his promises.\n-- Franklin Adams
When all other means of communication fail, try words.
When among apes, one must play the ape.
When God endowed human beings with brains, He did not intend to guarantee them.
When in doubt, do it.  It's much easier to apologize than to get permission.\n-- Grace Murray Hopper
When it comes to helping you, some people stop at nothing.
When people say nothing, they don't necessarily mean nothing.
When there are two conflicting versions of the story, the wise course is to believe the one in which people appear at their worst.\n-- H. Allen Smith, "Let the Crabgrass Grow"
When you dig another out of trouble, you've got a place to bury your own.
When you jump for joy, beware that no-one moves the ground from beneath your feet.\n-- Stanislaw Lem, "Unkempt Thoughts"
When you speak to others for their own good it's advice; when they speak to you for your own good it's interference.
When you try to make an impression, the chances are that is the impression you will make.
WHENEVER ANYBODY SAYS he's struggling to become a human being I have to laugh because the apes beat him to it by about a million years.  Struggle to become a parrot or something.\n-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.\n-- Oscar Wilde
Whenever someone tells you to take their advice, you can be pretty sure that they're not using it.
... whether it is better to spend a life not knowing what you want or to spend a life knowing exactly what you want and that you will never have it.\n-- Richard Shelton
While anyone can admit to themselves they were wrong, the true test is admission to someone else.
While having never invented a sin, I'm trying to perfect several.
While most peoples' opinions change, the conviction of their correctness never does.
While we are sleeping, two-thirds of the world is plotting to do us in.\n-- Dean Rusk
While you don't greatly need the outside world, it's still very reassuring to know that it's still there.
While your friend holds you affectionately by both your hands you are safe, for you can watch both of his.\n-- Ambrose Bierce, "The Devil's Dictionary"
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.  And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.\n-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Whoever would lie usefully should lie seldom.
Why be difficult when, with a bit of effort, you could be impossible?
Why did the Lord give us so much quickness of movement unless it was to avoid responsibility with?
Why my thoughts are my own, when they are in, but when they are out they are another's.\n-- Susanna Martin, executed for witchcraft, 1681
Why was I born with such contemporaries?\n-- Oscar Wilde
Why, every one as they like; as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.\n-- Rabelais
Will your long-winded speeches never end? What ails you that you keep on arguing?\n-- Job 16:3
Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat.
With a gentleman I try to be a gentleman and a half, and with a fraud I try to be a fraud and a half.\n-- Otto von Bismark
With clothes the new are best, with friends the old are best.
Words must be weighed, not counted.
Worrying is like rocking in a rocking chair -- It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere.
Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.\n-- Anonymous
Ye've also got to remember that ... respectable people do the most astonishin' things to preserve their respectability.  Thank God I'm not respectable.\n-- Ruthven Campbell Todd
Yes, but every time I try to see things your way, I get a headache.
Yield to Temptation ... it may not pass your way again.\n-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love"
You ain't learning nothing when you're talking.
You are a wish to be here wishing yourself.\n-- Philip Whalen
You are absolute plate-glass. I see to the very back of your mind.\n-- Sherlock Holmes
You are not a fool just because you have done something foolish -- only if the folly of it escapes you.
You can always tell luck from ability by its duration.
You can always tell the people that are forging the new frontier. They're the ones with arrows sticking out of their backs.
You can bear anything if it isn't your own fault.\n-- Katharine Fullerton Gerould
You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow.\n-- Janis Joplin
You can't carve your way to success without cutting remarks.
You can't cheat an honest man.  Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump.\n-- W.C. Fields
You can't cross a large chasm in two small jumps.
You can't erase a dream, you can only wake me up.\n-- Peter Frampton
You can't have your cake and let your neighbor eat it too.\n-- Ayn Rand
You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.\n-- Booker T. Washington
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.\n-- W. Somerset Maugham, "The Circle"
You can't play your friends like marks, kid.\n-- Henry Gondorf, "The Sting"
You can't start worrying about what's going to happen.  You get spastic enough worrying about what's happening now.\n-- Lauren Bacall
"You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't."\n-- Dagwood Bumstead
You cannot achieve the impossible without attempting the absurd.
You cannot kill time without injuring eternity.
You cannot propel yourself forward by patting yourself on the back.
You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.\n-- Indira Gandhi
You cannot use your friends and have them too.
You could get a new lease on life -- if only you didn't need the first and last month in advance.
You don't have to be nice to people on the way up if you're not planning on coming back down.\n-- Oliver Warbucks, "Annie"
You don't have to explain something you never said.\n-- Calvin Coolidge
You give me space to belong to myself yet without separating me from your own life.  May it all turn out to your happiness.\n-- Goethe
You got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there.\n-- Yogi Berra
You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.\n-- John Viscount Morley
You humans are all alike.
You just wait, I'll sin till I blow up!\n-- Dylan Thomas
You know how to win a victory, Hannibal, but not how to use it.\n-- Maharbal
You know it's going to be a bad day when you want to put on the clothes you wore home from the party and there aren't any.
You know it's going to be a long day when you get up, shave and shower, start to get dressed and your shoes are still warm.\n-- Dean Webber
You know it's Monday when you wake up and it's Tuesday.\n-- Garfield
You know what they say -- the sweetest word in the English language is revenge.\n-- Peter Beard
You know you are getting old when you think you should drive the speed limit.\n-- E.A. Gilliam
You know your apartment is small...\nwhen you can't know its position and velocity at the same time.\nyou put your key in the lock and it breaks the window.\nyou have to go outside to change your mind.\nyou can vacuum the entire place using a single electrical outlet.
You may be sure that when a man begins to call himself a "realist," he is preparing to do something he is secretly ashamed of doing.\n-- Sydney Harris
You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with him.\n-- Ed Howe
You must know that a man can have only one invulnerable loyalty, loyalty to his own concept of the obligations of manhood.  All other loyalties are merely deputies of that one.\n-- Nero Wolfe
You never gain something but that you lose something.\n-- Thoreau
You never get a second chance to make a first impression.
You never go anywhere without your soul.
You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough.\n-- William Blake
You never learn anything by doing it right.
You probably wouldn't worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.\n-- Olin Miller.
You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"\n-- George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methuselah" [No, it wasn't J.F. Kennedy.  Ed.]
You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.\n-- Joseph Conrad
You should avoid hedging, at least that's what I think.
You should make a point of trying every experience once -- except incest and folk-dancing.\n-- A. Bax, "Farewell My Youth"
You shouldn't wallow in self-pity.  But it's OK to put your feet in it and swish them around a little.\n-- Guindon
You want to know why I kept getting promoted?  Because my mouth knows more than my brain.\n-- W.G.
You won't skid if you stay in a rut.\n-- Frank Hubbard
You'd best be snoozin', 'cause you don't be gettin' no work done at 5 a.m. anyway.\n-- From the wall of the Wurster Hall stairwell
You'd better smile when they watch you, smile like you're in control.\n-- Smile, "Was (Not Was)"
You're always thinking you're gonna be the one that makes 'em act different.\n-- Woody Allen, "Manhattan"
You're either part of the solution or part of the problem.\n-- Eldridge Cleaver
You're never too old to become younger.\n-- Mae West
You've always made the mistake of being yourself.\n-- Eugene Ionesco
You've been telling me to relax all the way here, and now you're telling me just to be myself?\n-- The Return of the Secaucus Seven
Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.\n-- George Chapman
Young men, hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young.\n-- Augustus Caesar
Your conscience never stops you from doing anything.  It just stops you from enjoying it.
Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years.\n-- Richard Bach, "Illusions"
Youth -- not a time of life but a state of mind... a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease.\n-- Robert F. Kennedy
Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret.\n-- Benjamin Disraeli, "Coningsby"
Youth is a disease from which we all recover.\n-- Dorothy Fuldheim
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.\n-- Jesus, "Gnostic Gospels" (Elaine Pagel)
If a man slept by day, he had little time to work.  That was a satisfying notion to Escargot.\n-- "The Stone Giant", James P. Blaylock
He liked fishing a little too much, and he believed that work was something a man did when he had to.  He had always been able to get along well enough without it, especially for the last couple of years.\n-- "The Stone Giant", James P. Blaylock
Would a giant, profit-oriented cartel lie to you?\n-- Top Ten List, Late Night with David Letterman
Some days you wake and immediately start worrying.  Nothing in particular is wrong, it's just the suspicion that forces are aligning quietly and there will be trouble.\n-- "Survival Series", Jenny Holzer
I am examining you on your fool ideas that no intelligent Christian on earth believes.\n-- Clarence Darrow, to William Jennings Bryan
"Go on, girl!  You'll never get a better chance to buy Jif at this price.  *Carpe diem*, babe!"\n-- "The Naked Consumer", Erik Larson
I'm enthralled by combine harvesters. In fact, I yearn to have one -- as a pet.\n-- "The Day of the Jackal"
The horizon of many people is a circle with a radius of zero. They call this their point of view.\n-- Albert Einstein
