Oxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit and Wisdom from History's Greatest Wordsmiths Book

My fav quotes (not a review):
-Page 2 |
"Who among us is not experienced something ugly in everything beautiful, something; true in everything false, something female in everything male, or, as King Claudius says in Shakespeare's Hamlet, "mirth in funeral" and "dirge in marriage"?"
-Page 3 |
"Even his ignorance is encyclopedic."
-Page 3 |
"Another example occurs in the Albert Camus observation: I love my country too much to be a nationalist."
-Page 6 |
"after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001: A nation is only at peace when it's at war."
-Page 7 |
"Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself. GEORGE SANTAYANA"
-Page 7 |
"Katherine Mansfield: If you wish to live, you must first attend your own funeral."
-Page 8 |
"Gibbon advanced the same idea: I was never less alone than when by myself."
-Page 9 |
"Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do."
-Page 9 |
"On the Road: Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything."
-Page 11 |
"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's printed on. SAMUEL GOLDWYN Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded. YOGI BBRRA, ON A POPULAR RESTAURANT"
-Page 13 |
"One martini is all right, two is two many, three is not enough."
-Page 15 |
"When I came home I expected a surprise and there was no surprise for me, so, of course, I was surprised."
-Page 18 |
"wish I were either rich enough or poor enough to do a lot of things that are impossible in my present comfortable circumstances."
-Page 18 |
"I figure you have the same chance of winning the lottery whether you play or not."
-Page 18 |
"The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swatter."
-Page 19 |
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. MARK TWAIN"
-Page 24 |
"You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough."
My fav quotes (not a review):
"I think people who go to a psychiatrist ought to have their heads examined. JANE ACE Stay with me; I want to be alone. JOEY ADAMS When all else fails, read the instructions. AGNES ALLEN"
"There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them. GEORGE ORWELL"
"We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn't obey the rules. ALAN BENNETT"
"People would have more leisure time if it weren't for all the leisure-time activities that use it up."
"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city."
"I love mankind'it's people I can't stand."
"A life of ease is a difficult pursuit."
"Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man."
"The devil, after all, is a fallen angel."
"The paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind's eye."
"There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying."
"You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. WILLIAM BLAKE"
"We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is a civil war, and in all such contentions, triumphs are defeats."
"It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it."
"Man can believe the impossible, but can never believe the improbable. OSCAR WILDE"
"What a man enjoys about a woman's clothes are his fantasies of how she would look without them."
"In another paradox, love leads to both profound truth-telling and grand deceptions. While in the throes of love, people reveal things"
"Love is the source of every virtue in you and of every deed which deserves punishment. DANTE"
"To make a young couple love each other, it is only necessary to oppose and separate them. JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE"
"Personally I think if a woman hasn't met the right man by the time she's twenty-four, she may be lucky. DEBORAH KERR
"To be able to say how much you love is to love but little. PKTRARCH (FRANCESCO PETRARCA)"
"You can end love more easily than you can moderate it. SENECA"
"Sex is like money; only too much is enough. JOHN UPDIKE"
"The real paradox is that the men who make, materially, the biggest sacrifices for their women should do the least for them ideally and romantically."
"Mark Twain said it best in one of his most popular observations: My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it."
"Nobody knows how to manage a wife but a bachelor."
"Two important things to teach a child: to do and to do without."
"{79} I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man."
"An obedient wife commands her husband."
"The finest people marry the two sexes in their own person. RALPH WALDO EMERSON"
"We want our children to fit in and to stand out. We rarely address the conflict between these goals. ELLEN GOODMAN"
"When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her."
"I am determined my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it"
"I suspect that in every good marriage there are times when love seems to be over."
"The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous."
"Never have children, only grandchildren."
"To blow and swallow at the same moment is not easy."
"Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be President, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process. JOHN F. KENNEDY"
"If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of lawyers in the first place. CHARLES MONTAGU"
"Sincere diplomacy is no more possible than dry water or wooded iron. JOSEPH STALIN"
"Tragedy is if I cut my finger. Comedy is if I walk into an open sewer and die."
"If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. If I have to laugh, I think of my sex life. GLENDA JACKSON"
"To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must forget them."
"I have been told that Wagner's music is better than it sounds. MARK TWAIN"
"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it"
"Don't use no double negatives or "It ain't correct to say ain't.""
"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right. ISAAC ASIMOV"
"Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, get your breakfast first. JOSH"
"The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all."
"There are some occasions when a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest."
"War is a series of catastrophes which result in a victory. GEORGES CLEMENCEAU"
"Paper is always strongest at the perforations."
"Lying is the strongest acknowledgment of the force of truth."
"War is fear cloaked in courage."
"Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others."
"A journalist is stimulated by a deadline; he writes worse when he has time."
"Literature: proclaiming in front of everyone what one is careful to conceal from one's immediate circle."
"Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: The thought of suicide is a great consolation: with the help of it one has got through many a bad night."
"Once again she decided not to decide. She preferred being compelled into her decisions."
"Entertaining is one method of avoiding people."
"It is the final proof of God's omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us."
"One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures."
"When I grow up I want to be a little boy. JOSEPH HELLER, IN SOMETHING HAPPENED (l974)"
"He had felt like a man rushing to catch a train he was anxious to miss."
"Several excuses are always less convincing than one."
"I shall long to see the miseries of the world, since the sight of them is necessary to happiness."
"(1913) I would be content being a housewife if I could find the kind of man who wouldn't treat me like one."
"I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly. SAKI"
"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. SEN. EVERETT DIRKSEN, ON WASHINGTON, D.C. FISCAL POLICY"
"Democracy used to be a good thing, but it has now got into the wrong hands."