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Quotes of the day: Rex Stout
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Published Sunday, December 01, 2013 @ 6:41 AM EST
Dec 01 2013

(Note: Today is also the birthday of Woody Allen.)

Rex Todhunter Stout (December 1, 1886 - October 27, 1975) was an American writer noted for his detective fiction. Stout is best known as the creator of the larger-than-life fictional detective Nero Wolfe, described by reviewer Will Cuppy as "that Falstaff of detectives.". (Click here for full Wikipedia article)

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A lie isn't a lie if it's in reply to a question the questioner has no right to ask.

A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.

A person who does not read cannot think. He may have good mental processes, but he has nothing to think about.

A pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.

Any spoke will lead an ant to the hub.

As I understand it, a born executive is a guy who, when anything difficult or unexpected happens, yells for somebody to come and help him.

Dignities are like faces; no two are the same.

Genius is fine for the ignition spark, but to get there someone has to see that the radiator doesn't leak and no tire is flat.

I can dodge folly without backing into fear.

I cannot agree that mountain climbing is merely one manifestation of man's spiritual aspirations. I think instead it is a hysterical paroxysm of his infantile vanity.

I don't answer questions containing two or more unsupported assumptions.

I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.

I try to know what I need to know. I make sure to know what I want to know.

In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.

No one likes the authority of superior intellect.

Nothing is more admirable than the fortitude with which millionaires tolerate the disadvantages of their wealth.

One trouble with living beyond your deserved number of years is that there's always some reason to live another year.

The brain can be hoodwinked but not the stomach.

The minute those two little particles inside a woman's womb have joined together, billions of decisions have been made. A thing like that has to come from entropy.

The more you put in your brain, the more it will hold- if you have one.

There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living- cook books and detective stories.

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

There is only one object on earth that frightens me: a physicist working on a new trick.

To say that man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.

War doesn't mature men; it merely pickles them in the brine of disgust and dread.

We are all vainer of our luck than our merits.

What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there's only one damn thing in the world I have any faith in. That's the idea of American democracy, because it seems to me so obvious that that's the only sensible way to run human affairs.

What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature?

When people's brains stop working, just go somewhere else.

Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.


Categories: Quotes of the day, Rex Stout, Woody Allen


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Quotes of the day
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Published Saturday, December 01, 2012 @ 6:27 AM EST
Dec 01 2012

Quotes of the day- Woody Allen:
 
Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician whose career spans over half a century.

He began as a comedy writer in the 1950s, penning jokes and scripts for television and also publishing several books of short humor pieces. In the early 1960s, Allen started performing as a stand-up comic, emphasizing monologues rather than traditional jokes. As a comic, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he insists is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comics, while a UK survey ranked Allen as the third greatest comedian.

By the mid-1960s Allen was writing and directing films, first specializing in slapstick comedies before moving into more dramatic material influenced by European art cinema during the 1970s. He is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late '70s. Allen often stars in his own films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup. Some of the best-known of his over 40 films are Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Midnight in Paris (2011). Critic Roger Ebert has described Allen as "a treasure of the cinema".

He is also a jazz clarinetist who performs regularly at small venues in Manhattan, including the Carlyle Hotel on Monday nights. (Click for full article.)

A relationship is like a shark- it has to keep moving forward or it dies. Well, what we have on our hands here is a dead shark.

All people know the same truth; our lives consist of how we choose to distort them.

As the poet said, “Only God can make a tree”- probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in the bath and she'd come in and sink my boats.

Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.

Cloquet hated reality but realized it was still the only place to get a good steak.

Death should not be seen as the end but as a very effective way to cut down expenses.

Early in life, I was visited by the bluebird of anxiety.

Eighty percent of success is showing up.

Eternity is really long, especially near the end.

God is silent- now if we can only get man to shut up.

How can I believe in God when last week I got my tongue stuck in the roller of an electric typewriter?

Hypocrite: a guy who writes a book on atheism and prays that it sells.

I am at two with nature.

I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.

I believe there's something out there watching over us. Unfortunately, it's the government.

I can't express anger. I grow a tumor instead.

I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.

I can't make the leap of faith necessary to believe in my own existence.

I do not believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying.

I have an intense desire to return to the womb. Anybody's.

I really don't care about commercial success, and the end result is I rarely achieve it.

I recently turned sixty. Practically a third of my life is over.

I think crime pays. The hours are good, you meet a lot of interesting people, you travel a lot.

I think that people should mate for life, like pigeons or Catholics.

I think you should defend to the death their right to march, and then go down and meet them with baseball bats.

I took a speed-reading course and read “War and Peace” in 20 minutes. It involves Russia.

I wanted to be an Olympic swimmer, but I had some problems with buoyancy.

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.

I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.

I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.

If God exists, I hope he has a good excuse.

If I believed in reincarnation, I'd come back as a sponge.

If my soul exists without my body I am convinced all my clothes will be loose-fitting.

If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss bank.

In California, they don't throw their garbage away- they make it into TV shows.

In real life, [Diane] Keaton believes in God. But she also believes the radio works because there are tiny people inside it.

Intellectuals are like the mafia; they only kill their own.

Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought, particularly for people who can never remember where they have left things.

It was the day after Jean-Paul Sartre died.
(recalling under oath the day in 1980 he first met Mia Farrow)

It's worse than dog eats dog. It's dog doesn't even return other dog's phone calls.

Life doesn't imitate art. It imitates bad television.

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering- and it's all over much too soon.

Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.

Marriage? That's for life! It's like cement!

Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.

Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.

My brain is my second favorite organ.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

My parents stayed together for forty years. But that was out of spite.

My relationship to death remains the same. I'm strongly against it.

Not only is there no God, but try finding a plumber on Sunday.

Oh, now there's only one kind of love that lasts. That's unrequited love. It stays with you forever.

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

Organized crime in America takes in over $40 billion a year and spends very little on office supplies.

Political questions, if you go back thousands of years, are ephemeral, not important. History is the same thing over and over again.

Remember, if you smoke after sex you're doing it too fast.

Sex alleviates tension. Love causes it.

Sex between a man and a woman can be wonderful- provided you get between the right man and the right woman.

Sex between two people is a beautiful thing; between five, it's fantastic...

Sex is like having dinner: sometimes you joke about the dishes, sometimes you take the meal seriously.

Sex without love is a meaningless experience, but as meaningless experiences go it's pretty damned good.

She was an atheist and I was an agnostic. We didn't know what religion not to bring our children up in.

Some drink deeply from the river of knowledge. Others only gargle.

Some guy hit my fender and I said “be fruitful and multiply” but not in those words.

The difference between sex and death is that with death you can do it alone and no one is going to make fun of you.

The good people sleep much better at night than the bad people. Of course, the bad people enjoy the waking hours much more.

The last time I was inside a woman was when I visited the Statue of Liberty.

The lion and the lamb shall lie down together, but the lamb won't get much sleep.

The message is God is love and you should lay off fatty foods.

The only thing standing between me and greatness is me.

The three most beautiful words in the English language are not “I love you.” They are, “It is benign.”

The universe is merely a fleeting idea in God's mind- a pretty uncomfortable thought, particularly if you've just made a down payment on a house.

There's nothing wrong with you that some Prozac and a polo mallet wouldn't fix.

Thought: Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.

To me there's no real difference between a fortune teller or a fortune cookie and any of the organized religions. They're all equally valid or invalid, really. And equally helpful.

To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.

Tradition is the illusion of permanence.

We will run amok together, and then, when we get tired, we will walk amok.
(As Jimmy Bond in Casino Royale)

What a wonderful thing, to be conscious! I wonder what the people in New Jersey do?

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

Whosoever shall not fall by the sword or by famine, shall fall by pestilence; so why bother shaving?

With me, it's just a genetic dissatisfaction with everything.

You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to.

You cannot prove the nonexistence of God; you just have to take it on faith.

Zen boy scout: rubs one stick together.


Categories: Quotes of the day, Woody Allen


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Quotes of the day
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Published Thursday, June 21, 2012 @ 12:00 AM EDT
Jun 21 2012

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (June 21, 1905 – April 15, 1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. (Full Wikipedia article)

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

Anyone, at any time, may equally find himself victim or executioner.

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Hell is other people.

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

I know only one Church: it is the society of men.

I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

If you are lonely when you are alone, you are in bad company.

If you begin by saying, “Thou shalt not lie,” there is no longer any possibility of political action.

Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous

Life begins on the other side of despair.

Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.

One cannot become a saint when one works sixteen hours a day.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

The attentive pupil who wishes to be attentive, his eyes riveted on the teacher, his ears open wide, so exhausts himself in playing the attentive role that he ends up by no longer hearing anything.

The more one is absorbed in fighting evil, the less one is tempted to place the good in question.

The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

Three a.m. is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

We are alone, with no excuses. That is the idea I shall try to convey when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects is free; because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

We do not judge the people we love.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

When the rich make war it's the poor that die.

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It was the day after Jean-Paul Sartre died.
(recalling under oath the day in 1980 he first met Mia Farrow) -Woody Allen


Categories: Jean-Paul Sartre, Quotes of the day, Woody Allen


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