- DESCRIPTION - WIT FOR WISDOM Compiled and continued by Kevin Solway Short description: A compilation of the most incisive wit. Long description: "Wit for Wisdom" is a compilation of the most incisive gems of wit. Unlike normal collections of quotes, aphorisms and apothegms, this work has both a purpose and a message. So this is not so much a book for wits, but for thinkers. Wit for wisdom is a kind of wit that is too witty even for wits. 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � � � - WIT FOR WISDOM - � � � � - File 1 (of 4) - � � � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � - MENU - � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � 1. Foreword. � � 2. Introduction. � � 3. Men and women. � � 4. Some words of mine on men and women.� � 5. Love. � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � Press 1..5 or scroll through � � the text at your leisure. � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � � � (C) Copyright 1991 by Kevin Solway � � � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 컫� 컫� � � � � � � � � � � 탠 � � � � � � � � � � 읕컴좔컴� � 읕켸 FOR 컫� 컫� � � � � � � � � � � 旼� 旼컴� 旼컴� 쩡컫컴� � � � � 읕커 � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 읕컴좔컴� � 읕켸 읕컴� 읕컴� � � COMPILED & CONTINUED BY KEVIN SOLWAY Copyright (c) 1991 - FOREWORD - This book is a compilation of words that I like, used in whichever way I see fit to convey my message. This is what books are for, or at least should be. I have chosen not to attribute the quotes to their supposed creators. Who knows who created them? And who cares! In any case, I do not claim to have created them myself, be they ever so deeply embedded in my heart. Even my own productions I submit with the knowledge that they can't be mine. To benefit from this book you must accept what you read as it stands, irregardless of the context in which the words were first used, and by whom. Imagine I wrote the lot - or perhaps God. If you are interested in finding out more about my writings I would be glad to hear from you. I would also be glad to hear from any publishers who would like to make this work more convenient to read by printing and binding it for me. Kevin Solway P.O Box 207 St. Lucia Queensland 4067 Australia - INTRODUCTION - Wit is rarely conducive to wisdom. It is more often a power-play and a fortification. Wit marries ideas lying wide apart, by a sudden jerk of the understanding. Like a bright blast of lightning, it flashes, strikes and vanishes in an instant. But only if this flash ignites a fire will there be any lasting good. For such a fire there must be fuel, the fuel of courage, open-mindedness, and yearning for truth. And if there is no fuel, well then, the lightning flash of wit may still fell the odd tree or two, which will, in time, feed a killer fire. Wit is all too often used in the same way that forest fire- fighters use fire - to prevent or stop a larger blaze. Small truths eat-up the fuel and form a barrier against larger and more dangerous truths. Wit becomes an attempt to beat the Devil, in this case the truth, at his own game. If you would use reason in such a cowardly fashion then I would ask you to return this book to the shelf, where it might await more kindly eyes. But if you have the hunger of a giant and the heart of a lion, then read on my friend - not only will you become human, but then a god, and perhaps, a saint? For not only must there be intelligence, but courage also - an inhuman courage that seeks to walk alone, with none other than the sun and the moon for company. May wit sustain you till you find your walking legs, cutting the ground from under you. I have not designed this collection of writings for the use of public speakers, businessmen, public figures, lecturers, authors, clergymen, teachers and students. Quotes are not to be quoted. I work only for thinkers! - MEN AND WOMEN - - A woman who strives to be like a man lacks ambition. - The battle of the sexes is the most terrible: it is not easy to fight an enemy who has an outpost in your head. - Woman wishes to wish away the differences between the sexes. - but then, that is the nature of woman. - There's no social differences - till women came in. - Some men are different. All women are alike. - Men understand clever women best because this type never show their real selves to other women. - Men live by forgetting - women live on memories. - A very little wit is valued in woman, as we are pleased with a few words spoken by a parrot. - A man gets what he wants by acting smart; a woman, by playing dumb. - Why is it we never hear of a self-made woman? - Woman submits to her fate; man makes his. - A clever woman has flashed her glance into the innermost crannies of a man's mind, while he is asking himself the colour of her eyes. - Women are demons who make men enter hell through the gates of paradise. - A beautiful woman is paradise for they eyes, hell for the soul, and purgatory for the purse. - God made woman beautiful and foolish; beautiful, that man might love her; and foolish, that she might love him. - That which attracts us in a woman rarely binds us to her. - There are two kinds of women: those who wish to marry, and those who haven't the slightest intention not to. - To a single woman men are either dates, potential dates, or date substitutes. - There's only one way to get on for a woman, and that's to please men. That is what women think men are for. - Women: an infinity of cosmetics. - Cosmetics make women appear not as young as they are painted. - Women should be thankful that the laws requiring truth in packaging don't apply to them. - Nowadays, a woman without artificial loveliness doesn't look natural. - Men say knowledge is power; women think dress is power. - Judge a man not by his clothes, but by his wife's clothes. - Women who are not vain about their clothes are often vain about not being vain about their clothes. - Women are the decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. - Woman's first duty is to her dressmaker. What the second duty is no one has yet discovered. - If you are looking for trouble, tell a woman her new dress is unbecoming. - Beauty is only sin deep. - A woman is as young as her knee. - There are few women whose worth lasts longer than their beauty. - Men hunt women for their skins. - A woman's smile may attract a man, but it takes an angelic temper to hold him. - Pretty women and rich men are rarely wrong. - Women are like elephants to me; they're nice to look at, but I wouldn't want to own one. - If a man hears much that a woman says, she is not beautiful. - Most men read too much to be wise, and most women talk too much to be beautiful. - If a man tells a woman she is beautiful, she will overlook most of the other lies he told her. - As a woman's waist increases, her faith in man decreases. - To men a man is but a mind . . . But woman's body is the woman. - Woman strives for loveliness, man for dignity. - Beauty is the wisdom of women. Wisdom is the beauty of men. - Many women would swap brains for beauty and think they were getting the best of the bargain. - The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows that the average man can see much better than he can think. - "After men, monkeys have the most intelligence," says an author. Others will argue that women do. - Smart men are smarter than they look; smart women look smarter than they are. - The heart is the whole of women, who are guided by nothing else: and it has so much to say, even with men . . . that it triumphs in every struggle with the understanding. - In the interests of equal opportunity, philosophic discussion should be forbidden to cows with lipstick. - A young lady who thinks is like a young man who rouges. - To find fault with a woman's intellect you must first find her intellect. - Women have simple tastes. They can get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love. - The woman and the sage are forever diametrically opposed - each thinks the other lives a life of escapism. - A man, conceivably, could adjust to the knowledge that he was at a higher level than those around him, although no rational man could possibly enjoy that perspective; but to a woman it would be unbearable. - The masculine attitude: "If women were not fools, how would we look?" - Essentially feminine, she was able to chatter but say nothing, ask questions and require no reply. - Women can write more interestingly than men on the really important topics of civilization: dress, food and furniture. - She wavers, she hesitates; in a word, she is a woman. - Woman's one notable invention: Perpetual emotion. - She ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B. - Women: picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense. - Poor inanimate, unreal dolls, with just enough will of their own to open their eyes and shut them. - No wonder women live longer than men - look how long they remain girls. - You bring up your girls to be ornaments and then complain of their frivolity. - When he has a thorn in his side, she has to have a sword through her heart. - Of what use is independence to a woman, if she is - all alone? - If the parasite woman on the couch, the plaything and amusement of men, be the permanent and final manifestation of female human life on the planet, then that couch is also the death-bed of human evolution. - Democracy is woman's greatest invention. Indeed, it even reflects her character: purposeless, irrational, subject to public opinion and passing fashions, rambling, confused, underhanded, scheming, in love with its own purity. - To be a woman is something so strange, so confusing and so complicated that only a woman could put up with it and, what is worse, feel happy about it. - Woman: a biped with two hands, two feet, two breasts, two eyes and two faces. - A woman has three reasons for everything she does: the reason she says she has, the reason she thinks she has, and the reason she really has. - If a woman meant what she said, she wouldn't say it. - If a woman thinks that a man means nothing to her, he very likely means everything. - I will not say that women have no character, rather, they have a new one every day. - A good woman's prejudices are harder to combat than a bad woman's vices. - No matter how worthless a man is, there's always a woman and a dog that love him. - A man of straw is worth a woman of gold. - There are few virtuous women who do not tire of their role. - Virtue in women is often merely love of their reputation and their peace of mind. - God made many women smart, a few clever; and some good. - A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day. - The only chaste woman is the one who has not been asked. - Between a woman's "yes" and "no" there is no room for the point of a needle. - Women sometimes forgive a man who presses an opportunity, but never a man who misses one. - Little girls are won with dolls; big girls with dollars. - Even a fickle woman is loyal to one man - until she prefers another. - Her husband's funeral Is often where a widow looks for the next man. - Woman's virtue is man's greatest invention. - Indiscretion: the guilt of woman. - A woman sometimes feels pity for the sorrows that she causes without remorse. - No matter how much a woman loved a man, it would still give her a glow to see him commit suicide for her. - What is conscience to a wife? . . . To marry is to domesticate the Recording Angel. - The formation of a young lady's mind and character usually consists in telling her lies. - With a man, a lie is a last resort; with women, it's First Aid. - Women are not half as sensitive about their sins as about their follies. - Women always speak the truth, but not the whole truth. - Most women think that truth is an irrelevant triviality whose only role in life is as a stumbling block for men. - A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost forever. - The one thing that man never gives to a woman is spiritual help. - The souls of women are so small, that some believe they've none at all. - Is it not better to fall into the hands of a murderer than into the dreams of a lustful woman? - Women have no moral sense; they rely for their behaviour upon the men they love. - It has often been claimed that God is a woman, but to my knowledge no-one has ever claimed that the Devil is a woman and really meant it. So I will. - The overwhelming pain of loneliness; a mother smiles at her baby - watch out for the Devil! - Woman cheapens his thoughts. He knows this, but does not tell her - he buys her flowers instead. - Men are women's playthings; woman is the Devil's. - Women give themselves to God when the Devil wants nothing more to do with them. - Women are not necessarily evil - but evil is necessarily feminine. - Where the Devil cannot go himself he sends an old woman. - Woman - last at the cross, earliest at the grave. - Woman: the hand that rules the cradle rocks the world. - Women learn how to hate in the degree that they forget how to charm. - Friendship among women is but a suspension of hostilities. - Misogynist: a man who hates women as much as women hate one another. - No man is as anti-feminist as the really feminine woman. - Woman is a domesticated animal; the feminist has returned to the wild. The goddess has gone wandering, collecting a few bruises, developing a few survival traits. She is lost; the bed beckons her. She will soon return. - When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different. - Man's conclusions are reached by toil. Woman arrives at the same by sympathy. - A woman can believe anything in the world if there's no good reason for it. - What passes for women's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency. - Women never reason, and therefore are (comparatively) seldom wrong. - Intuitions are the natural resource of a type of mind which is not adept at reasoning. - Womens' intuition is the result of millions of years of not thinking. - Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious. - No woman, plain or pretty, has any common sense at all. Common sense is the privilege of our sex and we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it. - Women would rather be right than reasonable. - It took a million years to develop man's ability to reason, but it takes only a few minutes of feminine logic to destroy it. - Women represent the triumph of matter over mind - just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals. - Taste: the feminine of genius. - Society is the book of women. - A mother loves her child more than the father does because she knows it is her own, while the father only thinks it is his. - It is only rarely than one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman. - The hardest task of a girl's life is to prove to a man that his intentions are serious. - It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him. - Woman was God's second mistake. - Woman are like death: they pursue those who flee from them, and flee from those who pursue them. - If God considered woman a fit helpmate for man, he must have had a very poor opinion of man. - God created man, and finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more fully. - God made the rose out of what was left of woman at the creation. The great difference is, we feel the rose's thorns when we gather it, and the other's when we have had it some time. - When one knows women one pities men, but when one studies men, one excuses women. - Men are always sincere. They change sincerities, that's all. - A bad man is the sort of man who admires innocence, and a bad woman is the sort of woman a man never gets tired of. - Self-pity is one of the last things that any woman surrenders. - The reason women live longer than men is because they get more pleasure out of feeling miserable. - If all men told the truth the tears of women would create another flood. - It is sometimes argued that women have a hard enough time in this world, without telling them the truth. - A man who won't lie to a woman has very little consideration for her feelings. - Man is the head, and woman his headache. - Never contradict your wife - if you listen a short while, she will contradict herself. - A woman's mind is cleaner than a man's - she changes it more often. - Consistency: the only jewel found among more men than women. - About the time a man thinks he has a woman fooled, she fools him by changing her mind. - Never trust a woman's final decision: it seldom agrees with the one that follows it. - Women's words are as light as doomed autumn leaves. - The easiest way to change a woman's mind is by agreeing, disagreeing, or saying nothing. - You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanishness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly. - The reason women usually win arguments with men is that only dumb men are foolish enough to argue with women. - Women take up ideas, like clothes, to suit their mood and whim, whereas men only permit themselves one quasi-original idea, (or "ism"), like a neck-tie. - Nothing makes a woman angrier than when her husband pretends to believe her when he knows she is lying to him. - Women like silent men. They think they're listening. - Silence in woman is like speech in man; deny it who can. - Many a man wishes he were as wise as he thinks his wife thinks he is. - I see the woman with a scarf twisted round her hair and a cigarette in her mouth. She has put the tea tray down upon the file on which my future depends. - "He gradually wormed his way out of my confidence." - A woman - A man never knows how to say goodbye; a woman never knows when to say it. - One hair of a woman draws more than a team of oxen. - Cunning: life is a battle of wits, and women have to fight it unarmed. - The wiles of most women are stronger than the wills of most men. - Some women are so clever that you can't talk to them for ten minutes without beginning to realize how brilliant you are. - There is something about cats and women that is viewed with distrust by mice and men. - On one issue at least, men and women agree; they both distrust women. - You don't know a woman till you've met her in court. - Man has his will - but woman has her way! - The practice of putting women on pedestals began to die out when men discovered that women could give orders better from that position. - The history of woman is the history of the worst form of tyranny the world has ever known. The tyranny of the weak over the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts. - Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them very little. Samuel Johnsen (1709-1784) - Women now insist on having all the prerogatives of the oak and all the perquisites of the clinging vine. - Give a woman an inch and she thinks she's a ruler. - What difference does it make whether women rule, or the rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same. - A woman can be a serviceable substitute for masturbation - it just requires more imagination. - In adolescence pornography is a substitute for sex, whereas in adulthood sex is a substitute for pornography. - As much pity is to be taken of a woman weeping, as of a goose going barefoot. - Women wipe away their tears like sweat. - A woman weeps with one eye and laughs with the other. - The worst thing you can possibly do to a woman is to deprive her of grievance. - Every woman is wrong until she cries. - She is on the verge of tears, her favourite perch. - Women give us solace, but if it were not for women we should never need solace. - Women want a mediocre man, and men are working hard to be as mediocre as possible. - Wisely a woman prefers to a lover a man who neglects her. This one may love her some day, some day the lover will not. - Every man wants a woman to appeal to his better side, his noble instincts and his higher nature - and another woman to help him forget them. - There are two things I have always loved madly: they are women and celibacy. - As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent. - You can never be kind to a woman with impunity. - Men were born to lie, and women to believe them. - A wife should never be allowed to go alone to see her mother. - Man says what he knows, woman what she pleases. - To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue. - When a man dies, the last thing that moves is his heart, in a woman her tongue. - Mouth: in man, the gateway to the soul, in woman, the outlet of the heart. - Men have marble, women waxen minds. - Wives are young mens' mistresses; companions for middle age; and old mens' nurses. - Women are attractive at 20, attentive at 30, and adhesive at 40. - He must be Something in the City; that she may be everything in the country. - The wife should be inferior to the husband. That is the only way to insure equality between the two. - Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior. Socrates - The greatest problem with women is how to contrive that they should seem our equals. - Women are neither equal nor different to men - they are inferior. Women rarely if ever organize themselves effectively because they are unable to think logically. - He knows little who will tell his wife all he knows. - He that shows his wife or money will be in danger of having them borrowed sometimes. - A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to comprehend his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it. - A woman very much settles her esteem for a man, according to the figure he makes in the world, and the character he bears among his own sex. - Women never forgive failure. - Women commend a modest man, but like him not. - I like men to behave like men . . . strong and childish. A woman - In all legends men have thought of women as sublime separately, but horrible in a herd. - Every woman is a captive queen. But every crowd of women is only a harem broken loose. - Women singly do a good deal of harm. Women in bulk are chastening. - Two women placed together makes cold weather. - Three women make a market. - Women are not a hobby . . . they are a calamity! Were it not for gold and women there would be no damnation. By all means dream of marriage, but for God's sake remember to wake up! Nothing is worse than a woman, even a good one. - He seldom errs Who thinks the worst he can of womankind. - Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman. - I expect that woman will be the last thing civilized by man. - It's a great advantage to women to be regarded as a race apart, an advantage which, as usual, they abuse unscrupulously. - There is only one real tragedy in a woman's life. The fact that her past is always her lover, and her future is invariably her husband. - A boy expands into a man; a girl contracts into a woman. - Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size. - The generality of women appear to me to be as children whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time. Keats - Man gets and forgets; woman gives and forgives. - Women chat and men converse, Women gossip, men freely curse. Women question but men have doubt, Women are masonry, but men are the grout. - The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history. - A woman with a past has no future. - A man's age commands respect, a woman's demands tact. - There's only one thing worse than asking a woman her age, and that is to look incredulous when she tells it. - The years a woman subtracts from her age are not lost. They are added to other womens'. - As long as a woman looks ten years younger than her own daughter, she is perfectly satisfied. - Men are worried about how many years they have left, women how many they have had. - Women lie about their age; men lie about their income. - One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that, would tell one anything. - No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating. - Nothing is more difficult for a woman than to decide when to begin her 30th year. - Thirty-five is a very attractive age; London society is full of women who have of their own free choice remained thirty-five for years. - She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven. - An amateur is a young man who, when flattering women, is afraid of overdoing it. - Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women from the contrary. - A man likes you for what he thinks you are; a woman for what you think she is. - Women love us for our defects; if we have enough of them they will forgive us everything, even our superior intellects. - Time and circumstance, which enlarge the views of most men, narrow the views of women almost invariably. - Women's styles may change but their designs remain the same. - Women try their luck; men risk theirs. - A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralises is invariably plain. - Women are pictures. Men are problems. If you want to know what a woman really means - which, by the way, is always a dangerous thing to do - look at her, don't listen to her. - Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself. - We have emancipated women, but they remain slaves looking for their masters all the same. - Women inspire us to do masterpieces, and always prevent us from carrying them out. - A woman's chief asset is man's imagination. - The mystery of women is the product of the romantic imagination of men. - Women are like tricks by slight of hand, which, to admire, we should not understand. - Women: sphinxes without secrets. - For a man to pretend to understand women is bad manners; for him really to understand them is bad morals. - Even when a man understands a woman, he can't believe it. - Men dislike women who don't understand them, and women dislike men who do. - Woman: the peg on which the wit hangs his jest, the preacher his text, the cynic his grouch, and the sinner his justification. - As a woman's womb fills, her head empties. - The girl who is the image of her father is probably the echo of her mother. - SOME WORDS OF MINE ON MEN AND WOMEN - - It has been said that men will never win the battle of the sexes because they fraternize with the enemy too much. But it is not really a battle as such - more of a flirt. If only it were a true battle! - There will continue to be a vast gulf between the sexes for as long as men and women are attracted to opposite things - namely each other. - The worst mistake a man can ever make is to presume that a woman thinks like a man. - Of all I have ever said, my words on women have generated the most disgust, which tells me I have struck on something of the utmost importance. - Men were made by women. - Women speak of equality (Problems) Men speak of difference (Superiority and inferiority) Difference is dynamic (Equality goes nowhere) - A woman will only trust a man who lies to her. - Women are not honest about being in love, or at any other time. - Man is evil because he is conscious of the thought that he is lying; but women are worse because they cannot be conscious of that thought. - The reason a woman lies about not being in love is because she stands to lose so much if she tells the truth. Love is the life and the death of women; it is but the game and the gremlin of man. - Women are excused their lying because it is their only means of survival. - A cruel woman will demand that you be friends with her before she will love you so she can play with the corpse. - Only a brash, forceful, and unwomanly woman will tell a man she loves him. Real women are content to make him jealous. - Women enjoy making men chase after them during courtship because as wives they will have to carry the men. - Women ruthlessly take advantage of men during courtship, and during the few short moments when he thinks she is beautiful. - Woman is flattered to be called cruel - proud of her only power. - Women work by the principle that a man can be fooled into appreciating something if he has to fight for it. - A woman will not talk-through a problem in a relationship because she believes that reason is useless. In her mind the only thing that works is emotional violence. - A woman will injure you purely for the pleasure of patching you up again. - Man hates with his mind and body, woman with her heart and soul. - Good feminists are masculine. - Feminists are yet women. - A handsome woman looks more intelligent than she is. - I have met women with mat-black obsidian eyes that never blink, cold externally, with a small warm sun of intelligence behind, trying to conserve its heat. Such is the rare woman of inner masculine strength who hasn't enough to share it. - If a woman spends all her time in academic study, to improve her character, she forgets to improve her character, and one day finds herself to be a mere educated woman. - Women resent the man who is more caring, perceptive and knowledgeable of human relationships than they are. - It's a brave man who can overestimate a woman's age. - While chatting with a girl, if she suddenly tells you of her sister's brain tumour, that is equivalent to a kiss. - Sadly, a woman's virtue and depth of character disappears during the third hour spent getting to know her. - Women resent being made virtuous by a man's awkwardness. - When the last child leaves home they often take with them a lot more than their mother's heart . . . they take their mother's only excuse to live. Women have so neglected their minds that it is difficult to conjure an excuse to keep many women alive once their children have left home. - It is said that he who possesses a woman's body possesses her soul. This is because a woman must be what she does. She cannot act at a distance. - To possess a woman's soul is to possess empty space. It leaves one feeling cheated. - Women are naturally clean-shaven; most men artificially so. What I can't understand is why men aren't more consistent and shave their legs also. - When psychologists are asked to list the qualities of a healthy human mind they describe the qualities of the healthy male mind. Then, when asked to list the qualities of the healthy female mind, their list is not the same as that for the healthy human mind. - Women are good at trivial things because women think trivial things are important. Women are bad at important things because women do not realize how much harm they can do to the larger world outside of the small world of their immediate surrounds. - Women have babies to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things. - Pretty women are for men without imagination. No woman is pretty if a man has imagination. - Plain women know a lot more about men than beautiful women do - they have to. - Women are the most unnatural of animals because man has prevented them from growing. Who knows what they may be capable of? - For a man to have the stillness of a woman he must be a god. Consequently one mistakes women for gods. - That a woman must develop herself intellectually is a duty. If it were only a right she would sacrifice it. - Cheerfulness: the feminine of struggle. - Cunning: the feminine of courage. - Potentially misleading: Nietzsche's statement "Happiness is a woman", because it might lead us to believe that women can make us happy. - Woman: infinite to see, finite to hear. - Women: from goddesses to grannies. - Old woman: . . . lurking inside a young woman. - It is not enough to educate women, they must not be loved. - The best thing a woman can do for a man is to marry somebody else. The best thing a man can do for a woman is to make a man of her, which usually necessitates just leaving her alone. - After I comprehensively explained how Christians are false because of their weakness and effeminacy, someone said to me: "Does this mean Christians are almost as bad as women?" - Most men complain that they do not understand women. I complain that I do understand them. - Women are better adjusted to life, but men are better adjusted to death. Women live longer, but men are more often remembered. - At the age of six, boys and girls are essentially the same. The difference is that boys tend to remain at the mental age of six throughout life, while girls seem to regress. - Contrary to popular opinion, men probably talk just as much as do women do. It just feels as though women talk more. - There's a lot to be said for womanhood, and it's all unpleasant. - I tell ugly truths about women not to denigrate them, but to venerate God. - It is easy to control your desires in the company of women, and when reality is staring you in the face. It is much more difficult when they have left you alone with your imagination. - Sex is an instinct, love an emotion, and marriage is supposed to be a mature and responsible decision. But should there be reason, then there is neither sex, love, nor marriage. - Women need to feel compassion for others because weakness in others justifies their own weakness. - I will not sacrifice my life at the altar of woman. There are far worthier causes. - Women always have some mental reservations. This is because most of their brains are out of bounds to them. - Not only does a beautiful woman have more chance of catching herself a husband, she also has more chance of keeping him. At all times, men judge women by appearances. - The more beautiful a woman makes herself, the more ugly she makes others. - I get a strange feeling when I see a woman with naturally rosy cheeks . . . such beauty is so rare . . . And such immoral innocence! - A woman wears her tears like jewelry. - Women use make-up to highlight their worst features. - Good women never wear make-up - until they feel they need to. - Feminism has made many women go underground, to the extent that they dare only wear frillies underneath or in the bedroom. - Pornography is degrading to women, but most women are too degraded to realize it. - It is much more difficult for a man to maintain a sexual relationship than it is for a woman. This is because for a man to arouse enough passion to produce an erection, an awful lot of self-deception and egotistic thought is required, which must first be realized, then adapted. Such thought can only be dominant or submissive - both horrid. - Man is idealistic by nature; he doesn't want to be served by just any woman. But woman has no such ideals and will serve any man, if he be man enough to want her service. For she does not want the man, but the master. - What does it signify that woman was made from man's rib?: she's not the full quid. - Only women have complained to me that I try to confuse them with logic. - Feminists would make great advances if they were not so bothered about sexist men; that is, if they were not so womanish. - A strong and intelligent woman always seeks the company of a bad man. He must either be a ruthless manipulator who can make her feel like a woman, or a spineless wimp who can make her feel strong and intelligent. - Women are so alike, that if a man can win the love and devotion of just one woman, he feels he has conquered the entire female species. And if he cannot, then the entire female species has conquered him. - Women tend to love men for their character, while men tend to love women for their looks. This is because men already have character . . . now all they require is visual stimulation and the softening caress of feminine innocence. Women need a base, men seek a supplement. - A man wants a woman to be submissive, not necessarily to him, but to the world. This is what attracts him so. - A woman's life ends at thirty-five, at which time a man's life is often just beginning. - Women die in their eighties, fifty years longer than their lifespan. - Even a mediocre man is renowned by his contempories if he procures the love and devotion of a beautiful woman. But it is the solitary man of truth who is renowned by posterity. - No man can monopolize a girl's mind and destiny more comprehensively and deeply than the author of the book she reads. - Men put women up on a pedestal for two reasons: firstly, it is a good position for looking up their dresses, and secondly, it doesn't give them any room to do anything and cause any trouble. - A man should aim to think as much as a woman feels. - When a man realizes how close a woman's "Yes" is to her "No", he no longer wants her "Yes" because her "No" means so little. - A woman has no thought of her own, but lives purely in response to the forces of the moment. Then what of her love and approval? What can it ever mean? - Woman believes man's lies because she cares only about feelings, not future. She cannot realistically appreciate an honest man because honesty is superfluous to feelings. - Many women are convinced that the reason Jesus never got married was that he never met the right girl. - I am always amazed by women's ability it instantly detect my motives which I do not have. - When a woman hates a man she does not know (which happens often) she does not take his past into account, nor her own. She can easily judge a man to be an evil, manipulative, womanizing woman-hater, even if he be a saint who has never so much as laid sheep's eyes on a woman, let alone wolf's paws. - Women hate the man who speaks profoundly and obscurely; for it means that he does not need the company of women, never needs to explain himself, which means that he has not been tamed and therefore probably has a low opinion of women. Women far prefer the man who mistreats them to the one who gets away scot-free. It is for the same reason that we prefer people to do useless work badly than enjoy themselves constructively doing nothing. - If you have never hurt a woman then you hurt women terribly, for you are free. - If you do not cause a woman grievance you will not engage her very deeply. - Throwing stones is safe if you do not live in a glass house, or if you are a woman or a child. - Anyone who criticizes women is a misogynist. - Women are mysterious creatures; they sometimes appear superficially deep and at other times deeply superficial. - The horrifying thing about the mystery of woman is that there isn't one. - The less respect one has for ones rival, the more one is tortured by jealousy; not for the particular woman involved by any means, who has disqualified herself, but by jealousy for recognition. - I can think about women, from a distance, but to actually talk to them is going a bit too far. - What can a wise man say to a woman without making a fool of himself? - If you must talk to a woman, do so in private where no-one can hear the foolishness of what you are saying. - For a man to win the affections of a woman he must talk to her. But to talk to her he must sacrifice his mind and dignity, for what can a man say to a woman of any consequence? - All a woman really wants is for her man to talk to her, but this is precisely what he cannot stand to do, and is often the reason for his early leaving. Having fished-out her shallows, any further talk is insulting. If a man cares for such a woman, he should not talk to her in the first place. - Who ever heard of a woman seeking the truth? One can perhaps imagine a schoolgirl seeking truth, for a school project, but not a woman for any reason. - A woman thinks a man is unethical if he tries to measure her by ethical standards, for the reason that a woman cannot comprehend ethics. - The thing that most turns me off women, and also the most revealing thing about them, is the men they have loved. - Nothing destroys a man more thoroughly than being rejected by a woman whom he considers to be more inferior than he is normally prepared to tolerate. - What kind of a legacy does a man leave his children if he goes down on his hands and knees before his inferior - I mean a woman, a feminine woman at least. - The most intelligent women in the world are female impersonators. - A woman, like a child, has only the shallowest and most insubstantial of thoughts. If you were to try to paddle your feet in her oceans, you wouldn't even get your feet wet. - A man may become wise, If he really tries. But all women are born wise, In their own eyes. - It is good to condemn the feminine, but beware that in so doing you do not immortalize it in yourself. * * * - Yes, man is great because he is a mountaineer. But as Nietzsche says "I sought for great men, but all I found were the apes of their ideal." As great as striving makes a man compared to women, he strives for so little! - LOVE - - The little trouble in the world that is not due to love is due to friendship. - A woman's friendship ever ends in love. - Love and friendship exclude each other. - Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves. - Scratch a lover and find a foe. - If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it. - A lady of forty-seven who has been married twenty-six years and has six children knows what love really is and once described it like this: "Love is what you've been through with somebody." - Woman is flax, Man is fire, The Devil comes, And blows the bellows. - Man and woman have entirely different concepts of love, so there are two loves, and they are so unlike as to deserve different names. The love of woman is devotion; the love of man is to want devotion. Woman gives herself; man acquires more. - Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love. - Love with men is not a sentiment, but an idea. - Because women can do nothing except love, they've given it a ridiculous importance. - To inspire love is a woman's greatest ambition. It's the one thing women care about and there's no woman so proud that she doesn't rejoice at heart in her conquests. - Man loves where he must; women must love - somewhere. - If you wait for a girl to come to you, you can always be sure of receiving an invitation to her wedding. - Man loves little and often; woman loves much and rarely. - In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man. - When a man's in love, he at once makes a pedestal of the Ten Commandments and stands on the top of them with his arms akimbo. When a woman's in love she doesn't care two straws for Thou Shalt and Thou Shalt Not. - Love never knocks at the door of a woman's heart; he goes in, drives philosophy out, shows wisdom the door, then rules supreme. - A woman in love is less modest than a man; she has less to be ashamed of. - To a woman the first kiss is just the end of the beginning; to a man it is the beginning of the end. - Every love's the love before In a duller dress. - We always believe our first love is our last, and our last love our first. - Love makes time pass, and time makes love pass. - We love someone for what they are not, and quit them for what they are. - Falling out of love is very enlightening; for a short while you see the world with new eyes. - If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues. - Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. - If a woman wants to hold a man she has only to appeal to what is worst in him. - No one in love is free - or wants to be. - Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned. - A man is given the choice between loving women and understanding them. - You have to live with a woman to really misunderstand her. - The first sigh of love is the last of wisdom. - When a man has a vacant look, it's usually because a girl is occupying his mind. - No man, or woman, was ever cured of love by discovering the falseness of his or her lover. The living together for three long, rainy days in the country has done more to dispel love than all the perfidies in love that have ever been committed. - Absence: the common cure for love. - Sudden love takes the longest time to be cured. - First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity. - Women never acknowledge that they have fallen in love until the man has formally avowed his delusion and so cut off his retreat. - A modest girl never pursues a man any more than a mousetrap pursues a mouse. - Courtship begins with a man fishing for a girl, and ends with her making the catch. - A man always chases a woman until she catches him. - A man can damn by a wink, a woman by a nod. - A woman knows the value of love, but a man knows its cost. - It is written in the code of love: He who strikes the blow is himself struck down. - Each man kills the thing he loves. By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss The brave man with a sword! - Faint heart never won fair lady, or escaped one either. - Once a woman has given you her heart you can never get rid of the rest of her. - Once a woman is in your arms, she's on your hands. - If only one could fall into the arms of a woman without also falling into her clutches. - The law of gravity doesn't always work: it is usually easier to pick up a girl than it is to drop her. - The game of love cannot be played with the cards on the table. - Romantic: the sort of fellow who, if he were a bacteriologist, would report the streptococcus pyogenes to be as large as a St Bernard dog, as intelligent as Socrates, as beautiful as Beauvais Cathedral, and as respectable as a Yale Professor. - When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving oneself, and always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. - Romance is the state midway between past and present. - Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman. - Many a girl spoils a perfectly good romance by falling in love with the man. - If it were not for poetry, few men would ever fall in love. - A man first realizes he loves a girl when he begins to get mad at people who say she's stupid or homely. - A woman loves with all her heart and soul; and a man with all his mind and body. - No woman is wholly convinced that a man really loves her until he buys her something she doesn't need at a price he can't afford. - Most women would rather be loved much than wisely. - A man who loves wittily is a man who is not in love. - Love and potatoes both spring from the eyes. - There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. - When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her. - It is easier for a woman to keep half a dozen lovers guessing than to keep one lover after he has stopped guessing. - I have every reason to love you. What I lack is the unreason. - Try to reason about love, and you will lose your reason. - A lover who reasons is no lover. - Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you." - To love is to allow abuse. - To love is to suffer, to be loved is to cause suffering. - If love is judged by its visible effects it looks more like hatred than friendship. - The course of true love never runs smooth - it usually leads to marriage. - Love matches are made by people who are content, for a month of honey, to condemn themselves to a life of vinegar. - In love, victory goes to the man who runs away. - Those who are faithless know the pleasures of love; it is the faithful who know love's tragedies. - The man who is disappointed in love usually lives to be glad of it. - Many a man's death is due to a broken heart; if he hadn't broken a woman's heart, she wouldn't have shot him. - The girl who thinks she has broken her heart has only sprained her imagination. - Every day men sleep with women whom they do not love, and do not sleep with women whom they do love. - We ought not to complain if someone we dearly love behaves now and then in ways we find distasteful, nerve-wracking or hurtful. Instead of grumbling we should avidly hoard up our feelings of irritation and bitterness: they will serve to alleviate our grief on the day when she has gone and we miss her. - A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her. - Let the man who does not wish to be idle fall in love. - Sometimes I wish I could fall in love. Then at least you know who your opponent is. - Love has a thousand ways to please, But more to rob us of our ease. - Every time a woman gives a man a piece of her mind she loses a piece of his heart. - A woman can be anything that the man who loves her would have her be. - It is terrible to be alone, and it is terrible to be in love, but one is cheaper than the other. - When a man makes love to a woman who is covered in make-up and perfume, he is not making love to an individual, but to a department store. - There is often most love where there is the least acquaintance with the object beloved. - Love cures all but love. - The punishment for love is love. - No one acts more foolishly than a wise man in love. - Infatuation is what makes an intelligent man look foolish to a foolish girl who looks intelligent to him. - Even the wisest of men make themselves fools about women, and even the most foolish women are wise about men. - When a woman makes a fool out of a man, she seldom does it without his cooperation. - Men want to be a woman's first love. Women want to be a man's last romance. - Men love with their eyes, women with their ears. - Love is . . . * sex and sentiment. * the need to escape from oneself. * that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. * liking someone better than you like yourself. * the fruit of an idle brain. * a game that always begins with courting days and ends with days in court. * the triumph of imagination over intelligence. * a fan club with only two fans. * a religion with a fallible god. * a barbarity, for it is exercised at the expense of all others. * a temporary insanity curable by marriage. * a sort of fever of the mind, which leaves us weaker than it found us. * a word used to label the sexual and emotional excitement of the young, the habituation of the middle-aged, and the mutual dependence of the old. * yesterday's illusion, today's allusion, and tomorrow's delusion. * a game in which both players always cheat. * a product of habit. * the renunciation of one's personal comfort. * what happens to a man and a woman who don't know each other. * an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit. * the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man. * love is a mood - no more - to man. And love to woman is life or death. * the whole history of a woman's life, it is but an episode in a man's. * the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl and discovering that she looks like a haddock. * the delusion that one woman differs from another. * a season ticket on the shuttle between heaven and hell. * a bottomless pit. * the last and most serious of the diseases of childhood. * a state of mind which has nothing to do with the mind. - Love is like those second-rate hotels where all the luxury is in the lobby. - Love is like a malarial fever; one day raging, the next so chilly that blankets heaven high were as naught to warm it. - Love is like a bazaar. The admittance is free but it costs you something before you get out. - Love is like measles - all the worse when it comes late in life. - Love is like the moon; when it does not increase it decreases. - A girl may love you from the bottom of her heart, but there's always room for some other guy at the top. - Many a girl burns up her boy friend with an old flame. - Jealousy is always born with love, but does not die with it. - Love doesn't really make the world go round. It just makes people dizzy so it looks like it. - A man in love thinks that nothing is good enough for her except himself. - Courtship is that period during which the female decides whether or not she can do any better. - Courtship is the period when a girl finds out that her strength lies in her weaknesses. - What is puppy love? The beginning of a dog's life. - He imagined that he was in love with her, whereas I think she did the imagining for him. - The only true love is love at first sight; second sight dispels it. - Love is said to be blind, but I know lots of fellows in love who can see twice as much in their sweethearts as I can. - The trouble with blind love is that it doesn't stay that way. - Love is blind to everything but fat. - Love is not always blind and there are few things that cause greater wretchedness than to love with all your heart someone who you know is unworthy of love. - Love comes unseen; we only see it go. - The proof that experience teaches us nothing is that the end of one love does not prevent us from beginning another. - The time I've lost in wooing In watching and pursuing The light, that lies In woman's eyes, Has been my heart's undoing. Though wisdom oft has sought me, I scorned the love she brought me, My only books Were woman's looks, And folly's all they've taught me. ************************************************************************** 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � � � - WIT FOR WISDOM - � � � � - File 2 (of 4) - � � � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � - MENU - � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � 1. Some words of mine on love. � � 2. Marriage. � � 3. Some words of mine on marriage. � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � Press 1..3 or scroll through � � the text at your leisure. � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � � � (C) Copyright 1991 by Kevin Solway � � � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 - SOME WORDS OF MINE ON LOVE - - If I loved as much as others I would hate as much as they. - We expect others to love us yet remain trustworthy. - I am sometimes selfish enough to want to feel loved and to give love, but never enough to do so. - Love is so common as to appear normal. - If two people love each other they should try to get to know each other better. - Distance makes the heart grow stronger, not fonder. - The trouble with loving someone is that you can't just know them at the time you want to love them - you have to know them all the time. It's really no good pretending you don't know them. - Saying "I am in love with you" is a lot different to saying "I love you", and is a lot more honest. It is a bit like saying "insanity has control of me". - He who loves never, lives best. - Men always hate the woman they love. Women always love the man they hate. - A woman's first love is never the first; there are no truly virginal women. - A woman can mean everything to a man - until some other woman takes an interest in him. - Love conquers all but absence. - Love is a crutch that breaks when you lean on it. - Love is too much like hard work. - Love is blind and marriage is the darkness. - Love: the grand thief of time. - Love: a consequence of the human tendency to simplify experience - achieved in this case by discarding information about the future. - Love - a drop of water in an ocean of tears. - I love you more than yesterday, and tomorrow. - I am not in love with you. I only love you when I am reminded of you. - Do not be hurt by the hatred of a woman; it means as little as her love. - Don't feel cheated when a woman loves a lesser man. She doesn't love the sun either, yet it shines. - For me to love a woman I must respect her. For me to respect a woman she must be a good woman of principle. Hence, for me, love is not possible. - A wise man cannot accept the love of a woman who loves unwise men, for the reason that he cannot allow reason to be valued equal to unreason. - The man who knows himself to be a superior man cannot accept the love of a woman, for in doing so he would then also have to accept the love she felt for those men past, and the love she will feel for those to come. - Men do not respect women - not intellectually. Hence, as far as I'm concerned, men cannot love women. - Women love the boastful man because they are not allowed to boast themselves. - He tries to steal the first kiss, and tries, and tries. He tries exactly three times. Then he leaves. She ends up trying to make him take what he pleases . . . but masculine pride can only take so much abuse. Well . . . perhaps he tries only the once, and not all that hard, but it certainly feels like too much hard work. - I am a loser. Just when I want to feel rejected by women they go and make me feel wanted. - If a man is pure it is nearly always because he has not chanced upon the right woman. - Woman loves the man who thinks, but the man who thinks does not love woman. - Yes, woman loves the man who thinks, but not the man who lives by his thought. - Nothing spoils a romance so much as honesty in a man. - Some need to have sex with the one they love to dissolve the painful illusion of it all. Others abstain from sex to preserve a hope of the ideal - not only the ideal of love, but the ideal of independence. - The trick to being an idealist is to never act on your love, which would shatter the ideal. The trick is to never fall in love with someone who will not disappoint you. - If love is returned, it is not a great love. - How many have there been who entered the monastic life, not to renounce their love of woman, but to preserve it? - I cannot love any woman who is so unsure of herself as to feel love. - A woman's face is never so contorted and ugly as the moment she is struck with the realization that she is in love with you. - Women are unreliable: if you ask a woman out, you cannot rely on her to say no, and if she says yes, you cannot rely on her to be unfaithful. - If a woman loves me, how can I ever trust her again? - If a woman loves me, she ceases to be beautiful, and I can therefore never trust her again. - It is far less cowardly to love a naive, foolish, homely woman who will reject you, than it is to love an intelligent, sensible, beautiful woman who is in love with you. - If a man is noble enough to refrain from pressuring a woman, then he will refrain from loving her, for love is the greatest of pressures. Much less would he declare his love. - It is difficult to decide upon the least immoral course of action regarding someone you are falling in love with. - I cannot involve myself with a woman when there is no chance of marriage and a true everlasting love, nor if there is the slightest chance of it. - Two kinds of women are dangerous to a man: those who make him feel comfortable, and those who electrify him. - To be loved you must give love, which explains why only fools are loved. - You cannot win a woman just the once and be done with it; you have to humiliate yourself again and again. - There is no love without humiliation. - To love someone is humiliating because they do not deserve it. - To win a woman's affection is nothing to be proud of because women are motivated by love. - If your happiness depends on a woman's approval then your life is as insubstantial as her judgement. - Women judge by feelings, which I refuse to be judged by. - It is possible to be so much in love with someone that you don't want to go and spoil it all by actually talking to them. - A man cannot reason with the woman he loves. He cares about her too much. - A man wants to know about a woman's past until he is in love with her. - Loving a woman is not quite so bad as befriending one. - Some men will stoop to the lowest depths to win the love of a woman, even to the point of being friends with her. - Some men will stoop to the lowest depths to win the company and affection of a woman, including talking to her. - If you must fall in love, do so with a woman you can't talk to. - Love can make you marry a person you can't talk to, and wouldn't want to if you could. - Women criticize men for being egotistical, but if men were not egotistical women would live out their lives unloved. - Love is rarely mutual. While one person is feeling love the other is usually feeling guilt. - He who lives by love dies by it. - Where there's love there's hell. - A man needs to be loved if he has no other needs. - To me the pleasure of loving a woman is at best a concession. I am not prepared to pay one cent, wait one second, or suffer in the slightest degree even one inconvenient or nagging thought for the sake of something which is but a concession and an insult to my dignity. Thus I do not make concessions. - Any person of worth wants to be loved for the fact that they are different from everyone else. But in accepting love, the person of worth falls to the level of everyone else, and to a level undeserving of love. - To accept another's loving care and devotion is to take advantage of a mentally disabled person. - If you have trouble with love, love less, not more. Love not at all and be pure. - Love is intimacy. Intimacy is flattery. Love is flattery. - Love is the feeling you have before you know what you are getting yourself into. - Love is weakness. - Love and cowardice are really the same thing. - I stand a failure before love. I price myself out of the market. I cannot accept love without thereby making myself unworthy of it. Nor can I give love without thereby being unworthy of doing so. In any case, no woman can love me enough, because they love me - because love is so faulty. - A couple in love know very well never to speak of anything significant. This is good training for marriage. - To want to be loved by someone is to want to be admired and respected by a fool. - It is just as immoral for a man to fall in love with a girlish, emotional, feminine woman as it is for a woman to fall in love with a brutish, forceful, masculine man. - Women have synthetic affections for heavy-duty use. - If a man suffers because he is without a woman, he can easily make women feel guilty and responsible for his situation. This is because the world view of women is centred around making a man happy, and women have nothing better to do with their time than take him under their emotional wing. Yes, a woman will enjoy feeling guilty because another woman doesn't love him. Emotionally, women work together as one (nasty) creature. - Love is about fiddling fantasies. One does not fall in love with a person because they are truly good, but because they are good at stimulating one's imagination. With a stimulated imagination one can believe anything is good. - Love is directed towards what lies hidden in its object. Or at least, to what one likes to believe is hidden. - A man will pursue a woman relentlessly - until she turns and faces him with wide-open whirlpool eyes. Then he very wisely runs for his life in the other direction. - If a woman doesn't chase after a man just a little bit, she doesn't really care for him; and if she chases him at all, he won't care for her. - He mainly desires her, but she mainly desires to be desired. - A woman is quick to love a bad man and hate a good one. - Jealousy is the only true measure of love. - If a girl keeps us guessing, she causes us pain. And if she doesn't, she causes us pain. - Love is something you like to feel once a week, but it demands that you feel it every dreadful minute. - One looks to see if one causes another pain, to see if there is any love there. - A plain woman can keep a man's passions alive much longer than a beautiful woman, for she does not spoil his dreams, does not impinge on them. She takes nothing from him, so fuels his dominant emotions. - If you wish to be loved by a particular someone, then make sure they know your name. If they do not know your name they will not love you. Love is that deep. - Women are most attractive when they are in love with another man, for then one is not faced with having to actually know them in a real sense. There is nothing worse than knowing what a woman does not think. - A woman often cannot help but laugh when a man divulges his love for her. She finds him ridiculous. Or rather, she finds his weakness and vulnerability a sharp contrast to his towering physical and mental strength. She suspects for the first time that she is the stronger. No surprise he then makes a swift retreat. - Does a man ever laugh when a woman can no longer contain her love for him, and opens herself up like a wound? No, for there is no contradiction. A woman making herself vulnerable has no shock value, as there is in the case of a man. - A woman's kiss is a beautiful thing, and expensive too. Each and every kiss costs twenty-four hours of your time in maintenance, and I'm not talking about the maintenance after the divorce. - You love the best in someone and bring out the worst in them. - You never feel securely in possession of another's love, because you know that the person they think you are is not you. - The lover wants to be useful to the loved one, but love renders one useless. - One wishes to appear strong and calm for women, which makes one weak and nervous. - Women give a man a reason to be happy, for if he is not happy he will not find a woman. - Any man can be graced with the love of a woman if he is prepared to pay enough. - Other men hold a certain appeal to women, a certain power that I comprehensively lack. They are prepared to sacrifice their freedom for the sake of women, make concessions and compromises, and in short, tell lies. - The problem with love is that marriage takes root in it. - Please don't praise me, my persistently single state is as much due to good luck as it is to good management. - A woman will go close to a man only if she believes he will stay close by her. - A woman only loves the man who has hurt her. It seeps into the wound. And only a bad man is bad enough to initiate such a relationship. Good men are left alone because a woman will not do any decisive initiating herself, not if she is a woman. The result is that women tend to hate the innocent man, because, without love, they know no other feeling. - Lovers love quarrels for renewing their love. - I hate to see a couple quarrelling because I know it is keeping them together. - I hate to see a man raising his voice or being rude to his female companion - he moves closer and she tightens the noose. - A woman with a past attracts the kind of man who, at the races, will bet only on the favourites. - Sex holds such a significance in relationships because it is the last hope. - A true friend is someone who would never swipe the girl you love away from you unless circumstances arose. - If nothing else, you can trust the one you love to be untrustworthy. - A woman doesn't want to be the one to decide she's in love . . . she wants to keep the advantage. - A man is forced to make many advances towards women because women know a man's advances count for so little. - To fall in love is a big decision for a woman, who must give her whole life in love. But it is a bigger still decision for a man, who, while giving only a small part of his life, stands to lose so much more. Yes, her's is a big decision to fall in love, and not one she likes to take alone. A bad man has no trouble in helping her, with his application of appropriate unrelenting pressure, but a good man respects her independence. If this good man is not quickly insulted by her hesitation regarding him, or even more so by her open-everything policy to external pressures and manipulations, and if he does not then leave of his own account, then she leaves him out in the cold anyway. - Don't be surprised when your loved one treats you like a stranger. If they knew you they wouldn't be in love with you. - "Rational love" - title for an astounding book. - The person you love makes you so unhappy that you need to love somebody else for relief. Tempting a person to love you is also tempting them to be unfaithful to you. - The more intelligent a woman is, the less I am attracted to her, because I do not want to ruin such a precious thing. I do however sometimes feel that I can allow myself to be attracted to an ordinary woman, because I am thereby only ruining myself. - Once in a while I meet a girl who brings out the ignorant side of me. - A woman's kiss can mean as much as a goddess's hand in marriage, or as little as the loving lick of a dog, depending on whether it is the first kiss or the third. - The first kiss is an awakening; The second is deeply satisfying; The third is insulting. - Young men sometimes choose a girlfriend by the fact that she has some quality of personality they can learn from and add to their own character. Young men are generally aware that they have a lot to learn. By contrast, women, and even girls, feel they have nothing to learn from men nor anybody. In love She feels like she's going down in a lift. He feels like he's going up. She is swept off her feet He finds his. He sings She listens He possesses She possesses her possessor. - MARRIAGE - - Woman accepts man for the sake of marriage, and man accepts marriage for the sake of woman. - The fear of loneliness is greater than the fear of bondage, so we get married. - In contrast to a loose-jointed framework egotism, the union of marriage is a stone-wall egotism. This is precisely why we are told marriage is the truly ennobling life. - Women learn to love the man they marry because they rarely manage to marry the man they love. - Familiarity breeds contempt - and children. - Two's company and three's the result. - Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat. - Man proposes and woman imposes. - If a man looks foolish when he proposes, it's because he's doing a foolish thing. - When a man is on his knees proposing to a girl, he may as well say his prayers. - The only way a woman can ever reform a man is by boring him so completely that he loses all possible interest in life. - There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman. - A man's home may seem to be his castle on the outside; inside it is more often his nursery. - A man's home is his hassle. - A man's home is his wife's castle. - All unhappy marriages come from the husbands having brains. How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly rational being? - Some women have happy marriages; others married the men they wanted. - The secret to a happy marriage is to keep a lot of secrets. - Long engagements give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which is never advisable. - There's nothing in the world like the devotion of a married woman. It's a thing no married man knows anything about. - Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building. - How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as ciga- rettes, and far more expensive. - Men should keep their eyes wide open before marriage, and half shut afterward. - He is dreadfully married. He's the most married man I ever saw in my life. - What a holler would ensue, if people had to pay the minister as much to marry them as they have to pay a lawyer to get a divorce. - What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; but what they do not do we are told expressly, that they neither marry nor are given in marriage. - The woman who rejects an offer of marriage practices slight of hand. - Love is more pleasing than marriage, for reason that novels are more amusing than history. - A husband (or wife) is a person who sticks with you through troubles you wouldn't have had if you hadn't married him (or her) in the first place. - Marriage is not what it is contracted to be. - Prostitution is the rental of the body, marriage is the sale. - Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty and women their happiness. - Marriage is a lottery, but you can't tear up the ticket if you lose. - Marriage is most often like a cosy log fire; at first it offers a gentle, soothing warmth, but invariably ends in a pile of useless ashes. - Marriage is like a violin: after the music is over, the strings are still attached. - Marriage is a wonderful invention, but then again, so is the bicycle repair kit. - Marriage is an end of many short follies with one long stupidity. - Marriage is a feast where the grace is better than the dinner. - Marriage is a romance in which the hero dies in the first chapter. - Marriage is two people agreeing to sell the same lie. - Marriage: a ghastly public confession of what should be a strictly private intention. - Marriage: an eternal battle between the feminine love for interior decoration and the masculine love for comfort. - Marriage: a legal custom by which a man becomes a captive audience for his wife. - Marriage: a partnership in which two people co-operate for a common purpose against each other. - Marriage: an armed alliance against the outside world. - Marriage: a perfect moment frozen for a dull eternity. - Marriage: the road to repentance. - Marriage: an institution that simplifies life and complicates living. - Marriage: the only institution to which people willingly commit themselves. - Marriage: the miracle that transforms a kiss from a pleasure into a duty, and a life of luxury into a necessity. - Marriage: the consequence of a misunderstanding between yourself and another person. - Marriage: something made in heaven, but lived on the ground. - Marriage: the process by which love blossoms into vengeance. - Marriage: the souvenir of love. - Marriage: a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves - making in all two. - Marriage: the triumph of habit over hate. - Marriage: the only adventure open to the cowardly. - Marriage: a ceremony in which rings are put on the fingers of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman. - Marriage: the conventional ending of a love affair. A lonesome state. - Bride: a woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her. - Wife: a man's compromise with the illusion of his first sweetheart. - Wedding: a necessary formality before securing a divorce. - Apathetic: six weeks married. - Honeymoon: the first rude awakening for the male as to which sex is really the stronger. - Second marriage: (1) the triumph of hope over experience. (2) a splint for a broken heart. - Message on a greeting card: "Best wishes for a happy and successful first marriage." - Every bride has to learn it's not her wedding but her mother's. - Don't criticize your wife's relatives; remember, you chose them. - The most difficult year of marriage is the one you're in. - Love is a matter of chance, marriage a matter of money, and divorce a matter of course. - Divorce: the past tense of marriage. - Divorces are made in Heaven. - Divorce costs more than marriage because it's worth more. - It has almost reached the point where marriage is considered sufficient grounds for divorce. - Getting divorced just because you don't love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do. - An unhappy husband once said to a psychologist: "Marriage doesn't work, the only thing that works is divorce." "Divorce is only a temporary happiness" replied the psychologist. - The modern marriage ceremony: until debt do us part. - The three chief causes of divorce are men, women, and marriage. - You should really make the most of marriage, because your only going to get married two or three times in a lifetime. - Nobody knows why men marry, so it's best to make the most of every chance you happen to get. - Never get married in the morning, because you never know who you'll meet that night. - Marriage originates when a man meets the only woman who really understands him. So does the divorce. - The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to bear them, and sometimes three. - I'm very old-fashioned. I believe people should mate for life, like pigeons and Catholics. - A little common sense would prevent many divorces, and even more marriages. - Whoever heard of a man getting a divorce from a woman who was a good cook? - When marrying, one should ask oneself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this woman into your old age? - Matrimony is a process that turns a woman from an attraction into a distraction. - Matrimony is the root of all evil. - Girls don't believe in love at first sight any more, but some of the more old-fashioned ones believe in love at first marriage. - Love is the dawn of marriage, and marriage is the sunset of love. - Love is the addiction, marriage the withdrawal. - To marry a woman you love and who loves you is to lay a wager with her as to who will stop loving the other first. - Getting married is like jumping into a hole in the ice in the middle of winter: you do it once, and you remember it the rest of your days. - The man who marries in order to have someone to tell his troubles to, soon has plenty to talk about. - A man looks long and hard for the ideal woman and gets married in the meantime. - Two paths to total disillusionment: to have loved and lost, and to have loved and married. - Mothers hope their sons will be what they once thought their husbands were. - The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband's bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool. - Love makes marriage possible, and habit makes it endurable. - Monotony: one wife at a time. - You study one another for three weeks, you love each other for three months, you fight for three years and you tolerate the situation for thirty. - All comedies are ended by a marriage. - Marriage is seldom happy and successful unless both parties get better mates than they deserve. - When we are married or dead, it's for a long time. - Getting married, like getting hanged, is a great deal less dreadful than it has been made out. - If I ever marry, it will be on a sudden impulse - as a man shoots himself. - He loved his wife so much he was willing to die for her - little did he know that he already had. - Never tell a girl that you would die for her - she may take you seriously. - In most societies it is a criminal offense to attempt suicide, yet every day couples get engaged to be married with absolute impunity. - It takes less courage to die for a woman than to live with her. - If all you had to give in marriage was your hand, it wouldn't be so bad; it's giving away your soul that hurts. - Married men are afraid to think about the Ultimate because they will have to face the fact that they haven't found it in their wives. - Man looks upon the mule as the most obstinate creature on earth, until he gets married. - Married men who have no difficulty in saying "I love you" to their wives are almost certainly being unfaithful. - If love is the medicine for loneliness, then marriage must surely be the unwanted side-effect. - Marriage always demands the greatest possible understanding of the art of insincerity between two human beings. - Maxim for the married: Never both be angry at once. - Maids-in-waiting: those beyond twenty-five. - Stay away from women at thirty. - A married couple are well suited when both partners usually feel the need for a quarrel at the same time. - Some couples can't get along together because they have nothing in common to quarrel about. - The most common argument against marriage is the one between husband and wife. - How men hate waiting while their wives shop for clothes and trinkets; how women hate waiting, often for much of their lives, while their husbands shop for fame and glory. - The consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. - Men marry to make an end; women to make a beginning. - Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. - Many a man marries a girl because he can no longer support her in the style to which he has accustomed her. - Behind every successful man is a woman complaining she has nothing to wear. - Men often marry to keep other men from getting the woman they desire; they are not always successful. - If you get tired of being in love, get married. - When you're bored with yourself, marry, and be bored with someone else. - It takes two to make a marriage, or any other form of misunderstanding. - Always see a fellow's weak point in his wife. - Men are generally true to their first love; that is why many wives are so unhappy. - A man always retains tender thoughts of his first love, unless of course he marries her. - A little flattery now and then makes husbands out of single men. - Marriage isn't a battle that somebody is supposed to win. - Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. - Being a husband is a full-time job. That is why so many husbands fail. They cannot give their entire attention to it. - After forty, men have married their habits, and wives are only an item in the list, and not the most important. - After marriage a woman can see right through her husband without looking at him, and he can look right through her without seeing her. - Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve you; after marriage, he won't even lay down his newspaper to talk to you. - Before marriage a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage he will fall asleep before you have finished saying it. - The average woman talks fifty percent more than her husband listens. - The misfortune of becoming a widow is that one is usually stupid enough to want to marry again. . . . Any woman with a brain to bless herself, should remain free. - A platonic relationship between a man and a woman is generally only possible if they are married. - We sleep in separate rooms, we have dinner apart, we take separate vacations - we're doing everything we can to keep our marriage together. - The only people who want to get married today are Catholic priests. - A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he's married. - When you see a married couple coming down the street, the one who is two or three steps ahead is the one that's mad. - It is no excuse when you are neglecting your wife to say it doesn't matter because she is only a relation by marriage. - The trouble with wedlock is, there's not enough wed and too much lock. - A woman usually respects her father, but her view of her husband is mingled with contempt, for she is of course privy to the transparent devices by which she snared him. - One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry. - There is an advantage to long engagements: the longer a man is engaged, the less time he has to be married. - Nowadays all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors live like married men. - The trouble with marriage is that, while every woman is at heart a mother, every man is at heart a bachelor. - To the bachelor, a wedding ring symbolizes a vicious circle. - A confirmed bachelor believes that what God has put asunder, no man should join together. - Some people never marry because they do not believe in divorce. - The man who stays unmarried is a great deal wiser than he will ever know - unless he gets married. - A single person doesn't have to lead a double life. - If single life is bad then double life must be twice as bad. - Basically there are two kinds of men - the quick and the wed. - The man who holds back from marriage is in the same class as he who runs away from battle. - In marriage, he who hesitates is blessed. - The only good husbands stay bachelors: they're too considerate to get married. - The man who understands women best is the bachelor - that's what makes him a bachelor. - A bachelor is a man who is free to choose, and chooses to be free. - Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives. - When a bachelor wants to flatter a married man, he tells him he doesn't look married. - A bachelor is a man who has been crossed in love, and a married man has been double-crossed. - A bachelor is a man who lost the opportunity of making a woman miserable. - He who hesitates is lost - except a bachelor. - A bachelor never makes the same mistake once. - A bachelor is a rolling stone that has gathered no boss. - Bachelor: a man who flees unpleasantness wherever it is found. - Bachelor: the only man who never lies to his wife. - Bachelor: a man who does not take yes for an answer. - Bachelor: a woman's souvenir of the time she met someone better. - Clear thoughts expressed in unclear language is the style of a confirmed bachelor. He never has to explain anything to a wife. - A bachelor is a man with enough confidence in his judgement to act on it. - All reformers are bachelors. - Matrimony is an institution of learning in which a man loses his bachelor's degree without acquiring a master's. - The man who never in his life has washed the dishes with his wife or polished up the silver plate - he still is largely celibate. - When I hear that a personal friend has fallen into matrimonial courses, I feel the same sorrow as if I had heard of his lapsing into theism. - The only real argument for marriage is that it remains the best method for getting acquainted. - It does not much signify whom one marries, as one is sure to find next morning that it is someone else. - A married man will do anything for money. - Women, deceived by men, want to marry them; it is a kind of revenge as good as any other. - The cruellest revenge of a woman is to remain faithful to a man. - If you are afraid of loneliness, do not marry. - Young man, if she asks you if you like her hair that way, the woman has already committed matrimony in her heart. - Think of your ancestors, and your posterity, and you will never marry. - What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out the window. - Two can live as cheaply as one, but it's worth the difference to stay single. - Two can live as cheaply as one, but it costs them twice as much. - Two can live as cheaply as one - if they both have good jobs. - Two can live as cheaply as one large family used to. - To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties. - Marriage is for women, not men. - Honest men marry soon, wise men not at all. - A married philosopher is necessarily comic. - You could try marrying a witch and hoping that she will turn into a princess - most men experience the opposite. - Face powder may catch a man, but it's baking powder that keeps him. - Courtship to marriage, is a very witty prologue to a very dull play. - Men dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake. - Nobody works as hard for money as the man who marries for it. - Marriage isn't a 50-50 proposition. It's more like 100-0 one moment and 0-100 the next. - Many a woman doesn't know what she wants, and won't give her husband any peace until she gets it. - When a wife has nothing more to say, she always finds a very unpleasant way of not saying it. - Most married men have a dark side to their character - commonly known as their wife. - Research shows that married men are much more inventive than single men. They have to be. - After a man has been married a while, he begins to unlearn a lot of the things he knew about women. - He's a fool that marries; but he's a greater that does not marry a fool. - Many a woman thinks her husband is not an average man, but thinks he could be with a little improvement. - A man is apt to have decided views when his wife decides them for him. - When a man says he hasn't made up his mind, he means he hasn't had a chance to ask his wife. - Any man who agrees with his wife can have his way. - All any woman asks of her husband is that he love her and obey her commandments. - An adolescent waits impatiently to grow up and become his own boss - then he gets married. - Tis better to have loved and lost, Than to marry and be bossed. - My wife is a dominant woman; she walks on the ground I worship. - A man never realizes how unimportant he is until he attends his own wedding. - A husband is what is left after the nerve is extracted. - Some men are born meek while others have to get married. - A woman's a woman until the day she dies, but a man's only a man as long as he can. - Women, when they have made a sheep of a man, always tell him that he is a lion. - There's nothing so rare as a man talking sense and his wife agreeing with him. - A good motto for married men is: be sure you're right, and ask your wife. - It is possible for a married man to have two masters - his wife and his eldest daughter. - The man who gives in when he is wrong is wise; the man who gives in when he is right, is married. - If you want to know how she will talk to you after marriage, listen while she talks to her younger brothers. - A husband is well trained when he hears every word his wife doesn't say. - Some men are afraid to marry; others don't know what fear is until after they marry. - A woman is happily married when she has a husband who's scared to death of her. - The average woman wants a strong man she can wind around her finger. - Before marriage, when a man holds a girl's hand, it's love; after marriage, it's self-defence. - Before marriage, she's his opposite; after marriage, his opposition. - A woman who takes her husband about with her everywhere is like a cat that goes on playing with a mouse long after she's killed it. - A good husband makes a good wife. A good wife makes a good husband. - A man begins by seeking a girl's hand, and ends up being under her thumb. - During courtship, a woman tries to make a husband out of a man; during marriage, she tries to make a man out of a husband. - Marriage is an equal partnership where he makes the money and she makes the decisions. - When a man decides to marry, it is often the last decision he is allowed to make. - When a man changes his mind as much as a woman, he is probably married to her. - Rare is the man who acquires a feeling of inferiority before being forced into it through marriage. - The man who is tired out after his day's work at the office, should insist that his wife buy him a dishwasher. - Every wife likes a strong, silent man, especially one who is strong on making money and silent on the way she spends it. - Marriage is like any other job - it's much easier when you like your boss. - A henpecked husband is a man who is treated by his wife like a wife. - If your wife kisses you when you get home, is it affection or inspection? - My wife has a whim of iron. - A man always loses weight when his wife is dieting. - The worst of marriage is that it makes a woman believe that all other men are just as easy to fool. - During courtship, you are always saying foolish things; during marriage, you are always doing them. - The man who is ahead of his time is probably waiting somewhere for his wife. - "How to be happy though Married". Title of a book, 1910 - A man in love is incomplete until he has married; then he's finished. - No one really knows what happiness is until marriage, and then its too late. - Men are always doomed to be duped. They are always courting goddesses, and marrying mere mortals. - No one asks a man how his marriage survives if he's away a lot. - You never hear of a man being asked how he manages to combine marriage with a career. - Few marriages are happy because women spend their time making nets instead of cages. - What is wit in a wife for, but to make a man a cuckold? - Marriage is much more necessary to a man than to a woman; for he is much less able to supply himself with domestic comforts. - At first a woman doesn't want anything but a husband, but just as soon as she gets one, she wants everything else. - If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never get married. - A man who marries a woman to educate her falls a victim to the same fallacy as the woman who marries a man to reform him. - For talk six times with the same single lady, And you may get the wedding dresses ready. - The woman cries before the wedding; the man afterward. - A man may weep on his wedding day. - Education never hurts a man, unless he marries the girl he meets at college. - What's the use of man's superior intelligence if it doesn't keep him out of marriage and other troubles? - Men are the weaker sex, not women; otherwise why are they afraid to get married? - SOME WORDS OF MINE ON MARRIAGE - - When a woman gets married her worries are over. When a man gets married his worries are just beginning. - One should speak of a woman marrying a husband, not a man. - It is better to have a power struggle before you get married to save you the trouble of getting married. - If you don't enjoy having to remember someone's birthday, then don't marry. - Familiarity breeds contempt. This is why the person you are married to behaves like a stranger. - When a couple experience the pain of a relationship for the first time it makes them feel as though they've been married for a hundred years. - A man who tries to understand a quarrel will never make a good husband. - You never divorce the person you marry. - You never marry the person you love. When you truly love someone you can't stand to be with them. - A man often marries a girl to preserve his belief that she could love no other. - I would never marry a woman who was foolish enough to assent to marriage. - Men sometimes prefer the humiliation of living with a girl to the humiliation of having to travel to see her. - Marriage involves a hell of a lot of time and hard work for what is only an occasional hug. - Marriage: in the end, just a team effort to do something unnecessary. - Marriage is an attempt to complete childhood. Thus in marriage we never fully become adults, for childhood must be grown out of, not completed. - If you are single and attached to the opposite sex, then three quarters of your mind is taken-up with them. This leaves only one quarter available to reason. With so little reason available to you, marriage is sure to follow. Now the whole of your mind is taken up with family - eliminating reason entirely! - Marriage makes a moron. - You don't know how different you are from somebody till you've married them. - A single woman seems corruptible, and a married man. - If I had met a woman who forced the issue as much as some men do, I might well have been forced into doing things I wanted to do - things which I didn't want to do a whole lot more . . . and I might now be married. - Marry: a word that makes a girl blush. - Marriage shows a lack of commitment - a lack of commitment to single life. - The most horrible way to die is being caught in a soft, silken mesh of happy marriage. - There's only one disease worse than AIDS, and that's marriage. - For talk six times with the same single man, Then stop him from leaving if you can. - "How to fail though single". Title for a book, 1991 - A lament often heard after two years of marriage: "I thought it would take a lifetime for us to be this disappointed." - There is no happier moment in a man's life than the moment he realizes that he doesn't have to get married. - You sometimes hear of a man marrying a woman to educate her, but never to reform her. Reform what? - No man worth knowing is true to his wife, or can be true to his wife, or ever was, or ever will be. He must be true to truth. - We should believe in marriage . . . to the extent that we believe in the existence of God. - When a fellow needs a friend he often gets a wife instead. - It destroys one's nerves to be amiable to the same person every day - especially when that person doesn't deserve it. - A married man cannot bear to be alone - it reminds him of how much he once had. - Who ever heard a good poem about the poet's wife? - Men, good at first, always end up being rude to their female companions. - Nothing hurts a man more deeply than the knowledge that the woman who stays with him does so not for the reason that he is the best man, but for the reason that he is the best man to look after her. - Marriage is about as exciting as the view inside a coffin. - The never-married have some kind of respect for the married, but the married cannot understand why. - It is said that a man should marry the kind of woman he would choose as a male friend. The problem is, a man is lucky if he ever meets a man worthy of being a friend, let alone a woman. - The type of man who gets married is precisely the type of man who should never marry. - A good man, always a bachelor, is a man who takes a woman's "No" to mean "No", and her silence to indicate a lack of conviction, which he respects. That's what makes him a bachelor. - Bachelors often court trouble, and sometimes end up marrying it. ************************************************************************** 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � � � - WIT FOR WISDOM - � � � � - File 3 (of 4) - � � � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � � � (C) Copyright 1991 by Kevin Solway � � � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 - ASSORTED JEWELS, SALVAGED FROM CRUMBLING PAGES - - Words are like leaves And where they most abound Much fruit and sense beneath is rarely found. - He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself in his own ink. - These days the greater part of whitewashing is done with ink. - Many a glib talker has a lot of depth on the surface but way down deep is very shallow. - Many a writer seems to think he is never profound except when he can't understand his own meaning. - He writes quickly, with the fluency of the artist who has nothing whatsoever to say. - What an author doesn't know usually fills a book. - You should read it, though there is much that is skipworthy. - It was a book to kill time, for those who like it better dead. - The ordinary man would rather read the life of the cruelest pirate that ever lived than the wisest philosopher. - There are two common ways to avoid thinking: one is to never read, and the other is to do nothing but read. - If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement on a bad invention. - The dictionary is like a Bible to the unenlightened writer. - In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody. - The reason so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything. - A pin has as much head as some authors, and a good deal more point. - . . . but to give an account of that subject would need a far less brilliant pen than mine. - The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read. - Literature is an occupation in which you have to prove your talent to people who have none. - I quite admit that modern novels have many good points. All I insist on is that, as a class, they are quite unreadable. - I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, but found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. Charles Darwin - It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information. - The success of many books is due to the affinity between the mediocrity of the author's ideas and those of the public. - The road to ignorance is paved with good editions. - There is no worse robber than a bad book. - The multitude of books is making us ignorant. - Always read between the lies. - An editor is one who separates the wheat from the chaff and prints the chaff. - He who wields a pen is in a state of war. - An authors first duty is to let down his country. What is one's country but a land to stop one's feet from getting wet? - Writing is one of the few professions left where you take all the responsibility for what you do. - It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. - I go on writing for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. - Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read; and the greater of these is the doing. - Being a writer is an aphrodisiac for women, for plain, intelligent women, but not all that intelligent. - For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it. - Some books are undeservedly forgotten, none are undeservedly remembered. - Anybody who doesn't like this book is healthy. - Wit sometimes enables us to act rudely with impunity. - Wit helps to play the fool with more confidence. - He was a master of paradox, but more often its slave. - Few of the many wise apothegms which have been uttered have prevented a single foolish action. - It is more trouble to make a maxim that it is to do right. - When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, it is a proof that it should be rejected. - He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind. - Pithy sentences are like the sharp nails which force truth upon our memory. - Some sentences release their poisons only after years. - The study of proverbs may be more instructive and comprehensive than the most elaborate scheme of philosophy. - Proverbs: the sanctuary of intuitions. - Proverbs are the flowers of the rhetoric of a vulgar man. - The wise make proverbs . . . and fools repeat them. - You can cram a truth into an epigram, the truth, never. - There's nothing so lively as a deadly epigram. - Epigrams cover a multitude of sins. - Aphorisms prick with the sharp point of truth, but usually with the sting removed. - A powerful idea communicates some of its power to the man who contradicts it. - The more you say, the less people remember. - Think much, speak little, and write less. - You can remove all the words from a brilliant thought. - We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the people do not read it, and consequently do not influence it. - To write prose, one must have something to say; but he who has nothing to say can still make verses and rhymes, where one word suggests the other, and at last something comes out which in fact is nothing but looks as if it were something. Goethe - If you find writing prose too boring you can always convert to poetry by starting each sentence with a capital letter, and making each paragraph a stanza, with each line ending on the margin except the last one. - Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand. - A poet is a person who simply cannot keep his confusion to himself. - The pearl is the disease of the oyster A poem is a disease of the spirit Caused by the irritation Of a granule of truth Fallen into that soft grey bivalve We call the mind. - Show me a poet and I'll show you a shit. - A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman. - I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. - Music is the brandy of the damned. - Music is essentially useless. - A great fondness for music is a mark of great weakness, great vacuity of mind: not of hardness of heart; not of vice; not of downright folly; but of a want of capacity, or inclination or sober thought. - We ought to have books teaching us not how to compose music but how to decompose it. - The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you are an artist. - No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did he would cease to be an artist. - To reveal art and conceal the artist, is arts aim. - To be natural is to be obvious. To be obvious is to be inartistic. - Art is to protect us from truth. - Of all lies, art is the least untrue. - It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art. - Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you've got it made. - Actors are no better than creatures set upon tables . . . to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs. - The girl who has half a mind to become an actress doesn't realize that that's what it requires. - For he who lives more lives than one, more deaths than one must die. - A learned man is an idler who kills time by study. - He not only overflowed with learning, he stood in the slop. - There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but no philosophers. - The philosopher who will not take the trouble to make himself clear shows only that he thinks his thoughts of no more than academic value. - Mediocre men often have the most acquired knowledge. - If I had read as much as other men, I should know no more than they. - Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching. - The scholar labours meticulously for years on end to produce his masterpiece - which the thinker destroys with a single sentence. - I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly. - A child miseducated is a child lost. - It is less painful to learn in youth than to be ignorant in age. - You can lead high school graduates to University, but you can't make them think. - Anyone who has ever been to school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. - Very few can be trusted with an education. - Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. - We do not know what education could do for us, because we have never tried it. - Education is what remains when we have forgotten all that we have been taught. - The average PhD thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another. - The college graduate is presented with a sheepskin to cover his intellectual nakedness. - Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated. - Zeal without knowledge is fire without light. - Knowledge and timber should not be much used until they be seasoned. - "The more articulate, the less said" is an old Chinese proverb which I just made up myself. - The prime purpose of eloquence is to keep other people from speaking. - If you think before you speak, the other fellow gets his joke in first. - Clarity is so clearly one of the attributes of truth that very often it passes for truth. - A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently. - We use ideas merely to justify our evil, and speech merely to conceal our ideas. - Language is sometimes used to conceal thought, but never in a domestic quarrel. - A man never becomes an orator if he has anything to say. - It is a good answer that knows when to stop. - I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage. Henry David Thoreau (1817-62) - Conversation is the art of telling people more than you know. - The average value of conversation could be enormously improved by the constant use of four simple words "I don't know". - If every man were straightforward in his opinions, there would be no conversation. - Blessed are they who have nothing to say, and who cannot be persuaded to say it. - No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you'll see why. - The reason people talk so much, is because if they didn't, their brains might start to work. - There is nothing so pedantic as pretending not to be pedantic. - . . . He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met. - Almost everything that is publicly said these days is recorded. Almost nothing of what is said is worth remembering. - One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts. - One's eyes are what one is; one's mouth is what one becomes. - Talk is not always cheap. - Talk as if you were making your will: the fewer words the less litigation. - The only successful substitute for brains is silence. - Silence is the wisdom of the fool. To make a noise is to be found out. - Remain silent and others suspect that you are ignorant; talk and you remove all doubt of it. - To one who knows the Truth, a moment's silence is a lifetime's wisdom. - A wise man's question contains half the answer. - The ignorant are aware of many mysteries and understand everything else, whereas the wise are aware of one mystery and understand nothing else. - In this world the wiser one is the more one suffers . . . obviously humans must have a low tolerance for suffering. - Some peoples thoughts are so shallow they don't even reach their heads. - Intelligence tests really do indicate those who have brains. Those who have don't take them. - What screens on television is an insult to the intelligence, but many never realize it. - Think before you think! - Nature didn't make us perfect so she did the next best thing. She made us blind to our faults. - Where logic sees contradiction, reason often sees none. - If ignorance is bliss then a lot of people are going to die of joy. - The ignorance of most people gives one a rough sense of the infinite. - His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - The real problem is not whether machines think but whether people do. - Things even up. Ignorance causes fear in one man, but courage in another. - A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep. - Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. - Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of the wise. - Most fools think they are only ignorant. - The fool wonders, the wise man asks. - You can fool too many of the people too much of the time. - Wise men learn more from fools than fools from wise men. - You can't depend on anyone to be wrong all the time. Even a fool must now and then be right by chance, just as a broken clock is correct twice a day. - Fools and wise men are equally harmless. It is the half-fools and the half-wise that are dangerous. - A fool and his guilt are soon parted. - A wise man can look ridiculous in the company of fools. - The praise of a fool is more harmful than his blame. - The proverb says that Providence protects children and idiots. This is really true. I know it because I have tested it. - The reason there's so much ignorance is that those who have it are so eager to share it. - There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence. - Ignorance is a virtue, when it is ignorance of art and love. - There is not enough darkness in the whole world to extinguish the light of a small candle. - The truth is so simple that it is regarded as pretentious banality. - When drunk, men often say sensible things which sound foolish to them when sober. - Truth exists for the wise; beauty for the feeling heart. - When a man knows Truth he has no need of mirrors because he sees himself perfectly at all times. - When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago. - Every man wherever he goes is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. - Experience is a wonderful thing, for it enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. - All habits gather, by unseen degrees, as brooks run to rivers, rivers run to seas. - To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be. - Habits are at first cobwebs; at last cables. - Habit is often mistaken for loyalty. - Motto: contented with little, yet wishing for more. - Be contented, when you have got all you want. - It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. - I have the simplest of tastes. I am always satisfied with the best. - Nothing succeeds like excess. Moderation is for monks. - Take care to get what you like, or you will end by liking what you get. - If you won't be better tomorrow than you were today, then what do you need tomorrow for? - If some people lived up to their ideals they would be stooping. - What we earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. - A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions. - Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. - The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear. - Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think. - Your character is built by what you stand for, your reputation by what you fall for. - Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power. - When the meek inherit the earth they cease being meek. - When no wind blows even the weathervane has character. - The Devil himself is good when he is pleased. - The man who has never been tempted doesn't know how dishonest he is. - The strongest man in the world is the man who stands alone. - Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself. - When we ask advice we are usually looking for an accomplice. - We live in a most unselfish era where hardly anyone is egotist enough to wish to do their own thinking. - If we meet no gods, it is because we harbour none. - My life is so habitualised I don't even know who I am anymore. - Debating with a priest is like being savaged by a dead sheep. - He is a sheep in sheep's clothing. - To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology. - Do not needlessly endanger your lives until I give you the signal. - The first among the flock is still a sheep. - Man is ready to die for an idea, provided that idea is not quite clear to him. - Only dead fish swim with the stream. - What if a man is buried alive from time to time? For every such person there are a hundred dead men walking the earth. - He's a man of great common sense and good taste - meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage. - Society is the process in which everyone fights all battles except the one that should be fought. - The length of life ought to be measured by the number and importance of our ideas and not by the number of our days. By this standard, some people have never been born. - I know of very few individuals who deserve to live. - Some people are alive simply because it's against the law to kill them. - Fame is proof that people are gullible. - "Be yourself" is the worst advice you can give some people. - To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue. - Of two evils, choose neither. - Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil. - Virtue is more to be feared than vice because it is not subject to the regulation of conscience. - What men call good fellowship is commonly but the Virtue of pigs in a litter which lie close together to keep each other warm. - Every man's happiness is built on the unhappiness of others. - Charity creates a multitude of sins. - Nothing costs so much as what is given us. - If there were a God, he would regard atheism to be less of an insult than religion. - I sometimes hope that I am wrong and God does exist, so that when I die I can tell him to his face what a fool he is. - There is not enough religion in the world even to destroy the world's religions. - No sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name of Jesus. - I must believe in Apostolic succession, there being no other way of accounting for the descent of the Pope from Judas Iscariot. - The greatest act of faith is when a man decides that he is not God. - For many, faith is a suitable substitute for knowledge, as death is for a difficult life. - I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose. - The only excuse for God is that He doesn't exist. - In religion we believe only what we do not understand, except in the instance of an intelligible doctrine that contradicts an incomprehensible one. In that case we believe the former as part of the latter. - Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. - Christian humility is preached by the clergy, but practiced only by the lower classes. - Scratch the Christian and you find the pagan, spoiled. - The vows taken by a Catholic priest make him unable to conceive children. They also make him unable to conceive the Truth. - The Christian lives in a nightmare and thinks it is a pleasant dream. - To the philosophic eye, the vices of the clergy are far less dangerous than their virtues. - One religion is as true as another. - We must accept the other fellows religion . . . to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful. - To be an apologist for religious values one must enjoy the aroma of stagnant water. To be an apologist for enlightened values one must become a part of the turbulent rapids of causality. - A man without a religion is like a fish without a bicycle. - The fellow who argues that all religions should unite probably doesn't speak to his brother-in-law. - All religions die of but one disease, that of being found out. - A theologian is like a blind man in a dark room searching for a black cat which isn't there - and finding it! - It's a happy bishop who hasn't got a saint in his diocese. - Most people are bothered by those passages of Scripture they do not understand . . . the passages that bother me are those I do understand. - Every burned book enlightens the world. - "The way he (George Bernard Shaw) believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many believe in no God at all." - Cleanliness is almost as bad as godliness. - Hell is paved with good intentions. All men mean well. - It's a great kindness to trust people with a secret. They feel so important while telling it. - My friends! There are no friends. - He who always finds fault with his friends has faulty friends. - Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer. - Friends are thieves of time. - A reconciled friend is a double enemy. - An invitation to a wedding involves more trouble than a summons to a police court. - With each friend you buy you get an enemy free. - To find a friend one must close one eye; to keep him - two. - Judge a man by his foes. - Know a man by the company he avoids. - The wise man is never less alone than when he is alone. - Have no illusions, people do not think about you, but of what you are thinking about them. - Vanity is the result of a delusion that someone is paying attention. - You can say what you want to around home because no one pays any attention to you. - All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others. - While each man loves himself more than anyone else, he sets less value on his own estimate than on the opinions of others. - Most celebrated men live in a condition of prostitution. - Science increases our power in proportion as it lowers our pride. - Man thinks he amounts to a great deal, but to a flea or a mosquito a human being is merely something good to eat. - I hate babies . . . they're so human . . . they remind me of monkeys. - The question is not whether man descended from the apes, but when he's going to quit descending. - Who'd want to be an adult in this world? The normal, relaxed, well-adjusted adult is constantly exhausting itself playing a thousand games - 250 of these are spent in frantic pursuit of what it wants; another 250 are spent trying to avoid what it does not want; a further 250 involve elaborate justifications, trying to give the whole process some semblance of respectability; and the final 250 entail the efforts of trying to appear normal, relaxed, and well-adjusted. - Chess is about as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find anywhere outside an advertising agency. - If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses. - There's a time when you have to explain to your children why they're born, and it's a marvelous thing if you know the reason by then. - You know children are growing up when they start asking questions that have answers. - All children are in danger of eternal damnation in Hell. - If a growing object is both fresh and spoiled at the same time, chances are it is a child. - We're all born brave, trusting and greedy, and most of us remain greedy. - The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children. - The youth gets together materials for a bridge to the moon, and at length the middle-aged man decides to make a woodshed with them. - By the time we arrive at middle age, we have settled on definite convictions, most of which are wrong. - The young suffer less from their own mistakes than from the wisdom of the old. - It never occurs to a boy of eighteen that he will some day be as dumb as his father. - It must be a very weary day to the youth, when he first discovers that after all he will only become a man. - I never dared be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old. - I am sick of society. I need solitude, isolation. My feelings are dried up, and I am bored with public display. I am tired of glory at twenty-nine; it has lost its charm; and there is nothing left for me but complete egotism. Napoleon - After thirty, a man wakes up sad every morning excepting perhaps five or six, until the day of his death. - At thirty a man suspects himself a fool - at forty he knows it. - Every man over forty is a scoundrel. - People quiet down as they grow older, probably because they have more to be quiet about. - It is so many years before one can believe enough in what one feels, even to know what the feeling is. - As soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all. - Next to the very young, the very old are the most selfish. - Only the young die good. - We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once. - Talking is a disease of age. - Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that happen to a man. - When you are over the hill, you pick up speed. - We are always happy in spring, but still there is a certain sadness. It looks as if everything were coming back except us. - It is a man's fate to keep growing older long after he is old enough. - The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young. - Few persons despair of the human race after looking in the mirror. - A man must have grown old - lived long in order to see how short life is. - The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom. - At twenty we don't care what the world thinks of us; at thirty we wonder what it thinks of us; at forty we discover it doesn't think of us at all. - At twenty a man is a peacock, at thirty a lion, at forty a camel; at fifty a serpent, at sixty a dog, at seventy an ape, at eighty nothing at all. - May you live all the days of your life. - Where are you dying tonight? - Television is immortality - for it is impossible to die in front of one, isn't it? - The money men make lives after them. - Last will and testament: a pathetic attempt at immortality. - Many men on the point of an edifying death would be furious if they were suddenly restored to health. - Reading the epitaphs, our only salvation lies in resurrecting the dead and burying the living. - The tombstones of a great many people should say: Died at thirty, buried at sixty. - No wise man ever wished to be younger. - What is time but the stuff delay is made of? - I am my own ancestor. - It is not true that life is one damn thing after another: it's one damn thing over and over. - The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but by newspapers and the Bible. - There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. - The Irish are a fair people; they never speak well of one another. - Next to death, the most infallible cure for a guilty conscience is success. - Nothing fails like success. - Nothing succeeds like failure. - Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue. - Success in almost any field depends more on energy, drive and persistence than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders. - Confidence is the feeling you sometimes have before you fully understand the situation. - Nothing makes you as sure of yourself as ignorance. - Confidence is the feeling you have before you know what you are talking about. - The mind of a confidence man is like a flash of lightning - swift and crooked. - Life is not so bad, if you have plenty of luck, and a good physique, and not too much imagination. - When the people applauded wildly, Diogenes turned to one of his friends and said "Have I said something foolish?" - Diogenes struck the father when the son swore. - A practical man is a man who practices the errors of his forefathers. - Men are conservative after dinner. - Cause and effect are two sides of one fact. - All generalizations are dangerous, even this one. - Criticism is never inhibited by ignorance. - Each generation of critics does nothing but take the opposite of the truths accepted by their predecessors. - The lot of critics is to be remembered by what they failed to understand. - I am long on ideas, but short on time. I expect to live to be only about a hundred. - The place where optimism most flourishes is in the lunatic asylum. - A casual stroll through a lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything. - Where there's a will there's a why. - Doubt makes the mountain for faith to move. - Only the poor are forbidden to beg. - A rich man and his daughter are soon parted. - Appearance is an important factor in earning money, and vice versa. - Time is money if you are willing to sell your life. - I cannot afford to waste my time making money. - To be clever enough to make a lot of money, one must be stupid enough to want it. - Money costs too much. - What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more. - The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people. - A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. - In this world it is not what we take up, but what we give up that makes us rich. - There are no dollar signs on tombstones. - No man ever said on his deathbed: "I wish I had spent more time on my business." - Money is the fruit of evil as often as the root of it. - Nobody has money who ought to have it. - God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind person he selects to receive it. - It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. - Most people sell their souls and live with a good conscience on the proceeds. - A lot of men think that if they smile for a second, somebody will take advantage of them, and they are right. - Originality is undetected plagiarism. - Plagiarism is sometimes unrecognized originality. - Taking something from one man and making it worse is plagiarism. - Everything has been thought of before; the problem is to think of it again. - The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. - Sometimes you can tell by watching a person what kind of a past he is going to have. - Disobedience in the eyes of any one who has read history is man's original virtue. - History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions. T.H Huxley - History may be divided into events which do not matter and events which probably never happened. - The historian is a prophet looking backwards. - All history is the propaganda of the victorious. - Every man of us has all the centuries in him. - What is evil? - Whatever springs from weakness. - No man is clever enough to know all the evil he does. - There's only one thing that can continue to grow without nourishment: the human ego. - He is as good as his word - and his word is no good. - Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long. - The human race will die of civilization. - Civilization is a good idea - somebody ought to start it. - The man who lives by himself and for himself is apt to be corrupted by the company he keeps. - I have no relish for the country, it is a kind of healthy grave. - A thing of beauty is a great expense. - The fellow who never makes a mistake takes his orders from someone who does. - To err may be human, but to admit it isn't. - Some people have such open minds that nothing stays in them long. - The trouble with men who profess to have "open minds" is that nothing seems to take advantage of the openings. - There is a difference between an open mind and a hole in the head. - It is a pity that people travel in foreign countries; it narrows their minds so much. - Many a man thinks he is broadening his mind when he is merely stretching his conscience. - I am an idealist: I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way. - Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. George Bernard Shaw - He who slings mud generally loses ground. - You cannot humiliate a hog by throwing mud at him. - I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing. - He that hath ears to hear, let him stuff them with cotton. - Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side. - The best way of answering a bad argument is to let it go on. - If you are dealing with a fool, dictate, but never argue. - It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument. - The surest sign that you have no brains is to argue with one who hasn't. - The man who listens to reason is usually thinking of some way to refute it. - If someone says they agree with you in principle, it means they haven't the slightest intention of putting it into practice. - A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular. - So far as a man thinks, he is free. - The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving any excuse. - I must decline your invitation owing to a subsequent engagement. - I beg your pardon, I didn't recognize you - I've changed a lot. - Freedom produces jokes and jokes produce freedom. - When humour is meant to be taken seriously, it's no joke. - Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover about everybody's face but their own. - Don't trust first impulses - they are always good. - Few of us are brave enough for what we really know. - Somebody's boring me . . . I think it's me. - I am always embarrassed by compliments - I always feel that they have not said enough. - Conceit causes more conversation than wit. - Modesty died when clothes were born. - Whoever blushes seems to be good. - Whoever blushes is already guilty; true innocence is ashamed of nothing. - It is better for a young man to blush than to turn pale. Better a blush on a face than a blot on the heart. - Blush: a weakness of youth and an accomplishment of experience. - Women rouge that they may not blush. - Flattery is obnoxious to all except the flattered. - Many a good face Under a ragged hat. - Efficiency is a highly developed form of laziness. - Never learn to do anything. If you don't you'll always find someone else to do it for you. - What is worth doing is worth the trouble of asking somebody to do it. - I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top. - It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all. - Early to bed and early to rise and you'll meet very few of our best people. - Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy, wealthy, and dead. - It may make a difference to all eternity whether we do right or wrong today. - Never do today what you can do tomorrow. Something may occur to make you regret your premature action. - It is well to put off until tomorrow what you ought not to do at all. - Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it. - There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all. - Invention is the mother of necessity. - Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o' clock is a scoundrel. - The worm was punished for early rising. - Nothing helps a person's complexion like putting it to bed before 2.30 A.M. - The sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try and make oneself useful. - A man who is very busy seldom changes his opinions. - The line is often busy when your conscience tries to speak. - My duty is a thing I never do, on principle. - When a man claims that he is working toward the betterment of humanity - and humanity agrees - you can be sure he is not. - Many a man works hard and saves money so that his sons won't have the disadvantages that made a man of their father. - Work is the curse of the drinking classes. - If you are good, you'll be assigned all the work. If you are really good, you'll get out of doing it. - It is, no doubt, an immense advantage to have done nothing, but one should not abuse it. - Many a man holds both day and night jobs so he can drive from one to the other in a more expensive car. - Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do with their time. - Work is a form of nervousness. - I do not like work even when another person is doing it. - The lazy man gets round the sun as quickly as the busy one. - Industry is the root of all ugliness. - A man is known by the company that keeps him. - Nobody enjoys idleness unless they've plenty of work to do. - The one person who has more illusions than the dreamer is the man of action. - Action is the last resource of those who know not how to dream. - People who like to be referred to as dreamers are too often merely sleepers. - Actions lie louder than words. - Every great action is extreme. - One will seldom go wrong if one attributes extreme actions to vanity . . . - Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. - The only man who can change his mind is a man that's got one. - Many a man fails to become a thinker for the sole reason that his memory is too good. - People with good memories seldom remember anything worth remembering. - Everyone complains of his memory, but no one complains of his judgement. - Light travels inconceivably fast until it encounters the human mind. - You can make the average man mad by referring to him as the average man. - Little minds are interested in the extraordinary; great minds in the commonplace. - To be rational is so glorious a thing that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title. - Emotion has taught mankind to reason. - My reason is not framed to bend or stoop; my knees are. - All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified. - It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. - It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. - Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither. - If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out. - If you tell the truth once, no one will ever believe you again, no matter how much you lie. - I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood. - If you want to be thought a liar always tell the truth. - I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe. - My desire, without any wish to make anybody's hair stand on end or flesh creep, is to call a spade a spade. - An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. - Nobody minds a clever man, as long as he does not impart his cleverness to others. - If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang him. - Anyone who has begun to think places some portion of the world in jeopardy. - Take care that no one hates you justly. - I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unreasonable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect. - There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true. - All thought is immoral. Nothing survives being thought of. - The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it. - Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. - A truth ceases to be true when more than one person believes in it. - You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it. But let all you tell be truth. - A half-truth is seldom the better half. - Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied upon in a newspaper. - My way of joking is to tell the truth; it's the funniest joke in the world. - When a thing is funny, search it for a hidden truth. - If you always speak the truth you don't have to remember anything. - A little truth helps the lie go down. - Much truth is spoken, that more may be concealed. - Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true. - I never lied save to shield a woman - or myself. - A conclusion is the place where you get tired of thinking. - There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. - Ignorance is preferable to error and he is less remote from truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is false. - To have no morals at all is better than to have bad ones. - Every man has a right to be wrong in his opinions. But no man has a right to be wrong in his facts. - Most people who flee from temptation usually leave a forwarding address. - The trouble with resisting temptation is it may never come again. - The follies which a man most regrets in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity. - Better murder an infant in its cradle than nurse an unacted desire. - A good time is often a bad time held up. - Pleasures are like flowers: they die when gathered. - Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex. - Smiles form the channels of a future tear. - Life would be tolerable but for its amusements. - A metaphor is something you shout. - The moment you have a plan you cease to be a revolutionary. - I have yet to see a problem, however complicated, which, when you look at it in the right way, did not become more complicated. - Socialism is the capitalism of the lower classes. - Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires some sense to tell a lie well. - If computers get too powerful we can always organize them into a committee. - No poet ever interpreted Nature as freely as a lawyer interprets truth. - For most, life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. - Thought is never thrown away: wherever it falls, or runs, or rests, it fertilizes. - The purest water runs from the hardest rock. Neither worth nor wisdom come without effort. - No two things in Nature have less affinity than violence and reflection. - The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history. - Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for. - The superior man is distressed by his want of ability. - Great men grow tired of contentedness. - Few great men could pass Personnel. - If you are afraid of being lonely, don't try to be right. - If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things. - Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks; they are the summits of ranges. - To do an evil act is base. To do a good one without incurring danger, is common enough. But it is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds though he risks everything in doing them. - You can't cheat an honest man. - I have solved practically all the pressing questions of our time, but they keep on being propounded as insoluble, just as if I never existed. - I have nothing to declare except my genius. (Oscar Wilde's response to an American customs official) - Genius is born, not paid. - Genius borrows nobly. - Genius is an infinite capacity for giving pains. - Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. Their cousins can tell you nothing about them. - In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. - Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself, but talent instantly recognizes genius. - To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent. To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius. - Genius learns from nature, its own nature. Talent learns from art. - Talent is an infinite capacity for imitating genius. - If you think the world is against you - it doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't. - Those who never philosophised until they met with disappointments, have mostly become disappointed philosophers. - The sun is shining all around, but there are some who will only contemplate their own shadow. - Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it. - In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either. - Children are afraid of being left in the dark; men are afraid of not being left in it. - If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. If you really make them think, they'll hate you. - I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. - The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. - It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right. - Judge men not by their opinions, but by what their opinions have made them. - I wish I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours. - Self-love seems so often unrequited. - I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. - The worst thing about war is that it seldom kills off the right people. - A nation is only at peace if it's at war. - All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. - Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime. - The morals of today are the immorals of yesterday, the creeds of tomorrow. ----------------------- Celia Green . . . . - The question is whether anyone has ever been in any serious way, not sane. I have examined the history of the human race with care. Kant gives the impression that he liked the inconcievable, but his books were too long; Einstein was interested in the Universe, but was bad at psychology; H.G Wells saw that research consisted of taking risks, but declined into sociology. My best candidates, therefore, are Nietzsche and Christ. It may be objected that their ideas cannot possibly be of interest, since one went mad and the other was crucified. However, I think we should not hold this against them: they may have felt a trifle isolated. - The most distinctive expression of Nietzsche's thought is contained in "Thus spake Zarathustra", and in the first few pages of it at that. Nietzsche sometimes confused his psychological ideas with social or political ones, particularly in books other than Zarathustra. This kind of mistake is easily made by a person who has been brought up in a sane world. - "Love thy neighbour as thyself": In fact, everyone does love their neighbour as themselves. They desire that he shall accept second-best as they have done; that he, too, shall be made to realize his limitations and "come to terms with himself". - The human race is so megalomaniac; they think you're being conceited if you say you're better than everybody else. - A human relationship is what happens when you know you can rely on the other person to be as dishonest as you are. - The object of the educational system is to make the child feel guilty for the harm that has been done to him. - I decided to postulate infinitely many dimensions on grounds of economy of hypotheses. - The human race's favourite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them. - The human race knows enough about thinking to prevent it. - The human race expresses great concern that everyone should express their abilities to the full, and never more so than when those abilities are non-existent. - One of the greatest superstitions of our time is the belief that it has none. - Science arose by accident in the brief space when one great orthodoxy was loosening its hold and the new great orthodoxy had not yet reached its full strength. The first orthodoxy was that of religion which dominated the dark ages. The second orthodoxy is that of the belief in society, which is dominating the dark age now beginning. - Earning a living is regarded as moral. This is because a person who is answerable only to himself may or may not be wasting his time; an employed person is certain to be. - Job satisfaction consists of knowing that you are not actually doing anything to increase any one elses freedom. - It cannot be said that the movement known as the Women's Liberation shows any real recognition of the conditions actually necessary for any sort of genuinely intellectual activity. What appears to be the issue is that it is recognized that the position of man has not, in the changing social situation, deteriorated as radically as that of woman, and the solution envisaged appears to be to see that it does. The women concerned appear determined to demonstrate as thoroughly as possible their identification with precisely those psychological attitudes which have always prevented women from achieving anything. - Women are the last people to be trusted with children. Those who have repressed their own aspirations will scarcely be tolerant of the aspirations of others. - Marriage: there are less painful ways to commit suicide. - Men are children at heart and women are not. Women abandoned themselves to society. - Women are like sane people in general - you can't imagine how they can bear to be like it but the last thing they want is to be told how to stop. - Only the impossible is worth attempting. One is sure to fail at anything else. - The object of modern science is to make all aspects of reality equally boring, so that no one will be tempted to think about them. - If you stand up to the human race you lose something called their "goodwill"; if you kowtow to them you gain . . . their permission to continue kowtowing. - Society expresses its sympathy for the geniuses of the past to distract attention from the fact that it has no intention of being sympathetic to the geniuses of the present. - Equality: It is easier to make people appear equally stupid than to make them appear equally clever. - Democracy: everyone should have an equal opportunity to obstruct everybody else. - In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way. - With communism you can indulge your desire for power over other peoples' lives more directly than if you became a witch doctor or a social worker. What is unacceptable about capitalism is that it makes it possible for some people, sometimes, to do things that the collective does not want done. - I cannot write long books; I leave that for those people who have nothing to say. - Humility means (to the human race) to desire only what you can easily have. - Society, they say, exists to safeguard the rights of the individual. If this is so, the primary right of a human being is evidently to live unrealistically. - In the world there is nothing but prose and dishonesty. ************************************************************************** 旼컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴커 � � � - WIT FOR WISDOM - � � � � - File 4 (of 4) - � � � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � - MENU - � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � 1. Some gems of my own. � � 2. The thinking man's dictionary. � � 3. A final word. � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � Press 1..3 or scroll through � � the text at your leisure. � 쳐컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴캑 � � � (C) Copyright 1991 by Kevin Solway � � � 읕컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴켸 - SOME GEMS OF MY OWN - - Beauty is in the blindness of the believer. - Nowadays we live lives of length and quality but no value. - Quoting oneself is a sign of supreme humility. - I write in quotes. You can quote me on that. - I write for writers. If my words do not inspire my reader to bring his thoughts to life on paper, then I am no writer. - It is an easy thing to be a great writer, if you simply write the truth regardless of what anybody thinks - the truth everyone had once suspected but had been persuaded by society to look the other way. - The more you write, the more material you provide others to disregard you with. If you must write a lot, at least do it in small and dangerous bits that are hard to domesticate. - I would rather it were asked how I did not get published than how I did. - Writing is a lot like computer programming; grammar is the syntax, paragraphs are procedures, and the compiler is the human brain. - Some write for publication, while others want to write something worth reading. - I doubt the value of my having a book published because of the many grubby hands it will have to pass through before it reaches a worthy ready. - To get published these days you need to be a salesman, not a writer. - I do not particularly want to write more than aphorisms - not if just to show that I really mean them. - My greatest joy is bringing the immortals back to life. - It is my aim in life to say things I will never hear. - Good prose is only aphorisms joined end to end. - Words often mean more when one doesn't know who wrote them: one suspects they may have come from God. - Too much polishing weakens a work. A few rough edges are needed to gain a purchase in the human mind. - There is a threshold quality and number of aphorisms at which point they become wisecracks. - If a person calls himself an aphorist one suspects he is more interested in composing witty sentences than thinking about the meaning of them. - Aphorisms are malicious. To effect a change of heart requires love also. - The fault of aphorisms is that they often don't have any more to say. - Half of all epigrams exaggerate, and this is one of them. - No one can ever defeat me in argument because I stick to a subject they know nothing about - the truth. And I don't get led into and bogged-down by irrelevancies. - The advantage of concentrating on the effectiveness of one's speaking voice is that one cannot at the same time concentrate on the truth of what one is saying. - It is difficult to think deeply once you are renowned as a deep thinker - unless you are as deep as space. - Irrationality is the larger part of our inhumanity. - A statement which reminds me of feminine logic: "Life is a continuum which begins at conception." - A rational reason is a reason that agrees with reason. - There is only one thing more intellectually frightening than watching a sick and violent movie, and that's watching the rapture on the faces of the people watching it. - The heart is wiser than the intellect - says the heart. - The way to a man's heart is through his ignorance. - If there's one thing more daring than reading in public that's writing in public. - It is often undignified to die with dignity - too often cowardly and deceptive. Cowardice and deception are a cruel legacy. - Parents would rather their son be a salesman than a saint. - I can never seem to stop plagiarizing myself and being unoriginal. When I write down an idea I shamelessly copy it out of my mind, which has already had the idea . . . I seem to be a parasite off the past. - Others often better express myself. - Essentials for wisdom: Nothing to do, no one to love, and nothing to hope for. - It is dangerous to think you know everything if you are deceiving yourself. - A cup of tea gives a wise man time to think and a fool something warm to put in his mouth. - Tea drinkers often measure their lives with tea spoons. - A man should avoid tea, women, and all other slop-kettle. - The fact that a man dies does not prove that he lives. - People will only stay alive if they have something important to live for - like their birthday. - You will only see the animal side of a person after knowing them for about five seconds. - It seems so calculating to remember a person's name the first or second time one hears it. - A badly dressed person may or may not be a bum, but a well dressed person is surely bad. - The way people dress reflects what they think, and it nearly always reflects nothing at all. - If a person cares for their appearance it means they are a manipulative coward. In other words, a respectable citizen well worth knowing, just like us. - I heard a young journalist say: "It is difficult to judge what is newsworthy because it is hard to determine what the public regards as news." - One is not afraid of dying tonight, but of growing old without having achieved one's goals. - Society has declined to such a degree that nowadays very few people doze-off at inopportune times. - Anyone who thinks there is some good in everyone certainly hasn't met everyone, and probably doesn't know anyone very well. - Many Christians are astounded to learn that some people still believe in evolution. - The only evidence against evolution are its opponents. - To argue with a Christian is like sparring with a dead sheep. - The practice of honesty is more convincing than the practice of religion. - There is nothing more futile than debunking religion, the reason being that religion is not upheld because it is true, but because it is thought to be useful. - The only good thing to be learnt from religion is not to be so gullible. - If you know which writings are authentic Scripture and which are not, then you know enough to write Scripture yourself. - Goodness plus ignorance makes one Devil. - The road to Hell is paved with Bibles. - Even God doesn't have free will. - God may forgive you your sins, but destiny will not. - The only certain proof of the existence of God is a personal experience of Him - provided one can be sure He is not the Devil in disguise. - God is a pauper: He has nothing to believe in - no higher power - nothing. God in Heaven is irreligious, without faith, and . . . shame upon shame . . . does whatever He pleases. - To spell the word "Devil" with a lower case "d" is to underestimate Him, giving the impression that God cannot help but win, which leads to a fatal complacency. - It is said: "Even the Devil can quote Scripture." I tell you, even the Devil can write Scripture! - The best thing about Christians is that they're not serious about their religion, unlike Muslims. - The inside of a church or temple smells of dying souls - the incense of ignorance. - Christian humility: "It is not me who is saying this is true, but God. I only claim to know that God said it, and that He was right." - Priests are living proof that women should never be allowed to enter the clergy. - I am certain that there is no life after death because I have experienced it. - Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith in the value of truth. - Music appears the most innocent of passions, but no passion goes unpunished. - Masturbation is bad because it is a pleasure that is not shared with others. Marriage is bad because it too is a pleasure that is not shared with others. One's very own self is bad if it is not shared with all others. - All dogmatism is sinful. - Personal opinions are worth nothing, that's my personal opinion. - I despise judgemental people. There's no hope for them. - The difference between a real philosopher and a fake is that the fake has a wisp of hair neatly combed over his bald crown as if to cover it, while the real philosopher's wisp of hair is in disarray. - The more a wise man makes you laugh, and the more he cautions you to doubt him, the more suspicious you should be. - Blessed is he who has made it through University without being made a fool of. - A man is honest who reads the books he himself wrote in order to learn from someone who is more wise than himself. - We no longer read the great books of the past because it appears uncreative. - The thing I hate most about Americans is that ninety percent of them believe in God. - Sport is a great leveller, but then so is death. - Compliments are more readily believed when they are unbelievable. An element of truth in a compliment would tend to arouse feelings of guilt concerning the stretching the truth. - No man is scared of truth who never really hears it, never makes it a part of himself, never speaks it or promotes it in the world. The Devil Himself is unafraid of truth. Clearly it is not enough to be unafraid of truth - one must be disgusted with untruth. One who is only lukewarm in his feelings towards untruth has no love of truth, and is no friend of God. - The one thing out of place in any argument is reason: it is considered unrealistic. - To use reason against an opponent is a bit like trying to exhume a body from the grave with a hail of bullets. Your opponent will be totally unaware you are trying to help him. - If you can't live by philosophy alone, then die by it. - Science is 10,000 years behind philosophy. Theology is 10,000 years behind that. - No one ever thought to give awards for wisdom, which is a great relief. - The enlightened people of the new-age love everything, even lies. - It is impossible not to tell the occasional lie once you conform to a normal social life . . . you feel that one more lie on top of a veritable mountain of lies will not make any difference. - It is unreasonable to try to reason with unreasonable people. - I hate people calling me wise, for when I hear that word I am forced to consider truth, I become wise, and my pride vanishes. - Whoever said that imagination was strongest in youth? I have found that imagination is most strong in the elderly, who have the most to forget. - The true man is harsh because honesty is harsh. He doesn't see any reason for softness, because softness is mendacious. - Fallacy will get you everywhere. - Truth may kill a man, but he dies with dignity. And if the human race goes extinct, let it be for truth and not for the cowardice of ignorance. - When I was a boy of fourteen my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand him. It was only when I turned twenty-one that I realized how astonishingly wise I was even back then. - My mind possesses only a fraction of one percent of all possible knowledge, but that fraction includes everything that can ever be known about God and life. - Those who have the mental clarity to see things from other people's point of view are invariably accomplished manipulators. - Nowadays a child is brought-up by everyone except his parents. - These days children bring up parents. - When you reach the age of thirty you will have forfeited the chance to make yourself into a person worth listening to - but people will at last listen to you. - A socialist is someone who wants a slice of another person's excessive wealth. A conservative is an excessively wealthy person who doesn't want to share it. - Am I a capitalist if I want to increase the intellectual and spiritual capital of mankind? - That which a person doesn't believe in enough to write in prose can be comfortably written in poetry. The reason being that poets are not held responsible for what they write and are not taken seriously, so there is no risk. - Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason before reason has done enough damage. - The trouble with poetry that rhymes is that the rhyme often dictates the meaning of the poem, or the lack of meaning more usually. - In a shameless person the writing of aphorisms can descend to the depths of poetry writing, where the words suggest themselves at least as much as does the idea behind them, and so create a new idea, which is not a genuine idea. - A good writer is one whose thought develops his writing. A bad writer is one whose writing develops his thought. - He who speaks longest goes furthest in this world. - He who asks questions excludes himself from the conversation. - A good conversation is one where you either say or hear something worth remembering. - Longevity: My body may not live long, but I will live no less than a thousand years. - Egotism is one substance with two faces - love and hatred. - If you understand that people do not care about the survival of the human race it is more easy to understand why they behave the way they do. - I am too wise to be a sage. - That which is best for peoples' happiness is rarely what is best for their minds. - You can't listen to anyone younger than thirty. You can't reason with anyone older than twenty-five. - If you're going to become a monk You may as well get married. - Better unhappy and joyful Than happy and miserable. - I'm not happy to want to be happy. - Clear of conscience, clear of thought. - Two kinds of people do not blink - madmen and gods. - It is not hard to foretell wars and famines. It is impossible to stop them. - There would be no war if there were no history. - The only way to stop a war is to outlaw the truth. - Peace wets the appetite of war. - A book can get inside your mind and heart far better than any friend, so take more care in choosing your books than your friends. - All people over thirty are the same mental age. - Nobody wishes to grow older than thirty - the age of diminishing returns. - Nobody is intellectually honest. Sometimes people are emotionally honest, the only problem being that emotions can never be honest. - Wit is an infinite capacity for wit. Anything said in a short sentence sounds wise. - Everyone has free will, but some have more than others. - The older one gets, the more one is allowed to over-act. The elderly are excused for giving-up the fight for dignity. - Australians cut down tall poppies, which makes them almost as fair-minded as the Irish. - There is no such thing as a pessimist. One has to have an incredibly positive attitude to see the negative in everything. - Positive thinking is the triumph of negative forces. - I find that round shoulders often make a person seem taller, while those who stand tall seem small. - Confidence is the feeling you have before you know what you are setting into motion. - If time is money then the less you work the more wealthy you are. - What you do with your life determines what you will be as a person. This is why I do not work. - If I worked as much as others I would do as little as they. - You can never know how lazy you really are till you stop working. - Being on the dole is as dark as being in work, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. - A man who has a million dollars feels as well off as if he were not a fool. - Some people gather a lot of money thinking it will make them worth more. - One should not seek to be of value to society any more than one would wish to be popular with a fool. - If I was appreciated along with other men I would depreciate myself. - The danger of success is . . . it is not. - The danger in being valued by society is that it might lead you to think that you are contributing to it. - Busy people think that a busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life. - Nobody wants to take responsibility for the survival of the human race because it would involve being unsociable. - Beware being able to do many things well, but nothing that needs doing. - One can be competent and successful without being clever. One can be competent, successful and very clever without being imaginative and original. One can be competent, successful, very clever, imaginative and original without being wise. But one cannot be wise without a courage that encompasses the Universe. - To be a success in life all you need is confidence and ignorance. - One generally learns to express oneself well at the expense of knowledge and dignity. - It's hell living in paradise. - A very clever man does not need to hide his cleverness. - There are three kinds of lies: lies, truths, and statistics. - The perfectly wise never laugh, nor feel the need to laugh. But the imperfect must laugh if they will become perfect. Having said that, I am not convinced that anyone has, as yet, become perfect - I don't think we laugh seriously enough - not painfully enough. Humour only hurts when it strikes us as too true to be able to let out the whole of the laugh. - It is not important whether you are remembered when you die, but rather that you have done something worth remembering. - People no longer study for self improvement. - Tell me what you believe and I'll tell you where you're going wrong. - A bad man is judged innocent until proven guilty, and a saint is judged guilty, guilty, guilty. - We make more enemies by what we say than friends by what we do. Therefore wise men say much, be it in few words, while fools say little, very cautiously, and at great length. - If one wishes to think for a few hours of each day, one must use the remaining hours to rest-up in preparation. - I haven't read much, but what I have read I've read a lot. - Advice to spiritual men: Before you traipse off to help and encourage some wise-looking girl, consider first whether there is not some man close by of still more potential, but of less appeal. - Cosmetics are dehumanizing. They make us look and smell cosmetic. - It is a consolation for any person to know that if he were attractive he would be liked as much as other people. - Everybody who is incapable of teaching has taken up learning. - Even the person who doesn't want to yield to temptation cannot resist the temptation of temptation itself. - Stop short of the absolute and the times of greatest hope are the best you can hope for. - THE THINKING MAN'S DICTONARY - (Being the plain truth) (*) indicates those written by myself Absence: that which makes the heart grow fonder - of somebody else. Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. Abyss: the distance between truth and sanity. (*) Academics: those employed by their peers to produce papers and books of references to their peers. (*) Accident: an inevitable occurrence due to the action of immutable natural laws. Adherent: a follower who has not yet obtained all that he expects to get. Admiration: (1) ignorance. (2) our polite recognition of someone else's resemblance to ourselves. Adult: an obsolete child. Advertising: (1) the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket. (2) the art of making whole lies out of half truths. Affection: a woman's whole life. Altruism: (1) mowing your neighbour's lawn. (2) the art of doing unselfish things for selfish reasons. Amusement: the happiness of those that cannot think. Anxiety: that which provides us with something to think about while watching television. Ape: an animal with the effrontery to resemble man. Apology: (1) to repeat an insult with variations. (2) the foundation for a future offense. Art: (1) lying, and the telling of beautiful untrue things. (2) artlessness. Articulate: unaware of the foolishness of what one is saying. (*) Artist: one who doesn't see things as they are, but as he is. Atheism: (1) the vice of a few intelligent people. (2) one point beyond the Devil. Atheist: (1) one who has no invisible means of support. (2) beloved of God. (*) (3) one who knows he was not merely created. (*) Author: one who has his head in the clouds and his feet behind the sales counter. Autumn: a time when the hills put out weeds. Beauty: the feminine of intellect. (*) Bed: the place where marriages are decided. Best-seller: the gilded tomb of a mediocre talent. Bigot: a blind man with sight. Bishop: the politician of Churches. Bohemian: (1) a person who works to live but does not live to work. (2) a person open to the suspicion of irregular and immoral living. (3) a person conventionally unconventional. Books: (1) a screen to keep us from a knowledge of things. (2) either dreams or swords. Boredom: (1) the desire for desires. (2) what happens when we lose contact with the Universe. Boy: a cross between a god and a goat. Brain: (1) an apparatus with which we think that we think. (2) an appendage of the genital glands. Bravery: an accident of circumstance. Businessman: (1) one who has all the air, the distraction and restlessness and hurry of . . . a criminal. (2) one who is too lazy to do anything noble. Caution: cowardice. Ceremony: ignorance. Character: what history knows of us. (*) Charity: that which deals with symptoms instead of causes. Charm: the power to make someone else feel that both of you are wonderful. Cheat: the girl who loves you back. (*) Child: (1) love's by-product. (2) one who stands halfway between an adult and a t.v set. Childhood: the period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth - two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age. Child prodigy: a child who knows as much when it is a child as it does when it grows up. Children: a great comfort in your old age - and they help you reach it faster, too. Chivalry: the deportment of a man toward any woman not his wife. Christian: (1) one who follows the teachings of Christ insofar as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin. (2) one who makes atheism more appealing. (*) (3) one who is an atheist only in fair weather. (*) Christianity: (1) the paganization of monotheism. (2) the Femme Fatale of all religions. (3) the Devil's imitation of a quality of evil he can only imagine. (*) Circumstance: what determines all our thoughts and acts. Civilization: (1) a coat of paint that washes away when the rain falls. (2) the time when men learn to live off one another instead of off the land. Clairvoyant: a person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron - namely, that he is a blockhead. Classics: primitive literature. Clock: a reminder that you still have a lot of time left. Clothes: (1) remembrances of our lost innocence. (2) wrappings worn by men for warmth, women for spite, and children because they have to. (3) the reflection of one's self respect (lack of). Comedian: a man on the slow slide to oblivion. Comedy: an escape, not from truth but from despair: a narrow escape into faith. Commerce: the school of cheating. Committee: a group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary. Common-sense: the reason so many people can be wrong at the same time. Communism: the opiate of the intellectuals. Communist: a frustrated capitalist. Commuter: one who spends his life in riding to and from his wife. Compromise: an ignoble truce between the duty of a man and the terror of a coward. Conceit: worst when it is not. (*) Conscience: (1) an inner voice that warns us somebody is looking. (2) the voice of men in man. (3) cowardice. Conservatism: (1) a bag with a hole in it. (2) organized hypocrisy. (3) preserving the past for no reason whatsoever. (*) (4) preserving the best from the past without knowing what is best. (*) Conservative: (1) a statesman who is enamoured of existing evils, as distinguished from the liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. (2) one who is in office. (3) one who can't see the difference between radicalism and an idea. (4) men who have learned to like the new order forced upon them by radicals. Contentment: (1) moral laziness, the epitome of depravity. (2) the smother of invention. (3) being satisfied with what you haven't got. (4) the best powder for women's faces. Coquetry: innocent cruelty. Corruption: everything we see before us today. Courage: (1) doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're afraid. (2) a quality no one admits he lacks totally. Courtesy: (1) fictitious benevolence. (2) a gift notable in well-bred people and courtesans. Coward: sinner. Cowardice: the surest protection against temptation. Creed: (1) an ossified metaphor. (2) the shell of a lie. (3) the grammar of religion. Crime: to publish a book that offers nothing absolutely new, or which is no better than existing books - being a backwards step. (*) Criminal: someone who gets caught. Criticism: the art of appraising others at one's own value. Critics: people who quarrel over the meaning of books that don't have any. (*) Crowd: wherever there is . . . untruth. Culture: (1) reading. (2) anything that people do and monkeys don't. Cunning: a characteristic of animals which is called discretion in men. Curiosity: hope. Custom: a tyrant. Cynic: (1) a man who tells you the truth about your own motives. (2) a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be. (3) one who looks down on those below him. (*) (4) one who went without when God was handing out congeniality to lies. (*) (5) one who is cynical about cynics. (*) Cynicism: (1) a euphemism for realism. (2) intellectual dandyism. Damsel: a female who prepares a man for marriage. Dawn: the time when men of reason go to bed. Dead: the majority. Death: the bursting of a cell. Debate: the death of discussion. (*) Democracy: (1) a condition where people believe that other people are as good as they are. (2) a political system where votes substitute for brains. (3) mob rule. Devil: compromise. Die: to leave off dying and do the thing once for all. Dignity: the absence of love. (*) Diplomat: (1) one who has learned that you can't bend a nail by hitting it squarely on the head. (2) forever poised between a cliche and an indiscretion. (3) one who thinks twice before he says nothing. Disciple: ciphers. Discontent: comparison. Discretion: to be indiscreet discreetly. Disobedience: the rarest and most courageous of virtues. . . seldom distinguished from neglect; the laziest and commonest of virtues. Dreamer: one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world. Dreams: children of an idle brain. Eccentricity: originality without sense. Education: (1) capacity for further education. (2) all the minds of the past. (3) that which shows a person how little other people know. (4) persuasion. (5) that which has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. (6) a process which makes one rogue cleverer than another. (7) to reverence superiority and accept a fact though it slay him is the final test of an educated man. (8) something that puts one almost on a level with the commercial classes. Egoism: (1) the very essence of the noble soul. (2) a case of mistaken nonentity. Enemy: those who have more accurate insights about you than you do yourself. Enemy, the: made up of human beings just like us - that's why they can't be trusted. Equality: (1) a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane person has ever given his assent. (2) the offspring of envy and covetousness. Evil: (1) whatever springs from weakness. (2) suggesting to a forty five year old woman that she looks only twenty five. (*) Experience: the teacher of fools. Expert: (1) one who has focused all his ignorance on to one subject. (2) one who avoids the small errors as he sweeps on to the grand fallacy. Eye: the traitor of the heart. Face: a book where men may read strange things. Fact: something that ceases to exist when ignored. Failure: the fear of failure. Faith (religious): (1) the beast. (2) consists of believing things because they are impossible. (3) before all and above all, wishing God may exist. (4) belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without possibility. (5) trying to believe what your reason insists is untrue. (*) Faith (intellectual): (1) self-reliance. (2) courageously believing in what you know to be true. (*) Fame: (1) an inscription on a grave. (2) chiefly a matter of dying at the right time. (3) to have an insane person imagine he is you. Familiarity: a relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction. Fanatics: noncreative men of words. Fanaticism: the fashionable creed of tomorrow, the established religion of the day after, and trite is the multiplication table the very next day. Fashion: a despot whom the wise ridicule and obey. Fear: the start of wisdom. Fiction: the good end happily, the bad unhappily - that is what fiction means. Flatterer: (1) one whose throat is an open coffin. (2) flatterers look like friends, as wolves like dogs. Like cats, they lick and then scratch. Flirting: simply enjoying the company of the opposite sex without wanting sex. (*) Fool: (1) one who is without anxiety. (2) one who lacks the wish to personally know everything about life, death, and the purpose of all existence. (*) Free will: fate. (*) Friend: (1) the name for a more constant acquaintance. (2) one who has no comprehension of the harm you are doing him. (*) Friendship: loneliness relieved of the anguish of loneliness. Gaiety: the reckless ripple over depths of despair. Gambling: poverty of mind. Garden: a thing of beauty and a job forever. Generosity: the giving away of that which is not yours anyway. (*) Genius: (1) to believe your own thought. To believe that what is true for you is ultimately true. (2) the fruit of labour and thought. (3) soul. (4) something one can become. Gentleman: one who does not tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies. Ghost: the outward and visible sign of an inward fear. Golden age: never the present age. Gossip: (1) the art of saying nothing in a way that leaves practically nothing unsaid. (2) cannibalism. Grave: the place where beauty fades. Great men: (1) meteors that burn so that the earth may be lighted. (2) only an actor playing out his own ideal. (3) almost always bad men. (4) insist on publishing their letters before they die. (*) Greatness: saying what is true. Greece: from heroes to shopkeepers. Grief: the pleasure that lasts the longest. Habit: the shackle of the free. Happiness: (1) a good stomach and an evil heart. (2) tranquillity and occupation. (3) ignorance. (4) to be very busy with the unimportant. Harsh: truthful. (*) Hatred: the most sublime force in life. To love is to surrender; to hate is to carry on. Heart: the place the Devil dwells in. Hell: (1) Heaven enjoying itself. (2) a city much like London. Hermit: a person to whom civilization has failed to adjust itself. Hero: one who is afraid to run away. Highbrow: a person educated beyond his intelligence. History: the record of the follies of the majority. Hope: (1) the great falsifier of truth. (2) a mask the dying person wears. (3) the dream of those who are awake. (4) the fawning traitor of the mind. Humility: (1) an awful lot of hard work. (*) (2) so calculating. (*) (3) man making himself a worm. Hydrogen: a light, colourless, odourless gas, which, if given enough time, turns into people. Idleness: the ultimate purpose of the busy. Ignorant: (1) happy and beautiful. (*) (2) wicked and ugly. (*) Ignorance: (1) stupidity reduced to science. (2) a soft . . . easy . . . pillow. (3) the solidified wisdom of ages. Impatience: sometimes a sign that a person values their life and is not prepared to waste it on lies and trivialities. (*) Impulsive: following reason without a second thought. (*) Inarticulate: (1) the state of being unconvinced that what you are saying is worth saying. (*) (2) the state of being unconvinced that the people to whom you are speaking should hear what you have to say. (*) (3) thinking about what you are saying. (*) Infatuation: love that is not returned. (*) Intellectual: (1) one who stands firmly on both feet in mid-air on both sides of an issue. (2) one who produces endless quandaries for himself and others by sleight of brain. Irreligion: the principal one of the great faiths of the world. Jealousy: (1) the friendship one woman has for another. (2) concerned about the preservation of that which can be lost only if not worth keeping. (3) one of the consequences of love. Job: (1) A low mean lucrative busy affair. (2) Petty, piddling work; a piece of chance work. Journalism: the challenge of filling the space. Jury: a group of twelve people of average ignorance chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. Juvenile delinquent: a child who starts acting like his parents. Kindness: loving people more than they deserve. Labour: one of the processes by which A acquires the property of B. Lady: to have nothing to do, but listlessly to go they scarcely care where, for they cannot tell what. Language: the dress of thought. Laughter: (1) the hickup of the fool. (2) maliciousness with a good conscience. Laziness: (1) the mental alertness to avoid hard work. (2) there is no such thing. Everyone works hard at doing whatever they want to do. (*) Liar: (1) the aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. He is the very basis of civilized society. (2) Two kinds: (a) the genuine liar who knows himself to be lying, and (b) the evil liar who lies even to himself. (*) Library: (1) rows of tombstones that aren't worth reading. (*) (2) proof that publishers reject the seed and publish the chaff. (*) (3) a maze in which the goal is to find a book worth reading. Lie: a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second nature in a married woman. Life: (1) the pursuit of the superfluous. (2) a stress designed to keep you alive long enough to either reproduce or grow wise, but rarely both. (*) (3) life to the wise is death to the fool. (*) (4) a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learned to walk. (5) far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about. (6) a man puts his best foot forward and it gets stepped on. (7) a tragedy wherein we sit as spectators for a while and then act our part in it. Likeable: to be likeable one must be happy and cheerful. To be happy and cheerful one's brain must die. (*) Listening: a very dangerous thing. If one listens one may be convinced. Literature: (1) the art of writing something that will be read twice. (2) only what people would say to each other if they had the chance. (3) a monumental proof enough against death. Living: (1) the art of knowing how to believe lies. (2) the process of reacting to stress. Logician: he deposits on a sheet of paper a certain assemblage of syllables, and fancies that their meaning is riveted by the act of deposition. Longevity: uncommon extension of the fear of death. Madman: a man who has lost everything except his reason. Majority: one man with courage makes a majority. Man: (1) animals used by words. Animals who live by catchwords. (2) something that likes to do a lot of unnecessary things. (3) principally the organ of the accumulated smut and sneakery of 10,000 generations of weaseling souls. (4) the only animals able to do art, and evil. (*) (5) animals who strive for extinction with the tools of emotion. (*) (6) anything that calls itself intelligent. (*) (7) the most sophisticated computer today. (*) (8) an imitative creature - of apes rather than angels. (*) (9) a small, infinitely frail thing, which can be crushed in a snap by a falling branch. (*) (10) a species which owes much of its genetic inheritance to rapists, wife thieves, and sex maniacs in general. (*) Masses: (1) individuals minus quality. (2) the great identifiable majority, characterized by a feeling of general satisfaction, and spouting the first thing that comes into its head. Mediocrity: excellence to the mediocre. Memory: a beaten path in the brain. Metaphysics: the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct. Mercy: a virtue of the weak. Metaphor: the greatest thing in style . . . a mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblances. Middle age: (1) when every person you meet is only a composite of other people whom you have met. (2) a time when you'll do anything to feel better, except give up what's hurting you. (3) later than you think and sooner than you expect. (4) when a narrow waist and a broad mind begin to change places. Minority: they that have achieved all that is noble in the history of the world. Miracle: an event described by those to whom it was told by men who did not see it. Mirror: the conscience of women. They never do a thing without first consulting it. Misfortune: that which makes one man superior to another. Modesty: (1) one of the seven deadly virtues. (2) enhancing your charm by pretending not to be aware of it. (3) the attitude of mind that precedes the pounce. (4) with people of only moderate ability modesty is mere honesty; but with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy. (5) the beauty of women. Money: a kind of disease which those who have it don't like to spread. Monkey: a malicious mirror. Morality: (1) to discover Ultimate Truth and then to share your wisdom with everyone else. (*) (2) to renounce the traditional maxims of your community without hesitation or discussion. (*) Moron: one who is content with a serene state. Mother: (1) the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. (2) a woman who decorates her life with babies. Motive: what people have instead of purpose. (*) Murder: to obscure the truth. (*) Mysticism: the attempt to get rid of mystery. Nation: a body of people who feel they are a nation. Nationalism: a defensive movement against the crude encroachments of civilization. Natural: a very difficult pose to maintain. Necessity: the spur of genius. Negative: positive thinking. (*) Neurotic: anybody who thinks you mean it when you ask how he is. Newspapers: (1) a daily spiritual death. (2) a device unable to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization. Nihilist: someone who does not believe in anything. That is, a purely literary product. Noble: normally, it means being strong enough to stand-up against reality. (*) Novel: (1) a species of composition bearing the same relation to literature that the panorama bears to art. (2) the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. (3) what you write if you have something to say, but don't think it's worth writing in a readable form. (*) Obscenity: untruth. (*) Obvious: (1) that which is never seen until someone expresses it. (2) the most difficult question to answer. Old age: (1) an emotion which comes over us at almost any age. (2) more than ever, a time to consider whether you are not more of a hindrance to society than a help. (*) (3) a person is old when they have deserted their ideals. Optimism: (1) fatty degeneration of intelligence. (2) the instinct to lie. Optimist: (1) one who believes (a) that good arises out of evil, and (b) that there is no evil. (*) (2) a bridegroom who thinks he has no bad habits. Orator: one waving in the wind of his own eloquence. Oratory: (1) the art of making deep noises from the chest sound like important messages from the brain. (2) a solitary vice performed in public. Originality: truthfulness. (*) Orthodoxy: agnosticism towards deeper meaning. Pacifist: a deceased pacifist. Painting: a picture of paint. Paradox: when premature insight clashes with prevailing nonsense. Parasite: anyone who is a hindrance to the survival of wisdom and the human species. (*) Parents: what children never think of when falling in love. Passion: (1) not fake. (2) the winds necessary to put everything in motion, that usually cause storms. Past: the best prophet of the future. Patience: a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue. Peace: (1) a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. (2) a short pause between wars for enemy identification. Pen: a formidable weapon, but a man can kill himself with it a great deal more easily than he can other people. Pensioner: a kept patriot. Perseverance: a lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious success. Personality: what you are when people are around; character is what you are when everybody goes home. Pessimism: wisdom relative to optimism but cowardice relative to wisdom. (*) Pessimist: (1) one who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist. (2) a man who tells the truth prematurely. Philanthropist: a thief who enjoys tossing a penny or two to beggars. Philosopher: he who can analyze his delusions. Philosophy: (1) much words. (*) (2) homesickness - the longing to be at home everywhere. Piety: reverence for the Supreme Being, based upon His supposed resemblance to man. Pity: (1) remembering yourself. (2) one remove from love. Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true. Platonic love: the gun you didn't know was loaded. Poem: what happens when an anxiety meets a technique. Poetry: (1) a kind of ingenious nonsense. (2) an extravagance you hope to get away from. (3) language in which a man explores his own amazement. (4) a pleasant air but a barren soil. (5) Devil's wine. (6) the imaginative expression of strong feeling, usually rhythmical. Politician: a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth. Poor: the only class of people who have time to cultivate the intellect. Popularity: (1) to mingle with the erring throng. (2) what one buys at the cost of self respect. Population explosion: (1) humanity trying to immortalize itself in the final grand achievement of extinction. (*) (2) one of the consequences of love. (*) Possessions: we only possess what we renounce; what we do not renounce escapes us. Poverty: a great wealth, provided one is also short of a wife and family. (*) Praise: when you praise someone you call yourself his equal. Preacher: a man who advises others concerning things about which he knows nothing. Prejudice: a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety. Present, the: elastic, to embrace infinity. Press, the: a method of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust. Priest: one who speaks what all fools feel. (*) Printing: (1) a multiplication of mind. (2) an as yet unrecognized contributor to overpopulation and noise pollution. (*) (3) a way in which a fool can inflict mortal wounds to innocent children on a global basis even long after he is dead. (*) (4) something wise men cannot afford, and cannot find anyone to pay for it. Prison: a monument to neglected youth. Progress: (1) in antiquity . . . the appearance of great men; in modern times . . . the appearance of great inventions. (2) life means progress, and progress means suffering. Propaganda: the diminution of the love of truth by the falsehoods which interest dictates. Property: (1) theft. (2) a sacred trust expressly granted by God, the Bible, and the Recorder's Office. Prosperity: (1) the consequence of rapidly spending the planet's irreplaceable capital. (2) the surest breeder of insolence. Psychiatrist: one who lets you see why you are unhappy. Psychiatry: the art of teaching people how to stand on their own feet while reclining on couches. Psychology: nothing. (*) Public opinion: the people's tyranny. Public: the monkeys outside the cage. Pun: puns are to words what wit is to ideas. Punishment: (1) the justice that the guilty deal out to those that are caught. (2) having wisdom forced upon you by your own intelligence. (*) Question: something that fools raise which wise men answered a thousand years ago. Rabble: the greater part of the masses. Racist: a fraction of whose ideas about other races are true. (*) Radical: one who wants to tackle evil at the root. Reality: what truths should take account of. (*) Reason: (1) the arithmetic of the emotions. (2) the greatest enemy that faith has. Reform: to reform a grown man, you must begin with his grandmother. Recognition: what one desires from people who are more concerned with what they are doing than with what you have done. (*) Reformer: one who educates the people to appreciate the things they need. Regret: the beginning of a new life. Religion: (1) hope and fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the unknowable. (2) something that is upheld because it is good enough for children. (3) that which women and children should be protected from. (*) (4) a speculative hypothesis with no supporting evidence that is demonstrably invalid by the use of reason. (*) (5) the art of having faith in God without knowing what God is, or even if He is possible. (*) (6) a consciously accepted system of make-believe. (7) a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. (8) the best armour in the world, but the worst cloak. (9) ritual and the truth of dogma. (10) a set of things which the average man thinks he believes and wishes he were certain. (11) the fashionable substitute for belief. (12) discovering truth and believing it. (*) Reputation: what you seem to be like. Respectable: rich. Decent means poor. Responsibility: the way of doing the right thing - and of shortening life. Revenge: biting a dog because the dog bit you. Riches: the savings of many in the hands of one. Ritual, religious: the most effective form of thought prevention ever developed. (*) River: an aspect of Nature which lies behind the cottages and billboards. Romance: a self-induced state of hallucination that leaves one finally unromantic. Ruins: our monuments. Safety: never to feel secure. Satirist: a being with an eye in the back of his head who fills up with straw and sawdust all illusions. Savage: (1) the most conservative of human beings. (2) those who are content to be what they are. Selfishness: (1) devoid of consideration for the selfishness of others. (2) seeking your own good at the world's cost. (3) the only real atheism. Self-sacrifice: the effect of prudence on rascality. Semantics: the art of telling someone they agree with you when they don't. (*) Seminar: a place where you can learn in two hours what it takes a professor three months to teach. Silence: having nothing to say and saying it. Sin: ignorance. Sincerity: what a woman likes in a man, as opposed to honesty. (*) Skepticism: unbelief in cause and effect. Sleep: an eight-hour peep show of infantile erotica. Soft: untrue. (*) Song: that which is not worth saying is sung. Sorrow: the future tense of love. Soul: nothing apart from the senses. Spiritual: (1) anything enjoyable that is not easily or comfortably explained. (*) (2) golf. (*) Spring: spring has come when you can put your foot on three daisies at once. Stars: they loom above us to remind us we are not stars. (*) Style: (1) the man himself. (2) a noble manner in an easy manner. (3) the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index to character than the face. (4) the best style is truth. (5) knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn. Suburbia: the projection of dormitory life into adulthood. Success: (1) consuming more irreplaceable resources than others. (*) (2) having something to offer that morons regard as valuable. (*) (3) go with the crowd. Suicide: what every gentleman promises to do if he breaks his vow to his beloved. Superior man: an uneasy obligation. Superstition: the belief that all stage kisses give no satisfaction to the actor or actresses. Tact: (1) tongue in check. (2) the ability to describe others as they see themselves. (3) to lie about others as you would have them lie about you. Teacher: (1) the vanity of teaching often tempts a man to forget he is a blockhead. (2) one who in his youth, admired teachers. (3) one whose mission it should be not to make his pupils think, but to make them think right. (4) one who frees his students from extreme modernity. Theology: (1) obsolete psychology. (2) the intent of which is not to tell the truth but to satisfy the questioner. (3) Theology: an effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing . . . it is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is opposed to every other form of rational thinking. Thinker: a person who aims where your head ought to be. Thinking: often only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything. Thoughts: what you are today, what you will be tomorrow. Time: (1) the press-agent of genius. (2) the most valuable thing a person can spend. Today: yesterday's effect and tomorrow's cause. Tolerance: indifference. Tradition: (1) the democracy of the dead. (2) that part of history which has proven to be of value for the present age. Tragedy: (1) that there should one man die ignorant who had the capacity for knowledge. (2) the utter impossibility of changing what you have done. Translation: (1) commentary that is sometimes better than the source. (*) (2) the safest translation is word-for-word. Travel: (1) too often, instead of broadening the mind it only lengthens the conversation. (2) a fools paradise. A childish delight in being somewhere else. (3) a traveller must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, and the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing. Treaty: an agreement which ceases to be when the parties come into conflict. Trouble: mistaking love for beauty, success for brains, and television for civilization. (*) Truth: (1) the object of philosophy, but not of philosophers. (2) stranger than fiction but not as popular. (3) what keeps honest men poor. (4) what is true is possible. (5) a flower in whose neighbourhood others must wither. (6) often the refuge of those too cowardly to lie. (*) (7) truth should not be spoken, but communicated. (*) (8) realized by faith, once it has been arrived at by reason. (*) (9) truths in a child become half-truths in a man of learning, which then become lies in a man of intellectual courage, and finally Truth in a man of the Infinite. (*) T.V: (1) chewing gum for the eyes. (2) automated day-dreaming. (3) the glass teat. Unconscious, the: a realm of potential hell. Universe: anonymous. University: a place where pebbles are polished and diamonds are dimmed. Vagabond: when rich, is called a tourist. Verse: a special illness of the ear. Virtue: (1) a quality which has never been as respectable as money. (2) an inexpensive vice. Vulgarity: concealment of truth, or affectation. War: the only sport that has any intelligible use. Wealth: difficult to dignify. (*) Wise: a reputation that is built by agreeing with everybody. Wit: (1) the epitaph of an emotion. (2) a form of sex display; a flexing of the superior muscles. (*) (3) the only weapon with which it is possible to stab oneself in one's own back. (4) the terse intrusion into an atmosphere of serene mental habit of some uncompromising truth. (5) cultured insolence. Wonder: the effect of novelty on ignorance. Words: things to kill time until our emotions make us inarticulate. Work: (1) two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. (2) only one kind: discovering the truth about life and death and then living in accordance with it . . . All else is folly. (*) World: the prophecy of worlds to come. Writing: (1) giving the reader the most knowledge in the least time. (2) the art of putting black words on white paper in succession until the impression is created that something has been said. (3) a real writer is someone who has something genuinely important to say to others, and not merely to himself. (*) Yawn: a pertinent remark. Useless: remembering how many days there are in a year. (*) Yesterday: the tomorrow that got away. Youth: life as yet untouched by tragedy. Zoo: (1) a place which prevents people from getting at the animals. (2) an excellent place to study the habits of human beings. - A FINAL WORD - There are two sides to my nature, the human and the superhuman, or the animal and the human, depending on how critical our stance. The contents of this book issue from my lower self, which aspires to finish itself, and are aimed at your lower self, with the aim of inflicting a mortal injury. I would like to have related some profound spiritual insights with you, but I cannot speak to your higher spiritual self when you have none. Realistically, while there is ego one must work with ego, and only when the ego becomes utterly disgusted with itself can it die. I hope this book has disgusted you. ************************************************************************** Kevin Solway PO Box 207 St Lucia Australia 4067