All this is is a collection of quotations. They are by no means all of a literary nature. In fact they are taken more or less at random, and the only real criterion is that they appeal to me in some way. I hope that some of them appeal to you, too

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When I want a peerage, I shall buy it like an honest man.

- Lord Northcliffe

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When your work speaks for itself, don't interrupt.

- Henry J. Kaiser

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What have future generations ever done for us?

- Groucho Marx

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All I know is that I am not a Marxist

- Karl Marx

 

Of course I have principles. And if you don't like these, I have others.

 

- Groucho Marx

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It is good that war is terrible, lest we grow too fond of it.
 

- General Robert E. Lee

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He wrapped himself in quotations - as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of emperors.

- Rudyard Kipling

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Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.

- Jeremy Bentham

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Life is a gamble at terrible odds - if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it.
 

- Tom Stoppard

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Happiness is no laughing matter.

- Richard Whateley - Apophthegms

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They spend their time mostly looking forward to the past.
 

- John Osborne

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Si jeunesse savoit; si vieillesse pouvoit (If youth knew; if age could).
 

- Henri Etienne

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The critical period in matrimony is breakfast-time.

- AP Herbert

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A dreamer of dreams.

- The Bible (Deutoronomy)

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Apart from the known and the unknown, what else is there?
 

- Harold Pinter

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She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B.

- Dorothy Parker

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Deprivation is for me what daffodils were to Wordsworth.
 

- Philip Larkin

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In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne.

- William Langland

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When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.

- Mark Twain

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Victor Hugo ... un fou qui se croyait Victor Hugo. (Victor Hugo ... a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo).

- Jean Cocteau

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Difficile est saturam non scribere. (It is hard not to write satire).
 

- Juvenal

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Excuse my dust.

- Dorothy Parker [suggested epitaph for herself].

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No pasaran! (They shall not pass).

- La Pasionaria (Dolores Ibarruri).

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A week is a long time in politics.

- Harold Wilson

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The Middle East is a region where oil is thicker than blood.
 

- James Holland

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The central theme of the novel is that they were glad to see each other.
 

- Gertrude Stein.

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Bigotry may be roughly defined as the anger of men who have no opinions.

- GK Chesterton.

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ET phone home.

- Melissa Mathison [film scriptwriter].

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Life is just one damned thing after another.

- Elbert Hubbard.

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Architecture is the art of how to waste space.

- Philip Johnson.

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If one cannot catch the bird of paradise, better take a wet hen.
 

- Nikita Khrushchev.

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David Frost has risen without trace.

- Kitty Muggeridge.

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Religion to me has always been the wound, not the bandage.
 

- Dennis Potter.