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04/16/08 |
        
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Just some quotes I've gathered over the years. Peruse, copy 'n' paste as you will.
"I think we've learned something here today. Batter is a main course all its own, and if you shape anything like a rib people will come." - Anthony Bourdain
"It dawned on me that I had spent my whole career being judged by people who had less knowledge than me, be they restaurant inspectors or food critics." - Chef Marco Pierre White, speaking on the Michelin Guide
"If you are flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit." - Mitch Hedberg
"As we've learned, prominent people will pile fresh mistake atop fresh mistake to postpone the day when they admit their first mistake." - Gregg Easterbrook
"Christianity is for people who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those of us who went there, didn't like it much and left." - Peter Dolving, lead singer, The Haunted
"It's also true that all chefs work with the same ingredients; two people can employ the same basic knowledge and one can come to a much better result than the other." - Gregg Easterbrook
"To find a person who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness." - Robert Brault, software developer, writer
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell, philosopher
"If you ever wondered what it was like to be a Raiders fan, you are in luck because I'm about to give you some insight: First, take an ice pick and just ram it into your left testicle. Just do it for no reason at all. If you can make it all the way through so it sticks into a table or chair, that is preferable. Next, headbutt the nearest immovable object (table, brick wall, etc.) seven times or until you draw blood, whichever comes first. After that, put your left hand on a table and smash it with a hammer three times as hard as you can, then dip it in scalding hot water. After that wears off, eat an Oreo cookie because they actually look like they are going to score, but as soon as you eat the cookie wash it down with a quart of antifreeze because they found some way to screw it up. While you are still alive, slowly remove the ice pick to make sure you achieve maximum torture, and then stab yourself in the temple." - BJ in Syracuse, N.Y., describing the 2006 Oakland Raiders in what might be the best visual writing of all time
"An escalator can never break down. It can only become stairs. Instead of out of order, it should say escalator temporarily stairs. We apologize for the convenience that you can still get where you're going." - Mitch Hedberg
"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating." - Pearl S. Buck, novelist, Nobel laureate
"Feelings, whether of compassion or irritation, should be welcomed, recognized, and treated on an absolutely equal basis; because both are ourselves. The tangerine I am eating is me. The mustard greens I am planting are me. I plant with all my heart and mind. I clean this teapot with the kind of attention I would have were I giving the baby Buddha or Jesus a bath. Nothing should be treated more carefully than anything else. In mindfulness, compassion, irritation, mustard green plant, and teapot are all sacred." - Thich Nhat Hanh, "Miracle of Mindfulness"
"I am sick and tired of sports broadcasters talking about great rivalries and how 'These two teams really hate each other.' I now know that it is all lies. There are no rivalries, there is no hatred. There are just bank accounts." - Jason Gilman
"The virtues which keep this world
sweet and the faithfulness which keeps it steadfast are chiefly those of the
average man."
"The time of peace is always unstable. It's because we blindfold the fact that the end is nearing." - Shiina Tamai
"I keep coming back the question: When is food good? And the answer always begins with proud cooks. People who take pride in performing what really amounts to alchemy." - Anthony Bourdain
"Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it." -Tom Paine
"That's the problem. If you're slower than me, stupider than me and you taste good...tough shit." - Anthony Bourdain
"Anything that gets cut into four pieces, and the pieces move independently? That's one dumb fsckin' creature." -Anthony Bourdain, referring to lobster
"We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." - Anonymous
"I believe that each person must have his own opinion about every thing about which it is possible to have an opinion, because he himself is a special unique thing that holds a new previously nonexistent view about all other things." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"A person is only as big as the dream they dare to live."
"The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest, and not yet got the second, which comes with a sort of mastery." - Janet Erskine Stuart
"The ability to speak another's language does not mean that you are able to understand them. There is also the hardship of being able to speak with one another, while missing what is being said from the heart." - Sai-ou
"Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects
of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to
yourself - and be lenient to everybody else."
"All comedy is based on human behaviour, or it wouldn't be funny to you." - Chuck Jones, animator
"I come to the office each morning and stay for long hours doing what has to
be done to the best of my ability. And when you've done the best you can you
can't do any better."
"The deepest love shattered breeds a hatred a hundredfold worse." - An
"You have to work seriously and steadily. I don't even think geniuses can get good right away." - Tanaka Yukio
"Never mind what
others do; do better than yourself, beat your own record from day to day, and
you are a success."
"The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit for doing them." - Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893), British theologian and classicist "It is only as a man puts off from himself all external support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail." - Emerson
"If there is one thing upon this earth that mankind love and admire better than another, it is a brave man, -- it is the man who dares to look the devil in the face and tell him he is a devil." - James A. Garfield
" "She is a perfect person with the extremity of summer, the elegance of autumn, the nobility of winter and the gentleness of spring."- from the anime Kannazuki no Miko
"There is nothing so comfortable as money, - but nothing so defiling if it be come by unworthily; nothing so comfortable, but nothing so noxious if the mind be allowed to dwell upon it constantly. If a man have enough, let him spend it freely. If he wants it, let him earn it honestly." - Anonymous
"Knowing sorrow well, I learn to succor the distressed." - Virgil
"The good stuff isn't cheap, and the cheap stuff isn't good." - Alton Brown, host of Good Eats
"Democrats view their politicians the way adults view their parents: We realize they make mistakes, and we view them as people we respect and love but flawed as well. Republicans view their politicians the way small children view their parents: They can never do any wrong, and any criticism of them is attacked with blind rage and disbelief." - dchaos72, from the Blabbermouth.net message boards
"If the automobile had followed the same development as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year killing everyone inside." - Robert Cringely
"Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance towards the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point." - Harold B. Melchart
"Harmony, balance, rhythm. There you have it. That is what life's all about.'' - George Pocock
"‘Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." - Thomas Paine
"I dream of a day when instead of having to take a shower I can hit the F5 button and just refresh myself." - Technogen, from the Bigger Than Cheeses IRC channel
"Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past." - Tyron Edwards
"The greatest achievement of the human spirit is to live up to one's opportunities, and to make the most of one's resources." - Vauvenargues
"Throughout the universe, what is most precious is yourself." - Buddha
"The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the full light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become. You integrity is your destiny; it is the light that guides your way." - Heraclitus
"The most dementing of all modern sins: the inability to distinguish excellence from success." - David Hare
"It is not what he has which directly expresses the worth of a man, but what he is." - Henri Frederic Amiel
"Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting." - Sun Tzu
"A person needs at intervals to separate himself from family and companions and go to new places. He must go without his familiars in order to be open to influence, to change." - Katharine Butler Hathaway
"There is no other path to make myself feel alive. That is why I take this path." - Anonymous
"Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts twenty years of experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience--twenty times." - Japanese proverb
"Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear." - Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
"I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of the sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for you are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the roadway." - Dr. Dwight Van de Vate
"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you will help them become what they are capable of becoming." - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity." - Donald A. Adams
"When we allow another to use what we have given them without strings attached, we allow them to grow unfettered by expectation." - Bill VandenBush
"Life's about friendships, the way you love your partner, the way you care for your children. That is what life is about. Not anything about earning a hundred zillion dollars because you toured America more than anyone else. I want life to be about creativity." - Joe Strummer, former lead singer for the Clash
"Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not." - Henry Fielding
"Principle -- particularly moral principle -- can never be a weathervane, spinning around this way and that with the shifting winds of expediency. Moral principle is a compass forever fixed and forever true." - Edward R. Lyman
"A life without purpose is a languid, drifting thing; Every day we ought to review our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let me make a sound beginning, for what we have hitherto done is naught!" - Thomas A. Kempis
"To accurately reflect the state of the country today, you need only rename the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to vanity, greed, ignorance and stupidity." - paraphrased from WTUL (New Orleans) DJ Lisa "What you can do, or think you can, begin it." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself." - Samuel Butler (1835-1902) British writer "I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong." - Abraham Lincoln "Who would have ever heard of Theodore Roosevelt outside of his immediate community if he had only half committed himself to what he had undertaken, if he had brought only a part of himself to his task? The great secret of his career has been that he has flung his whole life, not a part of it, with all the determination and energy and power he could muster, into everything he has undertaken. No dillydallying, no faint-hearted efforts, no lukewarm purpose for him!" - Orison Sweet Marden
"Power over life and death-don't be proud of it. Whatever they fear from you, you'll be threatened with." - Seneca
"Although imagination and make-believe are encouraged during one's younger years, teenage culture and adult responsibilities usually quash them in anyone older than ten. Our society looks down on us as immature ne'er-do-wells if we engage in any activity so frivolous as pretending, yet inside of most people the desire still burns." - K.A. Lundy"O proud left foot, that ventures quick within Then soon upon a backward journey lithe. Anon, once more the gesture, then begin: Command sinistral pedestal to writhe. Commence thou then the fervid Hokey-Poke, A mad gyration, hips in wanton swirl. To spin! A wilde release from Heaven's yoke. Blessed dervish! Surely canst go, girl. The Hoke, the Poke -- banish now thy doubt Verily, I say, 'tis what it's all about." - From the Washington Post's 2003 Style Invitational Contest. "The Hokey Pokey" as William Shakespeare might have described it
"I am no stranger to organ replacement, and I always find it refreshing, always a happy improvement over Pain." - Hunter S. Thompson
"That which does not eat ME, will go well with gravy."
- Chef Stephan Salinas "Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fibre of a character, but strengthen it. Every conquered temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before." - James Buckham "We can often do more for other men by trying to correct our own faults than by trying to correct theirs." - Francois Fenelon "No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle and good, without the world being better for it, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness." - Phillips Brooks "Be the change that you want to see in the world." - Gandhi
"Adequate is the last stop on the road to being great."
- Chef Stephan Salinas "Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blue prints of your ultimate accomplishments." - Napoleon Hill "Take full account of what excellencies which you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not." - Marcus Aurelius "Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing." - John Stuart Mill "The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." - Jack London "The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials." - Chinese proverb "Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to the end, requires some of the same courage which a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men to win them." - Emerson "We come into this world crying while all around us are smiling. May we so live that we go out of this world smiling while everybody around us is weeping." - Persian proverb
"One must live the way one thinks, or end up thinking the way one lives." - Paul Bourget "The sages do not consider that making no mistakes is a blessing. They believe, rather, that the great virtue of man lies in his ability to correct his mistakes and continually make a new man of himself." - Wang Yang-Ming "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face." - Eleanor Roosevelt "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them." - George Bernard Shaw "Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress." - Nicholas Murray Butler "The various religions are like different roads converging on the same point. What difference does it make if we follow different routes, provided we arrive at the same destination." - Mahatma Gandhi "We can often do more for other men by trying to correct our own faults than by trying to correct theirs." - Francois Fenelon "Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given." - Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) Russian dramatist and writer "That's what it takes to be a hero, a little gem of innocence inside you that makes you want to believe that there still exists a right and wrong, that decency will somehow triumph in the end." - Lise Hand, describing Irish journalist Veronica Guerin, who was killed as a result of her investigations of Irish organized crime. "Some day, in years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process." - Phillips Brooks
"Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fibre of a character, but strengthen it. Every conquered temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before." - James Buckham
"When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another." - Helen Keller "Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself." - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
"'Goodbye,' said the fox. 'And now here is my secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; all that is essential is invisible--to the eye.'"
- Antoine De Saint-Exupery "The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when he discovers that someone else believes in him and is willing to trust him with his friendship." - Ralph Waldo Emerson"The nearest way to glory -- a shortcut, as it were -- is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be." - Socrates, quoted in Cicero, 44 BC. "That only which we have within, can we see without. If we meet no Gods, it is because we harbor none. If there is a grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps." - Ralph Waldo Emerson "I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods." - Ralph Waldo Emerson "Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t'were his own." - Johann von Goethe "If a man hasn't found something he would die for, he is not fit to live." - Martin Luther King, Jr. "So, then, to every man his chance -- to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining golden opportunity -- to every man his right to live, to work, to be himself, to become whatever his manhood and his vision can combine to make him -- this, seeker, is the promise of America." - Thomas Wolfe
"We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic." - E. Merrill Root "I will make love my greatest weapon and none on who I call can defend against its force....My love will melt all hearts liken to the sun whose rays soften the coldest day." - Og Mandino "Fear not for the future, weep not for the past." - Percy Bysshe Shelley "The lover knows much more about absolute good and universal beauty than any logician or theologian, unless the latter, too, be lovers in disguise." - George Santayana, "The Life of Reason: Reason in Society", 1906
"The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it, put your whole soul into it -- every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have." - John D. Rockefeller III "To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." - Ralph Waldo Emerson "Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." - Aristotle "Enthusiasm is the best protection in any situation. Wholeheartedness is contagious. Give yourself, if you wish to get others." - David Seabury "No man is a failure who is enjoying life." - William Feather
"To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are the two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart, but of strength of mind." - William Hazlitt "The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame." - Charles Caleb Colton
This site was last updated 02/14/08 |
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