amor towles

Surely nothing has to listen to so many stupid remarks as a painting in a museum. ~Edmond & Jules de Goncourt



It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs. We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so. It dictates to us our emotions, our passions. After eggs and bacon it says, "Work!" After beefsteak and porter, it says, "Sleep!" After a cup of tea (two spoonfuls for each cup, and don't let it stand for more than three minutes), it says to the brain, "Now rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature, and into life: spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!" ~Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat



My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance. ~Author Unknown



It takes 8,460 bolts to assemble an automobile, and one nut to scatter it all over the road. ~Author unknown, as seen on a bumper sticker



Men will often admit other women are oppressed but not you. ~Sheila Rowbotham



A skirt is no obstacle to extemporaneous sex, but it is physically impossible to make love to a girl while she is wearing trousers. ~Helen Lawrenson



It was subtle of God to learn Greek when he wished to become an author - and not to learn it better. ~Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886



The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. ~Galileo



The trouble with some women is that they get all excited about nothing - and then marry him. ~Cher



Gray skies are just clouds passing over. ~Author Unknown



Infidel: In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does. ~Ambrose Bierce



We have all taken risks in the making of war. Isn't it time that we should take risks to secure peace? ~J. Ramsay MacDonald



As network administrator I can take down the network with one keystroke. It's just like being a doctor but without getting gooky stuff on my paws. ~Scott Adams ("Dogbert")



Experience makes more timid men than it does wise ones. ~Josh Billings



Pilots are a rare kind of human. They leave the ordinary surface of the word, to purify their soul in the sky, and they come down to earth, only after receiving the communion of the infinite. ~Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra



Go with your heart, buddy. Our brains only screw things up. ~Chris Fedak and Allison Adler, Chuck, "Chuck Versus the Ring"



The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother's always a Democrat. ~Robert Frost



The only equipment lack in the modern hospital? Somebody to meet you at the entrance with a handshake! ~Martin H. Fischer



Ideas have become far more important to us than action - ideas so cleverly expressed in books by the intellectuals in every field. The more cunning, the more subtle, those ideas are the more we worship them and the books that contain them. We are those books, we are those ideas, so heavily conditioned are we by them. We are forever discussing ideas and ideals and dialectically offering opinions. Every religion has its dogma, its formula, its own scaffold to reach the gods, and when inquiring into the beginning of thought we are questioning the importance of this whole edifice of ideas. We have separated ideas from action because ideas are always of the past and action is always the present - that is, living is always the present. We are afraid of living and therefore the past, as ideas, has become so important to us. ~J. Krishnamurti Ideas should be clear and chocolate thick. Las cosas claras y el chocolate espeso. ~Spanish Proverb



What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight. ~Joseph Joubert