h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"They told me you had been to her,
And mentioned me to him;
She gave me a good character,
But said I could not swim."
-Alice in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll (completely random, but, er, nicely rhymed!)

"Infinity is a dreadfully poor place. They can never manage to make ends meet."
-The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning." - Albert Einstein"

Otto Von Bismarck once said, "If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans." before WWI

"Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was stabbed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire; then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to be a writer - and if so, why?"

Bennett Cerf, co-founder of Random House

[Lifted from Publishing nNews]

Sausage? SAUSAGE???????

Robbie Coltrane playing Dr Johnson on discovering he left the word sausage out of his dictionary in Blackadder the regency yrs.

"Nothing is final until you are dead, and even then I'm SURE god negotiates."
- Ever After

"No woman who does what shes told, acts polite, and is well behaved ever made the history books"
- Forgot... but I like it


cheers
ford

Heinrich Heine willed his estate to his wife, on condition she found a new husband.

When asked why he said "When Martha remarries, at least one man will regret my death."

Something rather apt for a lot of folks around "hootoo". Who feel that science supercedes all else, and ANY form of faiths or beliefs are an aberration of the mind. From one of the deeper and respected thinkers of the current time:

'Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' ... (Carl Sagan)

"Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please." - Mark Twain

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Anais Nin

or (I am Gemini, ok?)

"When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others."

Anais Nin

An old pal of mine, a local house painter with a flecked ginger wig, apart from weekends when he washed it to go out or maybe had a spare (I never dared ask!), had a lovely motto that sticks in my mind:
"When we win we'll have the gin and when we lose we'll have the booze".

"Time wounds all heels"
Groucho Marx

or

"Time heals all wounds, unless you've got a rash, in which case your better off with some ointment"
Holly, from Red Dwarf series 8

OMG I loveeeeee Red Dwarf... its one of the only british shows we get down here!!
cheers
ford

"Every single song
Is calculated
By the moneymakers,
And it DRIVES ME CRAZY!"
'Death of a DJ' by The Revs

"Revenge may be sweet, but it is not generally listed on the children's menu."
Lucifer, 'Gods and Monsters' by Mike Carey

"Catch 44 situation, you see"
"You mean catch 22?"
"No, its twice as bad as that"
Red Dwarf series 8

Another from Groucho Marx for Capt Jack -
Doctor holding patient's wrist:

Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.

Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

"religions are founded on the fear of the many and the cleverness of the few."
-Stendhal

Now, patience; and remember patience is the great thing, and above all things else we must avoid anything like being or becoming out of patience. A good plan used by worried business folk who may not have had many momentums to mastes Kung's doctrine of the meang of the propriety codestruces of Carprimustimus is just to think of all the sinking fund of patience possessed in their conjoint names by both brothers Bruce with whom are incoroprated their Scotch spider and Elberfeld's Calculating Horses.

James Joyce / Finnegans Wake p108

"People will get tired of staring into a plywood box every night"
Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox,
on the subject of Telly, 1946

"'Ere! You! Young feller-me-lad! Come 'ere! I'll swop you Yer Heart's Desire fer a year of yer life. No? Yer voice, then? Or the color of yer eyes? One of yer fingers, then? Yer've got ten of the littel buggers, you'll never miss one. It's Yer Heart's Desire I'm offrin', ducky, none of yer tat."
A stallholder at the goblin market, 'Books of Magic' by Neil Gaiman

"If we are superior, why are we not victorious?"
A Dalek, 'Doctor Who: Daleks in Manhattan' (series 3, episode 4)