Quote of the Day: April 15th
The shortest distance between two points is always under construction.
Previous quotes of the day
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The shortest distance between two points is always under construction.
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I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realise I should have been more specific.
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We're led to believe everybody opposes it and disagrees with political correctness, but yet everybody's scared to death of it. So who is it? Well, it's the power structure wherever you happen to be.
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We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
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The reason I talk to myself is because I'm the only one whose answers I accept.
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More than one newspaper has been ruined by the brilliant writer in the editor’s chair.
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The rule of thumb of UK elections is that the party leader who looks most like middle England wins.
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Animals I hope?
[on Goering’s excuse for being late of a shooting party]
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When desire comes in the door, judgment jumps out the window and cracks its skull on the pavement.
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The cleverest course for the not so clever is to know when to accept the wise guidance of others.
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You can’t find any true closeness in Hollywood, because everybody does the fake closeness so well.
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I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
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Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.
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The art of writing, like the art of love, runs all the way from a kind of routine, hard to distinguish from piling bricks, to a kind of frenzy closely related to delirium tremens.
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He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.
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Fortune should be treated like health; enjoyed when good, put up with when bad and drastic remedies should never be applied except in direst need.
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Mine was the kind of piece in which nobody knew what was going on, including the composer, the conductor and the critics. Consequently I got pretty good notices.
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Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
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Liberals cannot help believing that all human beings secretly yearn to become as they imagine themselves to be.
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Religion converts despair, which destroys, into resignation, which submits.
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She had very thick ankles .
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There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot; but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.
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The things we own can own us too.
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It destroys one’s nerves to be amiable every day to the same human being.
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Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.
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Abatement in the hostility of one's enemies must never be thought to signify they have been won over. It only means that one has ceased to constitute a threat.
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Aggregations and the ideals of aggregations is the legitimate definition of sociology
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Architecture is the will of an epoch translated into space.
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Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.
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The certainties of one age are the problems of the next.
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What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
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We are here on Earth to do good to others. What others are for, I don’t know.
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You can outsmart one other person, but not all the others.
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I understand your new play is full of single entendre.
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Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire - but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, compels their action. For the time being, he is master.
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Human beings can easily destroy every elephant on the earth, but we are helpless against the mosquito.
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A man has a hundred dollars and you leave him with two dollars ; that is subtraction.
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Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
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It’s just called the Bible now. We dropped the word ‘Holy’ to give it a more mass market appeal.
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When I came back to Dublin, I was court martialled in my absence and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
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Cocaine is God’s way of telling you that you’re making too much money.
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A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
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To die for an idea is to set a high price on conjecture.
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Fashions of thought, as well as the fortunes of the world, come round on the whirligig of time.
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The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
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Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.
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Debussy is one of the few composers who actually created a new sound on the piano - or perhaps we should say a new smell, so perfumed are the vibrations which emanate from the instrument.
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There are few people who, when their love for each other is dead, are not ashamed of that love.
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Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.
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I don’t at all like knowing what people are saying about me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.
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Jack Warner has oilcloth pockets so he can steal soup.
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I am hovering between wife and death.
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A false friend and a shadow attend only while the sun shines.
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The man who sticks to his plan will become what he used to want to be.
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Character is much easier kept than recovered.
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Pursue one great decisive aim with force and determination.
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Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
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My only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me – to give the mundane its beautiful due.
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President George W. Bush overcame an incredible lack of obstacles to achieve his success.
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Breasts are still our cheapest special effect.
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Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
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The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.
Children, Enjoyment, Grandparents
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There are those who think that Britain is a class-ridden society and those who think it does not matter either way as long as you know your place in the setup.
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Advice is seldom welcome and those who want it the most always want it the least.
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If we command our wealth we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we shall be poor indeed.
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Nothing discloses a real character like the use of power.
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Magnus; How long have you been a pedestrian?
Simon; Ever since I could walk
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Corruption –the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty.
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The truth is like poetry - and most people hate poetry.
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The only love affair I have ever had was with music.
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If a man asks you to have plastic surgery, he doesn’t want you he wants a trophy.
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Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
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In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.
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I cannot afford the luxury of a closed mind.
Mindless, Obstinate, Thought, Unreceptive
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‘Tis wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log hut on the frontier.
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Defectors are like grapes. The first pressings from them are the best. The third and fourth lack body.
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Good Americans when they die, go to Paris.
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A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender; but you don’t have a top for it.
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By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
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Dignity is to merit what fine clothes are to natural beauty.
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You’ve got to understand, in a way a thirty three year old guy is a lot younger than a twenty four year old girl. That is, he may not be ready for marriage yet.
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Some people think that football is a matter of life and death. I can assure them it’s much more serious than that.
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You go through life exhaustingly changing your emotional and physical state every few years –from baby, infant, child, teenager, young adult, young middle age, middle middle age - and then you reach old, finally a permanent, settled state for years and years until you die.
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In the ’60s the record companies seemed to sign anything with long hair. If it was a sheepdog, so what.
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There’s nothing worse that actors who give the impression that they have taken on the priesthood. Acting is really about lying and in my case drinking coffee.
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Oh to be back in Hollywood wishing I was back in New York.
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Always choose the person with branded soul not with the branded clothes.
Character, Insight, Shallowness
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Somehow a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever.
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The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you are still rat.
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Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
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Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three categories – those that don’t work, those that break down, and those that get lost.
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Let us have wine, women, mirth and laughter. Sermons and soda water the day after.
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I have always thought that every woman should marry and no man.
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Muddled syntax is the outward and audible sign of confused minds, and the misuse of grammar the result of illogical thinking.
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I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.
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Those who have succeeded at anything and don’t mention luck are kidding themselves.
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Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it.
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There is nothing wrong with having nothing to say – unless you insist on saying it.
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I’m on a whisky diet. Last week I lost three days.
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Why don't people just accept that life is sad and cheer up? After all, it's not going to last forever
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We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over.
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People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.
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In marriage, as in war, it is permitted to take every advantage of the enemy.
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Most things are praised or decried because it is fashionable to praise or decry them.
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I still go up my 44 stairs two at a time, but that is in hope of dropping dead at the top.
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He has one of those terribly weak natures that are not susceptible to influence.
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If he were any dumber he’d be a tree.
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I always feel that there should be some comfort derived from any question from the bench. It is clear proof that the enquiring Justice is not asleep.
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Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.
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Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.
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Capital is a coward.
Finance, Investments, Speculation
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The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
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There are two kinds of fool. One says “This is old therefore it is good”. The other says “This is new therefore it is better”.
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The collective noun for Principals is ‘a lack of Principals’.
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The report of my death was an exaggeration.
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Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
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I like paying taxes; with them I buy civilisation.
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Fame didn't freak me out at all. I always thought i was important from day dot.Success and that , all that stuff, fitted my fucking aroma. That's not the word is it? Persona? Persona that's it. But it fitted my aroma too.
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The last stage in fitting the product to the market, is fitting the market to the product.
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I must remember what I shall forget before we leave.
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He has only half-learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming.
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
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Diplomacy is the art of saying “Nice doggie” until you can find a rock.
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Capital love existence is to love what is indifferent to you
Capitalism, Indifference, Life, Love
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Anger is the prelude to courage.
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Jogging is for people who aren’t intelligent enough to watch television.
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A cynic is not merely one who reads bitter lessons from the past; he is one who is prematurely disappointed in the future.
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It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men in the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.
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Common sense and a sense of humour are the same thing...
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It’s amazing how much noise people ignoring each other can make.
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If a lot of names are suggested for a disease it means the disease is memorable.
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To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune, but to lose both looks like carelessness.
[‘Lady Bracknell’]
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Some men just want to watch the world burn down.
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If you have nothing to say or rather something extremely stupid and obvious, say it, but in a ‘plonking’ tone of voice ie roundly, but hollowly and dogmatically.
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That which we observe to be taken as a matter of course by those around us, we take as a matter of course ourselves .
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Hope may be a lying jade, but she does at any rate lead us to the end of our lives along a pleasant path.
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Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla.
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A man …is so in the way in the house.
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The music industry is dominated by guys. I work with men 98 percent of the time - producers, arrangers, musicians, engineers.
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We know of no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodic fits of morality.
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The older you get, the better you used to be.
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There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
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That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history, is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.
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Because he spills his seed on the ground.
[on being asked why she named her Canary ‘Onan ‘]
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A diplomat…is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.
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Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.
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The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
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Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
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Through it all I have remained consistently and nauseatingly adorable. In fact, I have been known to cause diabetes.
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If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and will take appropriate action.
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A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
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Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbours, and let every new year find you a better man.
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Only the dead have seen the end of war.
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What art reveals to us is Nature’s lack of design.
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It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.
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A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.
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Next to excellence, is the appreciation of it.
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People who say others are difficult are usually difficult themselves.
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The tastes of youth change because they are hot-blooded; those of age remain unaltered through force of habit.
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Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you an automobile.
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Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow.
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Kanye West , a hip hop 'artist' known for his revealing celeb wife Kim Kardashian,has declared that he will run for the US Presidency with the experience of show biz deals made by his wife and Jay-Z , another hip hop celeb. He commented 'One thing I learned you can't fuck up the paper ( money) . That's the problem with a lot of the radical leaders in the past' . Such insight and such immediate communication of values deserves a chance ...
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The green belt was a Labour idea and we are determined to build on it.
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Better to have him inside the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in.
[on J.Edgar Hoover]
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I really didn't say everything I said.
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Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom.
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Why shouldn’t gay people marry? Why shouldn’t they suffer like us heterosexuals do?
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One restaurant you’re in business. Four restaurants it’s the mafia.
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I don't care how much you know, how many books you read, how you much you study and, you know, how educated you are, you're still going to struggle. Life is challenging.
Education, Life, Struggle, Students, Study
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An emotion will shoot electrically through a crowd which might have appealed to each man by himself in vain.
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If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.
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Science is his forte and omniscience his foible.
[on the Master of Trinity College Cambridge]
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What greater service could I have performed for German literature than that I didn’t bother with it?
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Industrial archaeology believes that a thing that doesn’t work anymore is far more interesting than a thing which works.
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Never keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level. It’s cheaper.
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The older I get, the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence in any field from adultery to zoology.
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The cure for jealousy is certain knowledge of what we are afraid of for it puts an end to life or love. It is a cruel remedy but kinder than doubt or suspicion.
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Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.
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The best advice I ever received as a politician was; ‘If you find yourself really stuck, find a way of blaming the French ‘.
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In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.
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He is not only dull himself, but he is the cause of dullness in others.
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In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.
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The main business of a lawyer is to take the romance, the mystery, the irony, the ambiguity out of everything he touches.
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A bishop wrote gravely to the ‘Times ‘inviting all nations to destroy the formula of the atomic bomb. There is no simple remedy for ignorance so abysmal.
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If only the Bapu (Ghandi) knew the cost of setting him up in poverty.
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Death and taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them.
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It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.
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Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadful uneasy to take.
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From politics, it was an easy step to silence.
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There is no beauty without some strangeness in the proportions.
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I never dared be radical when young for fear that it would make me conservative when old.
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We can’t all be heroes. Someone has to stand on the kerb and clap as they go by.
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History gets thicker as it approaches recent times.
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When you first become a public figure, make sure you wear the right hat because it will be glued on to you and you will never be allowed to take it off.
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The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity.
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Life is full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering and unhappiness, and it’s all over much too quickly.
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The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
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PR - it should be the organisation of the truth to advantage .
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Vote for the man who promises least. He’ll be the least disappointing.
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Man’s love is of a man’s life a thing apart; ‘tis woman’s whole existence.
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When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.
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God made the world around so we would never be able to see too far down the road.
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Good conductors know when to let an orchestra lead itself. Ninety percent of what a conductor does comes in the rehearsal - the vision, the structure, the architecture.
Conductors, Musicians, Orchestras
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We forgive so long as we love.
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If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.
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He likes the country but in truth must own, most likes it when he studies it in town.
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If I had the power I would insist on all oratorios being sung in the costume of the period –with a possible exception in the case of ‘The Creation’. Ernest Newman
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The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation.
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A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.
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An Englishman considers himself a self-made man and thereby relieves the Almighty of a dreadful responsibility.
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A man seldom puts his authentic self into a letter. He writes it to amuse a friend or to get rid of a social or business obligation, which is to say a nuisance.
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The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.
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History teaches us that the certainty with which a prediction is made stands in inverse proportion to the likelihood of it coming to pass.
Foresight, History, Predictions
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Little fly upon the wall, Ain’t you got no shirt at all? Ain’t you got nothing on? Poor little fly. That’s all.
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Gratitude is not a normal feature of political life.
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As soon as men decide all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil they set out to destroy.
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Economists are people who work with numbers but don’t have the personality to be accountants.
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She is only 5’4’’ and to make someone that height regal is difficult. Fortunately, she holds herself very well.
[on Queen Elizabeth II]
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There are two ways of getting into the Cabinet- you can crawl in or kick your way in.
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Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.
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To a shower of gold, most things are penetrable.
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Before Trip Adviser, the customer was only nominally king. After, he became a veritable tyrant, with power to make or break lives.
Consumerism, Criticism, Social Media
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Life is a career that none of us choose. We are thrust into it, wailing in protest, and get little enough vocational training.
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I am 46, and have been for some time past.
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Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
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Justice as seen in moderate judges is but love of their high position.
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Be yourself. That’s the worst piece of advice you could give an impressionist.
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I have never understood this liking for war. It panders to instincts already well catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
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It is easy to forget that the most important aspect of comedy, after all, its greatest saving grace, is its ambiguity. You can simultaneously laugh at a situation and take it seriously.
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When a man opens a car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife.
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Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognises genius.
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If you haven’t found something strange during the day, it hasn’t been much of a day.
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I have to listen to a lot of boring speeches, but I have discovered that there is nothing so boring as not listening to a boring speech.
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Self -interest sets in motion virtues and vices of all kinds.
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The aim of argument or of discussion should be not victory, but progress.
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I really love having money because it lets me be lazy. Work is really over-rated.
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You have to take money where you find it, from the poor Ok. They don’t have much money but there are a lot of them.
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I hate to spread rumours but what else can one do with them?
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Wise men talk when they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.
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Advertising may be described as the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
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Someone has to accept one otherwise there would be shelves full of them left.
[on receiving an OBE]
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Sex without love is an empty experience but, as empty experiences go, it’s one of the best.
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The fundamental cause of trouble in the world is that the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
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The will alone is always a whore.
Free Will, Self-deception, Will
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Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard.
Practice, Sports, Talent, Work
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The cushions had cushions and the curtains looked like duvets.
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The critical importance of honest journalism and a free flowing, respectful national conversation needs to be had in our country. But it is being buried as collateral damage in a war whose battles include political correctness and ideological orthodoxy.
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Power worship blurs political judgement. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.
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US popular culture is riddled with stories of men who yearn to be free and the women who yearn only for them not to be.
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God Almighty was satisfied with Ten Commandments. Mr Wilson wants fourteen points.
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My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.
Belief, Conviction, Self Confidence
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The first obligation of the demonstrator is to be legible. One cannot sympathise with a cause whose signs you cannot make out even with glasses on.
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It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
Beauty, Goodness, Self delusion
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The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
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It has always been my belief that cameras can capture moments, however it is the moment that captures us.
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I said ‘It is most extraordinary weather for this time of year’. He replied’ Ah it isn’t this time of year at all’.
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Weakness, even more than vice, is the enemy of virtue.
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Prejudice is a great time-saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.
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Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.
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From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.
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If one could only teach the English how to talk and the Irish how to listen, society will be quite civilised.
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I would rather sit on pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
Self-satisfaction, Success, Vulgarity
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In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy.
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This is an interesting planet.It deserves all the attention you give it
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The true measure of a man is how he treats someone which can do him absolutely no good.
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What really knocks me out is a book that, when you are all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you liked.
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‘Television’. The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it.
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It is strange how I meet many people who fell in with the wrong crowd, but never any member of the wrong crowd itself.
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In the summer the song sings itself.
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I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value.
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At this moment in time I did not say them things.
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Mr Geller may have psychic powers by means of which he can bend spoons; if so it appears he be doing it the hard way.
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Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
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Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.
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A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That is why they don’t get what they want.
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It is a golden rule that when two or three Anglicans gather together, there is a competitive display of extravagant niceness.
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I learned at an early age that if you are nice to men, you can get anything you want from them.
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When the authorities warn you of the dangers of having sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.
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To see him, (Stephen Spender) fumbling with our rich and delicate language is to experience all the horror of seeing a Sevres vase in the hands of a chimpanzee.
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It’s not that we’re against elections, we just like to know the results in advance.
[to Chris Patten]
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The body of a young woman is God’s greatest achievement. Of course, he could have built it to last longer, but you can’t have everything.
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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
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Is sex dirty? Only if it’s done right.
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What we must look for here is first religious and moral principles; secondly gentlemanly conduct; thirdly intellectual ability.
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Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do.
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We can repair anything (Please knock hard on the door- the bell doesn’t work)
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The great advances which have been made in human happiness, have been just as much due to the spinning Jenny, the internal combustion engine and the generation of steam, as to the moral sublimity of a Shaftesbury, a Florence Nightingale, an Elizabeth Fry or a Mother Teresa.
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Fatigue is the best pillow.
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Everyone likes flattery, but when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.
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The others had drugs and booze. I had my women. I thought that was safer. You can’t overdose on women.
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A man that studieth revenge, keeps his own wound green.
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Wisdom is to the soul what health is to the body.
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You can only predict things after they have happened.
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What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?
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That rejection you went through, don't let it bring you down. It's just a splash in an open ocean of opportunities.
Opportunity, Rejection, Resilience
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He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.
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Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.
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Wit lies in recognising the resemblance among the things which differ and the difference between things which are alike.
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When faced with the choice to change his mind or find the proof not to do so, the conventional man always gets busy looking for proof.
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Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible .
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Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.
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Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.
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Can you imagine anything more depressing than fulfilling your potential?
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Life is too short to have anything but delusional notions about yourself.
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Science advances one funeral at a time.
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When I ask for a watercress sandwich I don’t mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it
-
I stay in one room, and it's easier to live there, to control it, to make it warm. It seems to me a convenient way to live, and it's cheap.
-
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
-
Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company.
-
Shakespeare's villains are fabulous because none of them know that they are villains. Well, sometimes they do.
-
I always thought Roger Moore was a new year’s resolution.
-
The essence of culture is its inner moral meaning, while the superficial forms have only entertainment value.
-
When they call you articulate that’s another way of saying ‘ He talks good for a black guy’.
-
The trouble with women in an orchestra is that if they are attractive it will upset my players and if they are not it will upset me.
-
To be ridiculous is more dishonouring than dishonour itself.
-
Oh wad some power, the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us.
It wad frae money a blunder free us
An' foolish notion.
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
And ev'n devotion.
Conceit, Self awareness, Self Criticism, Vanity
-
Perfection is what American women expect to find in their husbands…but English women only hope to find in their butlers.
-
It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.
-
A girl who thinks that a man will treat her better after marriage than before, is a fool.
-
France is a republic that creates monarchs out of its president so that it can behead them.
-
When you forgive, you in no way change the past, but you sure do change the future.
-
There is no need for the writer to eat a whole sheep to be able to tell you what mutton tastes like. It is enough if he eats a cutlet. But he should do that.
-
Happiness is something that comes into our lives through doors we don't even remember leaving open.
-
They kept mistresses of such dowdiness they might almost have been mistaken for wives.
-
Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it
-
A professor is one who talks in someone else’s sleep.
-
Elegance loses its power in the presence of a properly stupid.
Elegance, Ignorance, Stupidity, Style
-
A goal is a dream with a deadline.
-
The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story the only story.
-
The Archbishop (Runcie) is usually to be found nailing his colours to the fence.
-
The use of reason is to justify the obscure desires that move our conduct.
-
The Left looks for traitors the Right looks for converts.
-
Journalists say a thing they know isn’t true in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough, it will be true.
-
Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
-
I’m not going to make the same mistake once.
-
We are a virus with shoes on.
-
A man who correctly guesses a woman’s age may be smart, but he’s not very bright.
-
A diamond is the only kind of ice that keeps a girl warm.
-
If you ever become comfortable with your role as criminal defence lawyer, it's time to quit. It should be a constant source of discomfort, because you're dealing with incredible moral ambiguity, and you've been cast into a role which is not enviable.
Ambiguity, Immorality, Lawyers, Morals, Venality
-
Why, Sir, there is every possibility that you will soon be able to tax it!
[when asked by Gladstone on the usefulness of electricity]
-
You just have to work with what God sends and if God doesn’t seem to understand the concept of commercial success, then that’s your bad luck.
-
It's all absurd, you know.I think if a man picks himself up and comes to another country, you must meet it halfway.
Culture, Immigration, Integration
-
When you're finished changing, you're finished.
-
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
-
I must have women. There is nothing unbends the mind like them.
-
I would rather be an opportunist and float, then go to the bottom with my principles around my neck.
Opportunism, Politics, Principles
-
Children and zip fasteners do not respond to force. Except occasionally.
-
There is something maddening about mediocrity that calls forth the worst in those forced to deal with it.
-
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
-
When I reach the top of the mountain, will I feel big, or will I feel small ?
-
An actor’s a guy who, if you ain’t talking about him, ain’t listening.
-
Comedy is a tragedy that happens to other people.
-
Mr Speaker, I withdraw my statement that half the cabinet are asses – half the cabinet are not asses.
-
Certainly there are things in life that money can't buy, but it's very funny - Did you ever try buying them without money?
-
I despise the pleasure of pleasing people that I despise.
-
Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?
-
An unfulfilled vocation drains the colour from a man’s entire existence.
-
My definition of marriage. It resembles a pair of shears so joined that they cannot be separated often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.
-
To love one’s self is the beginning of a life- long romance.
-
I don’t give a damn for a man who can spell a word only one way.
-
Happiness is not the absence of problems but the ability to deal with them.
-
What I loved as an actor was working with me as a director.
-
My misdeeds are accidental happenings and merely the result of having been in the wrong bar or bed at the wrong time, say most days between midday and mid-night.
-
What do you mean funny? Funny peculiar or funny ha ha?
-
A prophet or an achiever must never mind an occasional absurdity, it is an occupational risk.
-
To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.
-
The best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago. The next best time is today.
-
I do not see why I should break my neck because a dog chooses to run after a nasty smell.
[on why he did not hunt]
-
How hard it is to break with somebody we have ceased to love.
-
Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.
-
Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.
-
The subjunctive move is in its death throes and the best thing to do is put it out of its misery as soon as possible.
-
Greater love have no man than this, that he lays down his friends for his life.
[on Harold MacMillan’s cabinet re-shuffle]
-
Half of the harm that is done is this world is due to people who want to feel important.
-
You can start late, looked different, be uncertain and still succeed.
-
So Poetry, which is in Oxford made,
In London only is a trade.
-
No, but I think I may have stepped in some.
[when asked if he had conducted any Stockhausen]
-
There’s no reason to bring religion into it. I think we ought to have as great a regard for religion as we can, so as to keep it out of as many things as possible.
-
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
-
In the Soviet army, it takes more courage to retreat than advance.
-
A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.
-
What a pity it is that we have no amusements in England except vice and religion.
-
I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it.
-
What matters is not whether you put your fork or knife together because you've finished your meal, or something like that. What matters is that you don't offend people, or hurt their feelings by mistake by saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing.
-
To Americans, English manners are far more frightening than none at all
-
A saint is a person whose life has been under-researched.
-
I always invest in companies an idiot could run because some day, one will.
-
No, you never get any fun out of the things you haven't done.
-
I am between the devil and the Holy See. My task is to prevent the californication of Ireland.
-
Only a mediocre person is always at his best.
-
The only good Government is a bad one in a hell of a fright.
-
My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.
-
Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people’s happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.
-
Women over thirty are at their best, but men over thirty are too old to recognise it.
-
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
-
Did God who gave us flowers and trees also provide the allergies?
-
Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically - for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist - but then what isn’t?
-
He who writes badly, thinks badly.
-
Authors are judged by strange capricious rule. The great are thought mad, and the small ones fools.
-
Of all forms of fiction, auto- biography is the most gratuitous.
-
In former days everyone found the assumption of innocence so easy; today we find fatally easy the assumption of guilt.
-
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal
Ambition, Application, Direction, Drive
-
The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served nothing but leftovers. The original meal was never found.
-
Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet.
-
In the struggle between yourself and the world, back the world.
-
Our government must forever be a kind of war of about one half of the [people against the other.
-
In exceptional circumstances it is necessary to say something that is untrue in the House of Commons.
-
I love living. I have some problems with my life, but living is the best thing they’ve come up with so far.
-
You're going to face adversity. It's not if - it's when.
-
The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.
-
If someone has a point to make, we talk about it for 20 minutes and then we decide what I said.
-
Happiness is pretty simple – someone to do it with, something to look forward to.
-
Dr. Donne’s verses are like the peace of God; they pass all understanding.
-
Never kick a man when he’s down? Name me a better time.
-
My mother wanted me to be a nice boy. I didn’t let her down. I don’t smoke, drink or mess around with women.
-
The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.
-
The worst Government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.
-
A bachelor has to have inspiration for making love to a woman – a married man needs only an excuse.
-
An intelligent woman who reads the marriage contract, and then goes into it, deserves all the consequences.
-
I've been at the bottom. I've been at the top. Both places are empty.
Ambition, Celebrity, Fame, Success
-
What is the point of wars and warships and glittering statues if the men who build them are not happy?
-
If you give him meat no woman in London would be safe.
[of vegetarian George Bernard Shaw]
-
Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.
-
A dead sinner revised and edited.
-
Whatever care a man takes to veil his passions with appearances of piety and honour, they always show through.
-
All my shows are great. Some of them are bad, but they are all great.
-
The most dangerous absurdity of elderly persons who have been attractive, is to forget that they are no longer so.
-
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
-
Fortunately the army has had much practice in ignoring impossible instructions.
-
The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.
-
A man who insists on seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides.
-
All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, second time in memory.
-
I have kleptomania, but when it gets bad I take something for it.
-
Life - a spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
-
The thing about getting old is the number of things you think that you can’t say aloud because it would be too shocking.
-
Every age gets the lunatics it deserves.
-
The fatal law of gravity: when you are down everything falls on you.
-
Work isn’t to make money; you work to justify life.
-
Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.
-
In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.
-
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.
-
Heralded by a sprinkling of glitter-dust and much laying on of microphones, Godspell is back in London at the Young Vic. For those who missed it the first time, this is your golden opportunity; you can miss it again.
-
Even I don't wake up looking like Cindy Crawford.
-
Expenditure rises to meet income.
-
He was one of those human hors d'oeuvres that stimulate the public appetite for sensation without giving it much to feed on.
-
Anyone who wants the presidency so much that he will spend two years organising and campaigning for it, is not to be trusted with office.
-
Custom reconciles us to everything.
-
Safe is spelt D-U-L-L Politics has got to be a fun activity.
-
The trouble with this business is the dearth of bad pictures.
-
Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well.
-
It is in the power of every hand to destroy us and we are beholden unto everyone we meet, he doth not kill us.
-
Actually I think Art lies in both directions - the broad strokes, big picture but on the other hand the minute examination of the apparently mundane. Seeing the whole world in a grain of sand, that kind of thing.
-
I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with pleasure.
-
Old Cary Grant fine. How are you?
-
I was sued by a woman who claimed that she became pregnant because she watched me on television and I bent her contraceptive coil.
-
Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television?
-
One must have some occupation nowadays. If I hadn’t my debts I shouldn’t have anything to think about.
-
Musical people are so absurdly unreasonable. They always want one to be perfectly dumb at the very moment when one is longing to be absolutely deaf.
-
Not so ducking fusty, well brushed. Cockney response to how are you ?
-
You can’t learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed.
-
I am all for morality now and shall confine myself henceforward to the strictest adultery- which you will please recollect is all that virtuous wife of mine has left me .
-
He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
-
It is the job that is never started that takes longer to finish.
-
I can never keep my rabble together if I were not above the human weakness of an apology. Never explain. Never apologise.
-
What’s going on? I have big meetings with important gentiles.
-
Continental people have love lives. The British have hot water bottles.
-
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend. A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
-
A liberal is a man who leaves the room before a fight begins.
-
I think it's better to be overly ambitious and fail than to be under-ambitious and succeed in a mundane way. I have been very fortunate. I failed upward in my life!
-
Money won’t buy happiness but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem.
-
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
-
It was a night.
[on the best day of her life]
-
Don’t drink other people’s poison, or let it foul your mind
Confusion, Involvement, Poison
-
Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy.
-
If I knew then it might spoil the purity of my hatred.
[on why he avoided meeting MPs]
-
As Lord Chesterfield said of the Generals of his day, ’I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names, they tremble as I do.’
-
My career must be slipping. This is the first time I have been available to pick up an award.
-
Only intuition can protect you from the most dangerous individual of all - the articulate, incompetent.
Incompetence, Intuition, literature
-
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Decision, Indecision, Right, Wrong
-
One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.
-
Claret is the liquor for boys, port for men but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
-
Like sunshine, music is a powerful force that can instantly and almost chemically change your entire mood.
-
The hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.
-
You can observe a lot by watching.
-
Reality is now a kind of huge advertising campaign, selling television’s image of what life is about.
-
A perfect tragedy is the noblest production of human behaviour.
-
If a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got?
-
I am a sundial and I make a botch,
Of what is done much better by a watch.
-
I can tolerate without discomfort being waited on hand and foot.
-
When man wanted to make a machine that would walk he created a wheel, which does not resemble a leg.
-
No matter how dirty your past is, your future is still spotless.
-
Women dress alike all over the world. They dress to be annoying to other women.
-
That branch in the art of lying which consists in very nearly deceiving your friends without quite deceiving your enemies.
-
The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fellah
But chiefly on the just because
The unjust steals the just’s umbrella.
-
We all know that prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart.
-
Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.
-
A Government without the courage to tell the public the reality, will end up making that reality far worse.
-
If you don’t like your job, you don’t strike.You just keep going every day and doing really half assed. That’s the American way.
-
The rich are not like us – they pay less taxes.
-
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.
-
People too much taken up with little things usually become incapable of big ones.
-
Most of my friends seem either to be dead, extremely deaf, or living in the wrong part of Kent.
-
Boxing is show business with blood.
-
We are lazier in mind than in body.
-
Youth might be wasted on the young but university is definitely wasted on students.
-
How can a Bishop marry? How can he flirt? The most he can say is ‘I will see you in the vestry after service’.
-
Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife.
-
Politics is the diversion of trivial men who when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.
-
He may be a horrible, racist, misogynist idiot, but he is our kind of idiot.
-
Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law. Hubert Humphrey
-
Intelligence has nothing to do with politics.
-
Beulah, peel me a grape.
-
Curses are like processions. They return to the place from which they came.
-
Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
-
The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second is no-one has yet discovered.
-
In women complete unresponsiveness always goes with dislike.
-
I couldn’t bat for the length of time required to score 500. I’d get bored and fall over.
-
In appearance, Dior is like a bland country curate made out of pink marzipan.
-
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
-
Already at four years of age I had begun to apprehend that refinement was often an extenuating virtue, one that excused and eclipsed almost every other unappetising trait.
-
Nearly every great discovery in science has come about as the result of providing a new question rather than a new answer.
-
Child psychologists generally do a good job, but I tend to find they are more helpful once they are a bit older.
Children, Experience, Psychology
-
God will pardon me. It is his trade.
-
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
-
Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
-
Young people making their debut in society, should be bashful or scatter-brained, for an efficient or assured manner looks like impertinence.
-
The only way of catching a train I discovered is to miss the train before.
-
Art, like some beautiful plant lives on its atmosphere and when the atmosphere is good it will flower everywhere and when it is bad, nowhere
-
Satan probably wouldn’t have talked so if God had been his wife.
-
Such a word as "hero" need to be cherished as carefully as any other endangered species.
-
No German can see a plat brought in for someone else without being possessed of a great fear that it represents a more toothsome morsel or better money’s worth than what he has ordered for himself.
Envy, Food, Germany, Restaurants
-
It is exciting to have a real crisis on your hands when you have spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment.
-
Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
-
We had a lot in common. I loved him and he loved him.
-
The virtues lose themselves in self-interest like rivers in the sea.
-
The books I have not written are so much better than the ones my friends have produced.
-
For reasons unknown, your atoms will close you down then silently disassemble and go off to be other things.And that's it for you.
-
Treason, Sire, is a matter of dates.
-
It is a pity that the composer did not leave directions as to how flat he really wanted it sung.
-
There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.
-
True terror is to wake up one morning and realise that your high school class is running the country.
-
If your man says of some picture ‘Yes but what does it mean?’ ask him and keep on asking him, what his carpet means or the circular pattern on his rubber shoe soles.
-
Never judge a book by its movie.
-
In oratory the will must predominate.
-
The effect is of a womble taking Cerberus for a walk.
[on Roy Hattersley]
-
Laddie, you can’t expect to believe everything you write in a newspaper.
[to a junior colleague]
-
The average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.
-
A Lexicographer-a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.
-
The absence of physical exertion in the business of killing a novelty of today.
-
I wonder if there are enough traffic cones for every student to have one in their bedroom?
-
For in all adversity of fortune, the worst sort of misery is to have been happy.
-
Liberal intellectuals have always moved in an aura of self-congratulation.They sustain themselves by flattering themselves with intentions and they dismiss as reactionary whoever questions them.
Intellectual, Liberals, Self delusion
-
Fortunately there is that about hope. It is never satisfied. It is met sometimes, but never satisfied.
-
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
-
The orgasm has replaced the cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfilment.
-
A nation is not governed which is to be perpetually to be conquered.
-
Politics should be the art of the impossible.
-
You can pretend to be serious; you can’t pretend to be witty.
-
A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.
-
No man goes further than he who knows not where he is going.
-
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
-
Two such wonderful phrases ‘I understand perfectly’ and ‘That is a lie’ -a precis of life, aren’t they?
-
And there was that wholesale libel on a Yale Prom. If all the girls attending it were laid end to end, Mrs Parker said she wouldn’t be at all surprised.
-
Knowledge comes by taking things apart – analysis. But wisdom comes by putting things together.
-
Early to rise and early to bed, makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead.
-
You can tell a lot about a fellow’s character by the way he eats jelly beans.
-
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Reading, Reflection, Thinking, Understanding
-
No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare.
-
Democracy is more important what it prevents than for what it provides.
Democracy, Governance, Politics
-
Anagnorisis, was what Aristotle termed the desire to connect us to something like the spirit of religion, or that thrill of recognition which grants you the sense of having just caught up with the truth was always waiting for you.
Excitement, Passions, Serendipity, Stimulation
-
A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
-
Several excuses are always less convincing than one.
-
They start with all that sucking and blowing and then you lose your house.
[comparing divorce with a Florida hurricane ]
-
If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.
-
With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.
Belief, Commitment, Fanaticism
-
Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.
-
All men have an equal share of pride; the only difference is in their ways and means of showing it.
-
The critical period in matrimony is breakfast time.
-
Love’s supreme miracle is to cure coquetry.
-
A great country can have no such thing as a small war.
-
I haven’t spoken to my mother-in-law for 18 months. I don’t like to interrupt her.
-
Women do not find it difficult nowadays to behave like men but they often find it extremely difficult to behave like gentlemen.
-
I’m not a saint unless you think of a sinner that keeps on trying.
-
Yes dear Frank we believe you. You have dined in every house in London, once.
-
I practice when I am loaded.
[when asked how he could play so well when loaded]
-
Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
-
As I take my shoes from the shoemaker and my coat from the tailor, so I take my religion from the priest.
-
How haughtily he lifts his nose to tell what every schoolboy knows.
-
Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. That is hard for a puritan to understand.
-
Every fear hides a wish.
-
The natural man does not feel that he is aggregating at all unless he aggregates against something.He refers to himself to the tribe; he is loyal to the tribe quite inseparably he fears or dislikes those others outside the tribe.
-
Earnestness can ferment into sentimentality.
-
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
-
This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.
-
No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.
-
In the sick room, 10 cents worth of understanding equals 10 dollars worth of medical science.
-
I write one page of masterpiece to 91 pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.
-
Sincerity is openness of heart. It is found in very few and what is usually seen is subtle dissimulation designed to draw the confidence of others .
-
Moderation in times of good fortune is merely dread of the humiliating aftermath of success or gear of losing what one has.
-
It’s cold, mechanical, conceptual bullshit.
-
The early bird may catch the worm. But it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.
-
Only the shallow know themselves.
-
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it’s their fault.
-
Philosophy triumphs easily over past and over future evils, but present evils triumph over philosophy.
-
I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to a size where I can drag it in to the bathroom and drown it in the bath tub.
-
There is only one inborn erroneous notion: that we exist in order to be happy.
-
The most wasted of all days is that on which one has not laughed.
-
Secrets with girls, like loaded guns with boys
Are never valued till they make a noise.
-
Egad! I think the interpreter is the hardest to understand of the two.
-
When I was nine I remember one of my most secret vices was to wait till everybody had gone out and listen to the last scene of Siegfried again. I was so worried about this I didn’t want anyone to know.
-
Do I feel any better? How do I know? I feel too sick to tell.
-
Eloquence is logic on fire
-
No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
-
I don’t like Switzerland. It has produced nothing but theologians and waiters.
-
We betray more often through weakness than through deliberate intention to betray.
-
Old age is the most unexpected of all things that happen to a man.
-
Confidence is not about believing you will win. It’s about being comfortable with the fact that you might lose.
-
Nations are defined by not only what they remember, but what they forget.
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Your idea of fidelity is not having more than one man in the bed at the same time.
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Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache.
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The more people one has to love, the more one's capacity to love stretches.
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I don’t know how long a child will remain utterly static in front of the television, but my guess is that it could be well into their 30’s.
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The only infallible rule that we know is that the man who is always talking about being a gentleman, never is one.
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Going to court is just an expensive habit.
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Children with Hyacinth’s temperament don’t know better as they grow older, they merely know more.
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Women are not forgiven for ageing. Robert Redford’s lines of distinction are my old age wrinkles.
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The limits of my language are the limits of my world.
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Children enjoy the present because they have neither a past nor a future.
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Martyrdom, the only way a man can become famous without ability.
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You can only hold your stomach in the so many years.
Appearance, Pride, Self awareness
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The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
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A chair is a piece of furniture. I am not a chair because no-one has ever sat on me.
[on Jack Straw’s announcement that Parliamentary language would be ‘gender neutral’]
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The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them –especially not from yourself
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Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever.
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All men make mistakes, but married men find out about them sooner.
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The reason that technology so often disappoints and betrays us, is that it promises to make easy things that, by their intrinsic nature, have to be hard.Tweeting and trolling are easy.Mastering the art of conversation and measured debate is hard. Texting is easy.Writing a proper letter is hard Looking stuff up on Google is easy.Knowing what to search for in the first place is hard.Having 1000 friends on Facebook is easy.Maintaining six or seven close adult friendships over the space of many years is hard.Swiping right on Tinder is easy.Finding love and staying in it, is hard.
Difficulties, Relationships, Social Media, Technology
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We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
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I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It involves Russia.
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When I was 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around, but when I got to be 21, I was amazed at how much he had learnt in seven years.
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There aren't more lady songwriters for the same reason that there aren't more lady doctors or lady accountants or lady lawyers; not enough women have the time for careers.
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All liaisons between homosexuals are conducted as though they were between a chorus girl and a bishop. In some cases both parties think they are bishops.
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The thing with hi tech is that you always end up using scissors.
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The basis of democracy is the willingness to assume well about other people.
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To perceive evil where it exists is a form of optimism.
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Men marry because they are tired, woman because they are curious; both are disappointed.
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Not knowing what one is doing is no prohibition on doing it.
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Let Shakespeare do it his way, I’ll do it mine. We’ll see who comes out better.
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Personality is only ripe when a man has made the truth his own.
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Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.
[in Paradise Lost ]
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The Achilles heel which has bitten us in the backside all year has stood out like a sore thumb.
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I do not believe that friends are the people you like best; they are merely the people who got there first.
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Television is for appearing on, not looking at.
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Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30ft tall.
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The old English belief that if a thing is unpleasant it is automatically good for you.
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The Universe is not complicated, there’s just a lot of it.
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Never, never will I do another play where a guy writes with a feather.
[on a failed play about Napoleon]
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The follies which a man regrets most in his life are those which he didn’t commit when he had the opportunity.
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In America, anyone can become president. That's the problem.
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I hate these reality TV shows where people walk off Big Brother and think they're A-list celebrities when they've done nothing in their lives, it really does my head in.
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Progress means bad things happen faster.
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It is a good rule in life never to apologise. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.
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Being a woman is a terribly difficult task since it consists principally in dealing with men.
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If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can’t be done.
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Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.
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A person whom we know well enough to borrow from but not well enough to lend to.
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If you want to understand what an expanded consciousness looks like, all you have to do is have tea with a four-year-old.
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Never check an interesting fact.
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Happy accidents are real gifts, and they can open the door to a future that didn't even exist. It's kind of nice sometimes to set up something to encourage or allow happy accidents to happen.
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They will call me ‘Pat’. I can’t stand it. The ‘Pat’ is the last straw that breaks the Campbell’s back.
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I think ‘waiter’ is such a funny word. It is we who wait.
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God in his wisdom made the fly. And then forgot to tell us why.
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Political correctness never rears its ugly head independently. It always shows up as a series of actions designed, to this observer, to crush the souls of those blessed with common sense.
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We met Dr Hall in such very deep mourning, that either his mother, his wife or himself must be dead.
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What my mother believed about cooking is that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.
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A page of my journal is like a cake of portable soup. A little may be diffused into a considerable portion.
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They’re both on drugs, they both detest you and neither of them has a job.
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The National Debt is a very good thing and it would be dangerous to pay it off for fear of Political Economy.
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Education with socialists is like sex- all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.
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Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.
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Holland lies so low they’re only saved by being damned.
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From birth to eighteen a girl needs good parents. From eighteen to thirty five she needs good looks. From thirty five to fifty five good personality and from fifty five onwards she needs good cash.
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If you can’t fix it, it ain’t broke.
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Most new ideas can be stopped in their tracks by deploying one, or sometimes both, of two arguments: `the thin end of the wedge’ and `the time is not ripe’.
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Fame is like VD. Everyone wants to fuck you until they see what they get.
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Major Yammerton was rather a peculiar man inasmuch as he was an ass without being a fool.
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Men get laid, but women get screwed.
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There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling and waiting for traces of blood to appear in the water.
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There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.
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I never deny; I never contradict; I sometimes forget.
[on dealing with Queen Victoria]
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I do not object to people looking at their watches while I am making a speech. But I strongly object when they start shaking them to make certain they are still going.
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I don’t mind how much my Ministers talk, so long as they do what I say.
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True friends stab you in the front.
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Fur is a subject that makes sensitive toes curl in their leather shoes.
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Make a women laugh and you are better off than any rich, smoothy Adonis.
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The things of the night cannot be explained in the day.
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If you think that nobody cares if you are alive, try missing a couple of car payments.
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But it up- grades despair so beautifully.
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Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life is the other way round.
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The reason why friendship means so little to most women is that it is insipid once they have tasted love.
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The richer your friends, the more they will cost you.
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But think how early I go.
[on being criticised for continually arriving late for work]
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We’re having a philosophical discussion about the yob ethics of professional footballers.
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Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: ‘What? You too? I thought I was the only one.’
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God can stand being told by Professor Ayer and Marghanita Laski that He does not exist.
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Listening to a speech by Chamberlain is like paying a visit to Woolworth’s. Everything is in its place and nothing above sixpence.
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Worth seeing but not worth going to see.
[on the Giant’s Causeway]
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Message ? Message? What the hell do you think I am, a bloody postman?
[on being questioned on ‘The Hostage’]
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Hell is full of musical amateurs. Music is the brandy of the damned.
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Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.
Establishment, Justice, Laws, Normality
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The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.
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No dictatorship can tolerate jazz.
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Besides death, constipation is the big fear in hospitals.
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Parsifal is the kind of opera that starts at six o’clock. After it has been going three hours you look at your watch and it says 6.20.
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Computers are useless. They only give you answers.
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Faith is believing something you know ain’t true.
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Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you.
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Since when was genius found respectable?
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Never speak ill of yourself; your friends will say enough on that subject .
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Fame is like a river that beareth up things light and swollen and drowns things weighty and solid.
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History repeats itself; historians repeat one another.
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The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking. The solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
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Bombazine would have shown a deeper sense of her loss.
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Those who oppose the most widely held opinions more often do so because of pride than lack of intelligence. They find the best places in the right set already taken and they do not want back seats.
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Love is what happens to men and women who don’t know each other.
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Husbands are like fires. They go out when unattended.
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Seek not happiness too greedily.
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A bachelor's life is no life for a single man.
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Growing old is like being increasingly penalised for a crime you haven’t committed.
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As a sensitive, civilized man you are bound to do your duty without fuss, but do not ever expect gratitude.
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It’s a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think that you will be amused by its presumption.
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We don’t have a plan and when we discover people who do have plans, we take vehemently against them.
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Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.
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British actors are renowned for being great villains in movies, like Bond films, all the rest of it.
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A person of low taste more interested in himself than in me
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Where love is, no disguise can hide it for long; where it is not, none can simulate it.
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Economy is going without something you want, in case you should, one day, want something you probably won’t want.
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What is robbing a bank compared with owning one?
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Many people’s tombstones should read, ‘Died at 30. Buried at 60’.
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In the depths of that dusty soul is nothing but abject surrender.
[on Neville Chamberlain]
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There is a weight of intellect behind my comedy.
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Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.
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When I hear somebody sigh that life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, compared to what?
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Politeness is a sign of dignity not subservience.
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The only sport where you can get your brain shook, your money took and your name in the undertaker book.
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An ideal wife is one who remains faithful to you, but tries to be just as charming as if she weren’t.
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Hypochondria’ is Greek for men.
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If money doesn’t bring you happiness, it does at least help you be miserable in comfort.
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We saw Queen Mary looking like the Jungfrau, white and sparkling in the sun.