Smart Stuff

The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them.
Samuel MCCHORD CROTHERS
Facts are ventriloquist’s dummies. Sitting on a wise man’s knee they may be made
to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.
Aldous Huxley
“Time Must Have a Stop”, 1944
Do not become archivists of […]

I believe in omens - for instance, when I’m on an ocean liner and I see the
Captain rowing away in a lifeboat, I worry.
M. Norman
Of course I believe in luck! How otherwise do you explain the success of the
people you detest?
Walter Slezak
The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect everything; the young know
everything.
Oscar Wilde
And how can […]

As hypocrisy is said to be the highest compliment to virtue, the art of lying is
the strongest acknowledgement of the force of truth.
William Hazlitt
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

That song is best esteemed with which our ears are most acquainted.
William BYRD
Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain
much.
Walter SAVAGE LANDOR
When you deal with your brother, be pleasant, but get a witness.
HESIOD

Always tell your rich relatives how fast you are making money, and your poor
ones how fast you are losing it. Anon
Fate chooses your relations, you choose your friends.
Jacques DELILLE
I haven’t spoken to my mother-in-law for eighteen months - I didn’t want to
interrupt her.
KEN DODD
A poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature.
Charles LAMB
Far […]

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
Winston Churchill
A fanatic is a man who does what he thinks the Lord would do if He knew the
facts of the case.
Finley Peter Dunne
Political extremism involes two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world’s ills and a conviction that […]

ADVICE FROM FATHERS:
Never forget where you came from; someday you might have to go back.
CYNTHIA BARNES
If you want something long enough, you’ll get over it.
Don CARNES
FATHERS, GENERAL
As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and
considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless.
Lord Chesterfield
I grew up […]

Rich men’s faults are covered with money and physicians’ with earth.
English Proverb
People will allow their faults to be shown them; they will let themselves be
punished for them; they will patiently endure many things because of them; they
only become impatient when they have to lay them aside.
Goethe
It is in our faults and failings, not in […]

No one is going to take Women’s Liberation seriously until women recognize that
they will not be thought of as equals in the secret privacy of men’s most private mental parts until they eschew alimony.
NORMAN MAILER
(Attrib)
While Manhattan’s new Women’s Bank seems to be thriving, Congresswoman Bella Abzug came out this week to quash the rumor […]

Rags make paper,
Paper makes money,
Money makes banks,
Banks make loans,
Loans make beggars,
Beggars make rags.
Anon
More than one pessimist got that way by financing an optimist.
Fred W. BRENDER
If Switzerland didn’t exist, the financial world would have to invent it.
FINANCIAL AXIOM
When you see a situation you cannot understand, look for the financial interest.
Tom L. Johnson
There seems to […]