It
is no tragedy to do ungrateful people favors, but it is unbearable to be
indebted to a scoundrel.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist
Absence
diminishes mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out
candles and fans flames.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist
True love is like ghosts;
whcih everybody talks about but few have seen.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist
It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be
deceived by them.
François,
Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist
There are bad people who would be less dangerous if they were
quite devoid of goodness.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist
Old
people like to give bad advice, as solace for no longer being able to provide
bad examples.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist
Men
are oftener treacherous out of weakness than out of any formed design.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist Maxims, #120
Almost
all our faults are more pardonable than the methods we resort to hide them.
François, Duc
de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)
French moralist Maxims, #3 (1665)
I've
never had much enthusiasm for pornography. Watching people have congress is a
bit like watching people eat, in that eating is both necessary and satisfying,
but when watching someone else do it, you just want to tell them to chew with
their mouth closed.
Matt Labash (contemp.) American journalist
The Weekly Standard, "How
to be a Porn Star" (
. . . she had enough experience now to make her plans around
pessimism rather than hope.
Mercedes Lackey
Worrying over fairness can sometimes impede justice, and that
in itself is not fair.
Mercedes
Lackey
Weekend planning is a prime time to apply the Deathbed
Priority Test: On your deathbed, will you wish you'd spent more prime weekend
hours grocery shopping or walking in the woods with your kids?
Louise
Lague
Mad, bad, and dangerous to know.
Lady Caroline Lamb of Lord Byron
I have cut
another $20,000 from the project. Instead of using ISDN PRIs, Cisco routers and
the PM3, we will now use empty soup cans and string to communicate. At a later
time I propose we upgrade to long flexible tubing so that we may shout our
requests to each other. We will hire a temp from a staffing agency to act as a
‘repeater’. When the distance exceeds a usable signal, she/he will write down
our requests and re-yell them to the recipient.
There
are good men everywhere. I only wish they had louder voices.
Louis L'Amour (1908-1988) American writer
All married
couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making
love. Good battle is objective and honest - never vicious or cruel. Good battle
is healthy and constructive, and brings to a marriage the principles of equal
partnership.
The
man whose first question, after what he considers to be a right course of
action has presented itself, is "What will people say?" is not the
man to do anything at all.
True love is when
you can look into another person’s soul and not fear what is found there.
Erik Laarson
Accomplishing
the impossible only means the boss will add it to your regular duties.
Doug Larson
Life
expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good
as bacon.
Doug Larson
The aging process
has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.
Doug Larson
Affirmative action is the
attempt to deal with malignant racism by instituting benign racism.
Elliott Larson
I found
out that it’s not good to talk about my troubles. Eighty percent of the people
who hear them don’t care and the other twenty percent are glad you’re having
trouble.
Tommy Lasorda
They can’t censor
the gleam in my eye.
Charles Laughton
The Constitution
does not grant rights, it recognizes them.
Jason Laumark
Say
not you know another entirely, till you have divided an inheritance with him.
Johann Kaspar
Lavater (1741-1801) Swedish poet, mystic,
philosopher
The
Bible contains 6 admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to
heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just
that they need more supervision.
Lynn Lavner (contemp.) American Lesbian comedian, pianist, singer
I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and
made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and
scrub the floor.
D. H.
Lawrence
The secret of dealing successfully with a child is not to be
its parent.
Mell Lazarus
You
get fifteen Democrats in a room, and you get twenty opinions.
Patrick Leahy (b. 1940)
Life
is made up of small pleasures. Happiness is made up of those tiny successes —
the big ones come too infrequently. If you don't have all of those zillions of
tiny successes, the big ones don't mean anything.
Norman Lear (b. 1922) American television writer-producer
People
don't ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good
soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.
Robert Keith
Leavitt (b. 1895) American writer
All
civil liberties have been created by small intellectual aristocracies, and
never by people in the mass. The power of crowds is only to destroy.
Gustave LeBon (1841-1931) German psychologist
If
your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to others, they would no longer be
fantasies.
Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950) American journalist
I prefer dead writers because you don't run into them at
parties.
Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950) American journalist
Cheese that is required by law to append the word food to its
title does not go well with red wine or fruit.
Fran Lebowitz (b. 1950) American journalist
Metropolitan Life (1978)
Each
snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty.
Stanislaw
Jerszy Lec (1909-1966) Polish aphorist, poet,
satirist
"They're
certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for
their opinions," said Atticus, "but before I can live with other
folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by
majority rule is a person's conscience."
Harper Lee (b. 1926) American writer To Kill a Mockingbird
“I wanted you to
see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man
with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but
you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”
Harper Lee (b. 1926) American
writer To Kill a Mockingbird
They called me mad, and I
called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.
Nathaniel Lee (1653-1692), objecting to being confined in Bedlam
It
is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of it.
Robert E. Lee (1807-1870) American general
Murder
is a crime. Describing murder is not. Sex is not a crime. Describing sex is.
Gershon
Legman (1917-1999) American writer
The story - from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace - is one of
the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining
understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but
there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
Ursula K. LeGuin
His gentleness was uncompromising: because he would not
compete for dominance, he was indomitable.
Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed
No one who is not willing to go as far as I am willing to go has any right to
stop me.
Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed
Power
corrupts. Absolute power is kind of neat.
John F.
Lehman, Jr. (contemp.) U.S. Secretary of the
Navy (1981-87), writer
That's
the way things come clear. All of a sudden. And then you realize how obvious
they've been all along.
Madeleine
L'Engle (b. 1918) American writer "The Arm of the
Starfish" (1965)
Truth is eternal,
knowledge is changeable. It is disastrous to confuse them.
Madeleine L'Engle (b. 1918) American
writer
It's
a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It
gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet, and what is sand.
Madeleine
L'Engle (b. 1918) American writer "The Summer of the
Great-Grandmother"
I hear some women
are using marijuana now to ease the pain of PMS. Now there’ s a drug deal you
don’t want to see go bad...
Jay Leno (b. )
American comedian
My most important
piece of advice to all you would-be writers: when you write, try to leave out
all the parts readers skip.
Elmore Leonard
The
difference between pornography and erotica is lighting.
Gloria
Leonard (b. 1940) American porn actress,
publisher
It
is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
Leonardo da
Vinci (1452-1519) Italian artist,
engineer, scientist
Once you have flown, you will walk the earth with your eyes
turned skywards, for there you have been, and there you long to return.
Leonardo da
Vinci (1452-1519) Italian artist,
engineer, scientist
That is what learning is. You
suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new
way.
Doris
Lessing The
If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then a cat is a
diagram and pattern of subtle air.
Doris Lessing "Particularly
Cats"
Most
politicians are totally wusses with the ethical consideration of my cat begging
for treats.
Kelley
Leverich (contemp.) Belief-L (
An
explanation of cause is not a justification by reason.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar
Courage
is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing
point.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar
Friendship
is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You, too? Thought
I was the only one.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar
Of
all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be
the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under
omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep,
his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own
good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own
conscience.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar
We
laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar
Most
of all, perhaps, we need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has
any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need
something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions
have been quite different in different periods, and that much which seems
certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar "Learning in War-Time"
Your
bid--for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life
or nonentity--will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will
never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high.
Nothing will shake a man--or at any rate a man like me--out of his merely
verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly
before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only
under torture does he discover it himself.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar A
Grief Observed
What
do people mean when they say, "I am not afraid of God because I know He is
good"? Have they never been to a dentist?
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar A
Grief Observed (1961)
Well,
let's go on disagreeing but don't let us *judge*. What doesn't suit us may suit
possible converts of a different type. My model here is the behaviour of the
congregation at a 'Russian Orthodox' service, where some sit, … some stand,
some kneel, some walk about, and *no one takes the slightest notice of what
anyone else is doing.* That is good sense, good manners, and good Christianity.
'Mind one's own business' is a good rule in religion as in other things.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar Letters of C.S. Lewis (
We
should never ask of anything "Is it real?," for everything is
real. The proper question is "A real *what?*," e.g.,
a real snake or real _delirium tremens_?
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar Letters to Malcolm, ch. 15
If
I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the
most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar Mere Christianity, Bk. III, ch. 10
Every
event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something
presented to our senses. … And our senses are not infallible. If anything
extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the
victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the
supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience
depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar Miracles, ch. 1
When
I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had
been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a
man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the
desire to be very grown up.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar Of Other Worlds (1952)
We
are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. "How
he's grown!" we exclaim, "How time flies!" as though the
universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as
strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And
that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to
become, one day, a land animal.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar Reflections on the Psalms, ch. 12
Telling
us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different
things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war.... Each instinct, if you
listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest .…
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar The Abolition of Man
Love
anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make
sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap
it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements.
Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket
-- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change. It will not be broken; it
will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be
vulnerable.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar The Four Loves
"
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar The Great Divorce, ch. 9
There
are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will
be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "*Thy* will be
done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there
could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever
miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar The Great Divorce, ch. 9
There
is something awfully nice about reading a book again, with all the
half-unconscious memories it brings back.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (
An individual
Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons --
marriage, or meat, or beer, or cinema; but the moment he starts saying the
things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do
use them, he has taken the wrong turning.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English
writer and scholar Mere Christianity
“You come of the
Lord Adam and the Lady Eve,” said Aslan. “ And that is both honour enough to
erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of
the greatest emperor in earth.”
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English
writer and scholar
Experience; that most brutal of teachers. But
you learn, my god, you do learn.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar
I
willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the
end; that the doors of hell are locked on the *inside*.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar The Problem of Pain, ch. 8
Do
not let us mistake necessary evils for good.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar The Weight of Glory, "Membership" (1945)
No man knows how bad he is
until he has tried to be good. There is a silly idea about that good people don’t
know what temptation means.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English
writer and scholar The Screwtape Letters
(1941)
To
love involves trusting the beloved beyond the evidence, even against much
evidence. No man is our friend who believes in our good intentions only when
they are proved. No man is our friend who will not be very slow to accept
evidence against them. Such confidence, between one man and another, is in fact
almost universally praised as a moral beauty, not blamed as a logical error.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar The World's Last Night, "On Obstinacy in Belief" (1955)
You
can't accept one individual's opinion, particularly if it's a female and you
know -- God willing, I hope, for her sake, it's not the case -- but when they
get a period, it's really difficult for them to function as normal human
beings.
Jerry Lewis (b. 1926) American comic actor, philanthropist Responding to a harsh review from a
female critic (1986)
There
are two insults which no human will endure: the assertion that he hasn't a
sense of humor, and doubly impertinent that he has never known trouble.
Sinclair
Lewis (1885-1951) American novelist,
playwright
People
these days are reluctant to read the canonical texts, but they love fiction.
Not all fiction, mind you, for they are sick of exemplary themes and far prefer
the obscene and fantastic. How low contemporary morals have sunk! Anyone
concerned about public morality will want to retrieve the situation.
Li Yü (937-978) Chinese emperor, poet, artist The Carnal Prayer Mat (c. AD 1657)
A
person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
Georg C.
Lichtenberg (1742-1799) German physicist, writer
Never
undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessing
of heaven.
Georg C.
Lichtenberg (1742-1799) German physicist, writer
To
do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
Georg C.
Lichtenberg (1742-1799) German physicist, writer
Some men come by
the name of genius in the same way as an insect comes by the name of centipede
-- not because it has a hundred feet, but because most people can’t count above
fourteen.
Georg C. Lichtenberg (1742-1799) German
physicist, writer
Obviously
crime pays, or there'd be no crime.
G. Gordon
Liddy (b. 1930) American political
operative, commentator, actor
The
passage of time makes these men seem unhuman. We need to remember that they
weren't dropped on the planet by leather-winged minions of Moloch. They were
people. Hitler brushed his teeth; Hitler took a leak and may have whistled
while he did so. He may have clipped his toenails while listening to light
opera on the Gramophone. Being evil is not a full-time job.
James Lileks (contemp.) American journalist, columnist The Bleat (
All
because some guy didn't tie down his cargo. Will the offender ever know what he
did? Not in this life. I’m not saying you should go to hell because you didn’t
secure the sofa cushions when you moved a friend, but there ought to be a Stern
Words Room in heaven where some burly angels scowl at you and rub brass
knuckles, and when you look up at the clock on the wall you note that the time
is measured in centuries.
James Lileks (contemp.) American journalist, columnist The Bleat (
Besides
the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things
undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
Lin Yu-t'ang (1895-1976) Chinese writer
If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly
useless manner, you have learned how to live.
Lin Yu-t'ang (1895-1976) Chinese writer
Gentlemen,
why don't you laugh? With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if
I did not laugh, I should die.
Abraham
Lincoln (1809-1865)
How many legs
does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. You can call a tail a leg if
you want to, but that doesn’t make it a leg.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
I
care not for a man's religion whose dog or cat are not the better for it.
Abraham
Lincoln (1809-1865)
I
desire so to conduct the affairs of this administration that if at the end I
have lost every other friend on earth, I shall at least have one friend left,
and that friend shall be down inside of me.
Abraham
Lincoln (1809-1865)
If
I care to listen to every criticism, let alone act on them, then this shop may
as well be closed for all other businesses. I have learned to do my best, and
if the end result is good then I do not care for any criticism, but if the end
result is not good, then even the praise of ten angels would not make the
difference.
Abraham
Lincoln (1809-1865)
Tact
is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.
Abraham
Lincoln (1809-1865)
The
probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the
support of a cause we believe to be just.
Abraham
Lincoln (1809-1865)
As
a nation we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We
now practically read it "all men are created equal, except Negroes."
When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created
equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to
this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of
loving liberty -- to
Abraham
Lincoln (1809-1865)
Sir,
I am not at all concerned about that for I know that the Lord is always on the
side of the right; but, it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I, and this
nation, should be on the Lord's side.
Abraham
Lincoln (1809-1865)
when asked if he thought the Lord was
on their side in the Civil War (1862)
There are two
rules for success. . . 1) Never tell everything you know.
Roger H. Lincoln
It
takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and
succeeded.
Anne Morrow
Lindbergh (1906-2001) American writer, pilot
I
guess if you were ever charged with necrophilia, that would be the perfect
defence: I didn’t know they were dead. I thought I was having sex with a civil
servant.
Paul Lindsay, Code name: Gentkill
The
final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction
and the will to carry on.
Walter
Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and
author
He
has honor if he holds himself to an ideal of conduct though it is inconvenient,
unprofitable, or dangerous to do so.
Walter
Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and
author A Preface to Morals
There
is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not
doing it.
Mary Wilson
Little (fl. c. 1900) American writer
The
real enemy is self absorption. Few have come to appreciate as much as I the
benefits of making fun of other people. It is impossible to adequately express
how much this has helped me to stop focusing so much on myself.
Christopher Locke
If
winning isn't everything, why do they keep score?
Vince
Lombardi (1913-1970) American football coach
Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser.
Vince
Lombardi (1913-1970) American football coach
Charity
is not a bone to the dog. Charity is a bone shared with the dog when you are
just as hungry as he is.
Jack London
If
we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's
life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
Henry
We
judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what
we have already done.
Henry
A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart
of a child.
Henry
Believe
me, every heart has its secret sorrow which the world knows not, and oftentimes
we call a man cold, when he is only sad.
Henry
I'm
furious about the Women's Liberationists. They keep getting up on soapboxes and
proclaiming that women are brighter than men. That's true, but it should be
kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket.
Anita Loos (1893-1981) American screenwriter, dramatist, author London
Observer (
Mistakes
are part of the dues one pays for a full life.
Sophia Loren (b. 1934) Italian actress
Sex appeal is 50
per cent what you’ve got and 50 per cent what people think you’ve got.
Sophia Loren (b. 1934) Italian actress
It's
good to have money and the things that money can buy, but it's good, too, to
check up once in a while and make sure you haven't lost the things money can't
buy.
George
Lorimer (1868-1937) American magazine editor
The most merciful thing in
the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its
contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of
infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.
H. P. Lovecraft
The Call of Cthulhu
Whatever
you may be sure of, be sure of this, that you are dreadfully like other people.
James Russell
Lowell (1819-1891) American diplomat,
essayist, poet
Many
worthy people, and many good books, with no doubt the best intentions, ... have
represented a life of sin as a life of pleasure; they have pictured virtue as
self-sacrifice, austerity as religion. Even in everyday life we meet with
worthy people who seem to think that whatever is pleasant must be wrong, that
the true spirit of religion is crabbed, sour, and gloomy; that the bright,
sunny, radiant nature which surrounds us is an evil and not a blessing, — a
temptation devised by the Spirit of Evil and not one of the greatest delights
showered on us in such profusion by the Author of all Good.
Sir John
Lubbock (1834-1913) British politician,
science writer The Use of Life (1894)
[C]ommunication
[can be] more difficult than we may think. We are all serving life sentences of
solitary confinement within our bodies; like prisoners, we have, as it were, to
tap in awkward code to our fellow men in their neighboring cells.
F. L. Lucas (1894-1967) British literary writer, editor, poet
Many years ago
Rudyard Kipling gave an address at
Halford E. Luccock
Censorship, like
charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.
Clare Booth Luce
A woman of mystique is fully
aware of her flaws and weaknesses, yet she is strong enough to admit them and
not be embarrassed by them.
Jean Lush
If
you are not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.
Martin Luther (1483-1546) German religious reformer
I
am a confirmed believer in blessings in disguise. I prefer them undisguised
when I myself happen to be the person blessed; in fact I can hardly recognize a
blessing in disguise except when it is bestowed upon someone else.
Robert Lynd (1892-1970) American sociologist
The
only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it,
top it; if you can't top it, laugh at it; if you can't laugh at it, it's
probably deserved.
J. Russell
Lynes (1910-1991) American educator,
critic, writer