Bon Mots: favourite quotes

Woody Allen

"THEY are MY principles and if YOU don't like them, well, I have others."

Tallulah Bankhead

If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.

 

Nancy Banks-Smith

He was as sleek as a rat with a gold tooth.

The sun, like a debt collector at the door, had redoubled its hammering.

Berlioz

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

George Bernard-Shaw

If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.

MDB

·         To dispose of a spotty youth: Go: and take your acne with you!

·         I would rather extract all my teeth without anaesthetic.

 

George W Bush

We want results in every single classroom so that one single child is left behind

"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours."

"Baseball is 90% mental -- the other half is physical."

Winston Churchill

Lady Nancy Astor: Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put arsenic in your morning coffee.
Churchill: Madam, if you were my wife, I'd drink it.

Billy Connolly

Oh aye...my Father would thrash me every now and then. He'd talk while he did it too! He'd hit me and shout, 'Have ye had enough?' Had enough? Whit kind of question is that? 'Why, Father, would another kick in the balls be out of the question???'
 

Noel Coward

·         Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

·         I am not a heavy drinker. I can sometimes go for hours without touching a drop.

·         I have always paid income tax. I object only when it reaches a stage when I am threatened with having nothing left for my old age - which is due to start next Tuesday or Wednesday.

·         I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

·         I'll go through life either first class or third, but never in second.

·         I've sometimes thought of marrying - and then I've thought again.

·         If you must have motivation, think of your pay check on Friday.

·         It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

·         It was not Cafe Society, it was Nescafe Society.

·         Mona Lisa looks as if she has just been sick, or is about to be.

·         My body has certainly wandered a good deal, but I have an uneasy suspicion that my mind has not wandered enough.

·         People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it.

·         Success took me to her bosom like a maternal boa constrictor.

·         That strange feeling we had in the war. Have you found anything in your lives since to equal it in strength? A sort of splendid carelessness it was, holding us together.

·         The higher the building the lower the morals.

·         There's always something fishy about the French.

·         Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade.

·         Camelot, twice as long as Parsifal and not nearly as funny.

Bette Davies

Old age isn’t for sissies

Denis Diderot

"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”

Disraeli

Youth is a blunder, manhood a struggle, old age a regret.

Jimmy Durante

"My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she stops to breathe."

Albert Einstein

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.

Paul Erlich

The first rule to tinkering is to save all the parts.

WC Fields

·         On his tombstone… 'On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia'

·         Children, I adore 'em; but I couldn't eat a whole one'

·         Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child - if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender.

·         Once ... in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.

·         Children should neither be seen nor heard from - ever again.

·         (When asked why he never drank water) "Fish fuck in it."

·         Anyone who hates small dogs and children can't be all bad.

·         Start every day with a smile and get it over with.

·         My boy, when I want to play with a prick, I will play with my own.

·         I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.

 

Samuel Goldwyn

"A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on"

Ernest Hemingway

·         Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

·         Never mistake motion for action.

Samuel Johnson

·         Patriotism is the last resort of a scoundrel.

·         Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

·         Remarriage after divorce is the triumph of hope over experience.

Miles Jupp

·         'I'm privileged, not just to be here, but in general.'

·         'Had to put the dog down, needed the boot space'

·         'A beggar asked me for money. What, all of it, I said? Most of it's tied up in land. Ended up writing him a cheque.'

·         'We've all had trouble with low quality Stilton. It's like varicose Dairylea'

·         'They say an Englishman’s home is his castle, but I don’t think that’s strictly accurate. Only three of my homes are castles. And one of those is in France, so technically it’s a chateau'

·         'The first time I came to Edinburgh I was greeted by a pit-bull with one of those squeaky things in its mouth, what do you call them? Oh yes, toddlers.'

Peter Kay

·         [Referring to the use of actual victims in crimewatch reconstructions]
"She was shaking like a shitting dog...."

·         [Referring to shop assistant when handed £20 for a small transaction]
"She looked at me like I'd walked in on Christmas day and pissed over the kids...."

Niccolo Machiavelli

"It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both."

 

Groucho Marx

·         From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

·         A child of five could understand this. fetch me a child of five.

·         Room Service? Send up a larger room.

·         I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.

·         Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?

·         I have had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.

• Go, and never darken my towels again.

Mencken's dictum,
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."

Spike Milligan

"It was a perfect marriage. She didn't want to and he couldn't."
 

Miscellaneous

·         Of a spotty youth.... ‘He had a face like a pun o' raw mince’.

·         Referring to something revolting.…‘It wid pit ye aff yer mince fir a week’.

·         The things ye see, when ye huvney got yer gun!

·         The whole truth about any of us would shock all the rest of us.

·         Old age comes at a bad time

·         'You can tell the character of a man by the way he deals with someone who is not of use to him.'

The following excerpts are actual answers given on history tests and in Sunday school quizzes by children between 5th and 6th grade ages in Ohio.
They were collected over a period of three years by two teachers. Read carefully for grammar, misplaced modifiers, and of course, spelling!

A) Ancient Egypt was old. It was inhabited by gypsies and mummies who all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert. The climate Of the Sarah is such that
all the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.

B) Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandos. He died before he ever reached Canada but the commandos made it

C) Socrates was a famous old Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. He later died from an overdose of wedlock Which is apparently
poisonous. After his death, his career suffered a Dramatic decline.

D) Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped
out "Same to you, Brutus"

E) Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen," As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah!" and that was the end
of the fighting for a long while.

F) Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper which was very dangerous to all his men.

G) The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is
famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter.

H) Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration
of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by Rubbing two cats backward and also declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." He was a naturalist for sure. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

I) On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theatre and got Shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. They believe the assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor This ruined Booth's career

J) Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his
attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large.

K) Charles Darwin was a naturalist. He wrote the Organ of the Species. It was very long people got upset about it and had trials to see if it was really true. He sort of said God's days were not just 24 hours but without watches who knew anyhow? I don't get it.

L) Karl Marx was one of the Marx Brothers. The other three were in the movies. Karl made speeches and started revolutions. Someone in the family had to have a job, I guess

 

·         From BBC Music Mag: Headline of an article about how much the sister of composer Mendelssohn meant to him....'Fanny Was Absolutely Central to the Life of Mendelsson'

 

·         French proverb: A father is a banker supplied by God.

·         Anon: A man is only as old as he looks and if he only looks: he’s old.

·         Of Oliver Martinez....No doubt he enters every room to the sound of falling knickers.

Dorothy Parker

·         A rival opened a door and standing aside commented, 'Age before beauty' She shot back. 'pearls before swine'

·         If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

Enoch Powell.

"To write a diary every day is like returning to one's own vomit."

Terry Pratchett

"Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life."

Sir Christopher Soams

An ex described sex with him thus:

''Like having a large double wardrobe fall on top of you....with the key still in the keyhole''

Joseph Stalin

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."

Mark Twain

·         Never run after your own hat - others will be delighted to do it; why spoil their fun.

·         Wagner has some wonderful moments: and some very dull quarters of an hour.

Third Rock from the Sun

• Power is given; control is taken

Peter Ustinov

·         Friends are not necessarily the people you like best: they just got there first.

·         If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying, it can't be done.

·         It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.

·         Laughter would be bereaved if snobbery died.

·         Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.

·         Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice was that what she thought didn't amount to much.

Voltaire

• The best is the enemy of the good 

Ruby Wax

• 'My leotard was so tight: I could taste it.'     

Mae West

·         It's not the men in your life, it's the life in your men.

·         Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me.

·         Actress to Mae West, 'Goodness, what beautiful pearls' May...'Goodness had nothing to do with it'

·         I always say, keep a diary, and some day it'll keep you.

·         It's better to be looked over than overlooked.

Oscar Wilde

·         Youth is wasted on the young.

·         People now, they know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

·         She looked as though she had got up in a storm and dressed in a tempest

·         We are all lying in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars.

·         When we are young, we love our parents, when we grow up, we judge them, sometimes we forgive them.

·         When widowed, she went quite blond from grief.

·         The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it."

·         I can resist everything except temptation.

·         The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

·         To lose one parent could be called a misfortune, but to lose two is carelessness.

·         Murder is always a mistake......one should never do anything one cannot talk about after dinner.

·         Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.

(On his deathbed)  Either this wallpaper goes or I go

·         'Each man kills the thing he loves'.

Kenneth Williams

Critics are like eunuchs: they watch it done every night, they know how it is done, but they can't do it themselves

 

P.G. Woodhouse

·         She had a voice like cavalry charging over a metal bridge.

·         She was a real 12 minute egg
 

Steven Wright

·         Why don't they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff.

·         You can't have everything. Where would you put it?

·         OK, so what's the speed of dark ?

·         Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died

·         I bought some powdered water, but I don't know what to add to it.

·         (Referring to a glass of water) I mixed this myself. Two parts H, one part O. I don't trust anybody.

The wisdom of Mike Tyson

Note: Some of the words have been censored because this is fromTripod.

My Favorite Mike Tyson Quote

“[He] called me a ‘rapist’ and a ‘recluse.’ I’m not a recluse.”

On Lennox Lewis

"Lennox Lewis, I'm coming for you man. My style is impetuous. My defense is impregnable, and I'm just ferocious. I want your heart. I want to eat his children. Praise be to Allah!"

"My main objective is to be professional but to kill him."

On Evander Holyfield

"You got nothing coming, man. I'm going to enjoy this fight."

After biting Holyfield he said, "This is my career. I have children to raise. I have to retaliate. He butted me. Look at me. My kids will be scared of me."

"I felt Holyfield was using his head illegally. I told the referee I wasn't getting any help, so I went back to the streets. I cannot defend it, but it happened."

"I could have knocked him out in the third round but I wanted to do it slowly, so he would remember this night for a long time."

On His Wife

"I paid a worker at New York's zoo to re-open it just for me and Robin. When we got to the gorilla cage there was 1 big silverback gorilla there just bullying all the other gorillas. They were so powerful but their eyes were like an innocent infant. I offered the attendant $10,000 to open the cage and let smash that silverback's snotbox! He declined."

"Anyone with a grain of sense would know that if I punched my wife I would rip her head off. It's all lies. I have never laid a finger on her."

On His Childhood

"One morning I woke up and found my favorite pigeon, Julius, had died I was devastated and was gonna use his crate as my stickball bat to honor him. I left the crate on my stoop and went in to get something and I returned to see the sanitation man put the crate into the crusher. I rushed him and caught him flush on the temple with a titanic right hand he was out cold, convulsing on the floor like a infantile retard."

On Fans

To a question on whether he feels support from the common fan: "I don't feel love from them because there's no love. They don't know me as an individual; they know me for what I actually do. Because they pay to see me smash anybody. If they're white they pay, [it's] because the only thing they have respect for is my ability as an athlete. But if I was in court and I had to use them to testify against me on my character, they wouldn't testify positively against me and they would think I'm a cad..."

"There are nine million people who see me in the ring and hate my guts. Most of them are white. That's okay. Just spell my name right."

"I think the average person thinks I'm a f**king nut and I deserve whatever happens to me. That's what I believe."

"When you see me smash somebody's skull, you enjoy it."

On His Time in Prison

"You have to understand, Frank Bruno would not have been champion if I had not been in prison. Oliver McCall would not have been champion if I had not been in prison. A lot of these guys would not have been champion. Michael Moorer would not have been champion. Those guys would not have been champion if I had been around. They would have had no legacy. None of those guys would have had a legacy."

"I would have been in shape. I would have been active. Holyfield, those guys wouldn't have been champion when I was around, but I went away for four or five years inactive and that made them competitive for a time."

"But you really have to look at the science of the situation. You guys come here to talk and report but you don't actually look at the facts of what this business is all about. The best thing that happened to those guys and they should stand on their mother's shoulders and kiss my ass because I went to prison or they would not be existing right now. They'd be a flash in the pan and would have made some money and opened up a restaurant or bar somewhere where they live at."

On Boxing

"I try to catch him right on the tip of the nose, because I try to push the bone into the brain."

"Everyone in boxing probably makes out well except for the fighter. He's the only one that's on Skid Row most of the time; he's the only one that everybody just leaves when he loses his mind. He sometimes goes insane, he sometimes goes on the bottle, because it's a highly intensive pressure sport that allows people to just lose it [their self-control]."

"How dare these boxers challenge me with their primitive skills? It makes me angry. They're just as good as dead."

"My power is discombobulatingly devastating I could feel is muscle tissues collapse under my force. It's ludicrous these mortals even attempt to enter my realm."

Tyson: "It's interesting that you put me in the league with those illustrious fighters [Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis, Jack Johnson], but I've proved since my career I've surpassed them as far my popularity. I'm the biggest fighter in the history of the sport. If you don't believe it, check the cash register."

"Without discipline, no matter how good you are, you are nothing! One day, and I might not be around; you're going to meet a tough guy who takes your best shot. He'll keep coming because he's tough. Don't get discouraged. That's when the discipline comes in."

"I just want them to keep bringing guys on and I'm going to strip them of their health. I bring pain, a lot of pain."

On His Family

"No one gives a f**k about me. No one cares if my children starve, if they're on welfare. I have to support my children. I need more money."

Mike, on his mother who died in 1982: "I never saw my mother happy with me and proud of me for doing something: She only knew me as being a wild kid running the streets, coming home with new clothes that she knew I didn't pay for. I never got a chance to talk to her or know about her. Professionally, it has no effect, but it's crushing emotionally and personally."

On the Media

“I want to throw down your kid and stomp on his testicles, and then you will know what it is like to experience waking up everyday as me. And only then will you feel my pain.”

[To a female reporter] "It's no doubt I am going to win this fight and I feel confident about winning this fight. I normally don't do interviews with women unless I fornicate with them. So you shouldn't talk anymore... Unless you want to, you know."

"People [are] going to say what they say. It has to be for a reason. It's just for a reason. I know sometimes I say things; I offend people. I ask this lady a lewd question because I'm in a lot of pain too. I have some pain I'm gonna have for the rest of my life. And Lewis, I'm trying to give some of that pain to ya'll."

"You gentlemen have no idea what it's like to be myself, no idea what it's like. I'm not interested in being humiliated anymore."

"Sometimes you guys have no pride, so no matter what I say, you guys ... it doesn't affect you because you don't care about nothing but money. So every now and then I kick your f**king ass and stomp on you and put some kind of pain and inflict some of the pain on you because you deserve to feel the pain that I feel."

"If I take this camera and put it in your face for 20 years, I don't know what you might be. You might be a homosexual if I put that camera on you since you were 13 years old. I've been on that camera since I was 13 years old."

On Himself

"The one thing I know, everyone respects the true person and everyone's not true with themselves. All of these people who are heroes, these guys who have been lily white and clean all their lives, if they went through what I went through, they would commit suicide. They don't have the heart that I have. I've lived places they can't defecate in."

"I'm not Mother Teresa. But I'm also not Charles Manson!"

"Fear is your best friend or your worst enemy. It's like fire. If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can't control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. If you can control your fear, it makes you more alert, like a deer coming across the lawn."

"I'm just like you. I enjoy the forbidden fruits in life, too. I think it's un-American not to go out with a woman, not to be with a beautiful woman, not to get my dick sucked ... It's just what I said before, everybody in this country is a big f**king liar. [The media] tells people ... that this person did this and this person did that and then we find out that were just human and we find out that Michael Jordan cheats on his wife just like everybody else and that we all cheat on our f**king wife in one way or another either emotionally, physically or sexually or one way."

"There's no one perfect. We're always gonna do that. Jimmy Swaggart is lascivious, Mike Tyson is lascivious -- but we're not criminally, at least I'm not, criminally lascivious. You know what I mean. I may like to fornicate more than other people -- it's just who I am. I sacrifice so much of my life, can I at least get laid? I mean, I been robbed of my most of my money, can I at least get [oral sex] without the people wanting to harass me and wanting to throw me in jail?"

"At times, I come across as crude or crass, that irritates you when I come across like a Neanderthal or a babbling idiot at times. But I like to be that person. I like to show you all that person because that's who you come to see."

"I'm the most irresponsible person in the world. The reason I'm like that is because, at 21, you all gave me $50 or $100 million, and I didn't know what to do. I'm from the ghetto. I don't know how to act. One day I'm in a dope house robbing somebody. The next thing I know, 'You're the heavyweight champion of the world.' ... Who am I? What am I? I don't even know who I am. I'm just a dumb child. I'm being abused. I'm being robbed by lawyers. I think I have more money than I do. I'm just a dumb pugnacious fool. I'm just a fool who thinks I'm someone. And you tell me I should be responsible?"

On His Mental Health

"I don't know if I'm mentally sick, but I have... episodes sometimes. I'm a depressant kind of dude. I have episodes, and I'm human. But no one cares about my health as a human because sometimes I'm in my episodes when I'm at work."

"Well, [contemplating suicide] goes through everyone's mind, I'm sure. And if it doesn't I really must be crazy. Everyone thinks about that because sometimes, you know what I mean, it's just tough being a ni**er and it's tough being a bad ni**er."

I don't react to a tragic happening any more. I took so many bad things as a kid and some people think I don't care about anything. It's just too hard for me to get emotional. I can't cry no more."

"I'm on the Zoloft [an antidepressant] to keep from killing y'all."

On America

"I'm just a dark guy from a den of iniquity. A dark shadowy figure from the bowels of iniquity. I wish I could be Mike who gets an endorsement deal. But you can't make a lie and a truth go together. This country wasn't built on moral fiber. This country was built on rape, slavery, murder, degradation and affiliation with crime."