SimplePhrase Quotations


This is the part where I put a bunch of nifty quotes on my website and you feign interest. When the Quote Extant on the main page changes, the old one is added to the top of this list. Enjoy...

This page was last modified 3/8/2010.


If you're already in a hole, it's no use to continue digging.

— Roy W. Walters


Death is nature's way of saying, "Howdy."

— Unknown


There's nothing wrong with teenagers that reasoning with them won't aggravate.

— Unknown


All life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.

— H. P. Lovecraft


Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

— Stephen Wright


I was unavoidably detained by my lack of punctuality.

— Ethan Greer


You don't have to change much to change everything.

— Mark Rosewater


Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

— Groucho Marx


Don't be humble. You're not that great.

— Golda Meir


When God gives you lemons, find a new god.

— Picnicface


The Good Lord never gives you more than you can handle. Unless you die of something.

— Guindon cartoon caption


People who like to dive through plate-glass windows shouldn't live in stone houses.

— Allen Hetzer


Why is it that our memory is good enough to retain the least triviality that happens to us, and yet not good enough to recollect how often we have told it to the same person?

— Francois de La Rochefoucauld


You can look at practically any part of anything man-made around you and think, "Some engineer was frustrated while designing this." It's a little human connection.

— Randall Munroe


The more you love, the more you can love — and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit to how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.

— Lazarus Long, as transcribed by Robert Heinlein


We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

— Robert Wilensky


No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present little instant.

— Fra Giovanni Giocondo


Lazy writing will always stand on the shoulders of clichéd giants.

— Josh Wilson


There is no food so good that it cannot be improved by forming it into a loaf.

— Ethan Greer


Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

— George Bernard Shaw


Profanity is the inevitable linguistic crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker.

— Bruce Sherrod


To judge from the notions expounded by theologians, one must conclude that God created most men simply with a view to crowding hell.

— Marquis De Sade


Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

— Denis Diderot


If you meet a clown in the forest it means you're gonna die.

— Unknown


Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

— Frank Zappa


The only thing more annoying than a proselytizing Christian is a proselytizing atheist.

— Ethan Greer


My reaction to porno films is as follows: After the first ten minutes, I want to go home and screw. After the first twenty minutes, I never want to screw again as long as I live.

— Erica Jong


More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

— Woody Allen


I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

— John Cage


This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

— Horace Walpole


People say life's too short to be unhappy. But if you're unhappy, everything seems to last a really, really long time.

— Ethan Greer


Instant gratification takes too long.

— Carrie Fisher


Hell is other people.

— Jean-Paul Sartre


How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

— Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night


"College is the best thing that can ever happen to you," my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking.

— David Sedaris


Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.

— George Jean Nathan


Just once I want to see a bad movie where someone says something dramatic and affecting like, "I've got bad news, Frank... your sister's in the hospital." And Frank would look glum, rub his eyes, and say, "I have a sister?"

— Steven Marsh


Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.

— Oscar Wilde


You can't have everything. Where would you put it?

— Stephen Wright


I have come to the conclusion, after many years of sometimes sad experience, that you cannot come to any conclusion at all.

— Vita Sackville-West


We need a president who's fluent in at least one language.

— Buck Henry


Idiot, n. A member of a large and powerful tribe whose influence in human affairs has always been dominant and controlling.

— Ambrose Bierce


In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

— Oscar Wilde


No sane man will dance.

— Cicero


The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards.

— Alexander Jablokov


Time is a storm in which we are all lost.

— William Carlos Williams


I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying.

— Woody Allen


Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego.

— Ambrose Bierce


Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns. He should be drawn and quoted.

— Fred Allen


The world is in the situation of a man who, when his wife had indigestion, took a pill, on the sound theory that having eaten the same thing, he would have the indigestion sooner or later.

— Louis Bartlett


It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.

— Arnold Bennett


Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.

— James Ernest


Indeed, one of the ultimate advantages of education is simply coming to an end of it.

— B.F. Skinner


It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

— Voltaire


Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.

— John Galsworthy


Fiery death? Whatever...

— Ethan Greer


There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

— Albert Camus


The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man's taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled.

— Robert Benchley


Here's ten bucks; bring me the head of Barry Manilow, alright? I want to drink beer out of his empty head! I want to have a Barry Manilow skull keg party at my apartment, okay? You write the songs; we'll drink the beer out of your head!

— Dennis Leary


The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle, complimentarty way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.

— F. Scott Fitzgerald


There is no such thing as "social gambling." Either you're there to cut the other bloke's heart out and eat it — or you're a sucker. If you don't like this choice — don't gamble.

— Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long


Organized Christianity has probably done more to retard the ideals that were its founder's than any other agency in the world.

— Richard le Gallienne


Nobody ought to wear a Greek fisherman's cap who doesn't meet two qualifications:
1. He is Greek.
2. He is a fisherman.

— Roy Blount, Jr.


Never turn your back on reality. It surrounds you.

— Stanislaw J. Lec


I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

— George Bernard Shaw


Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deathly sick.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge


Vegetables are interesting but lack a sense of purpose when unaccompanied by a good cut of meat.

— Fran Lebowitz


Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.

— Horace Mann


If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.

— Philip Sheridan


I'm clinging with a sort of near-religious desperation to the concept that writing is a form of immortality. The writer dies but his words live on. It's all bollocks; dead is dead. But hey, goals are important.

— Isaac Kelley


Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delerium.

— Cyril Connolly


Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

— Ambrose Bierce


Golf is a good walk spoiled.

— Mark Twain


I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally.

— W.C. Fields


Abstract art: a product of the untalented sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.

— Al Capp


Desire unacted is corruption.

— Ursula K. Le Guin


Is sex dirty? Only if it's done right.

— Woody Allen


I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.

— Michel de Montaigne


I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?

— Jean Kerr


Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car.

— Laurence J. Peter


Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

— Dorothy Parker


If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrement.

— Florynce Kennedy


The young always have the same problem — how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.

— Quentin Crisp


Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a post hole in sixty seconds.
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post hole in one second.

— Ambrose Bierce


The bitterness of poor quality far outlasts the sweetness of a bargain.

— Unknown


If tomato paste is made out of tomatoes, what is toothpaste made out of?

— Ethan Greer


Reality is not subject to the limits of human knowledge.

— Troy Gustavel


Meskimen's Law: There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.

— Unknown