Previous Quotes of the Week

Where we live on the Earth is
at the consent of geology,
but this concent can be withdrawn
at any time.

Radio 4 correspondent

16th January, 2005

Why procrastinate today when you can put it off until tomorrow?

Natham Rumbold

30th January, 2005

Doctor : We all must face reality sooner or later.
Elwood Dowde : Ah ha. Well, I wrested with reality for 35 years doctor,
and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it.

James Stewart - "Harvey"

7th February, 2005

On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty
can run for about fifty miles more if you have the right music very loud on the radio.

Hunter S Thompson

14th February, 2005

I've got to the age now where the only things I'm proud of
are my mistakes.

Robert Altman

19th February, 2005

I've got a step ladder.
It's a nice step ladder,
But sometimes.....
sometimes.....
I wish I'd known my real ladder.

Letter to Radio 2

5th March, 2005

His house was full of creatures he studied.
His children thought this was how everybody lived.
When they visited friends, one asked:
"And where does your Daddy keep his barnacles?"

Article about Charles Darwin

15th March, 2005

When two people meet there are really six people in the room;
themselves as they see themselves,
themselves as the other sees them
and themselves as they really are.

William James

13th April, 2005

Take me to the horizon.

Captain Jack Sparrow

23rd April, 2005

If a man is alone in a forest
with no woman to hear him;
is he still a bastard?

Dylan Sunter

4th May, 2005

Time is an illusion.
Lunchtime doubly so.

Ford Prefect

12th May, 2005

Be a realist;
Demand the impossible.

Che Guevara

28th May, 2005

Mae : I used to be ashamed of myself.
Interviewer : You mean you reformed?
Mae : No - I just got over being ashamed.

Mae West

3rd July, 2005

This was a day they would never forget;
Not even if someone erased their minds with tiny rubbers.

The Day Today

4th August, 2005

If the angel decides to come it will be
because you have convinced her, not by tears, but by your humble resolve
to be always beginning, to be a beginner.

Rilke - suggested by Elizabeth Bardsley

12th September, 2005

The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves.

William Shakespeare

4th October, 2005

Keep an angel on your shoulder.
Never throw your dreams away
For they may save your life
One day.

Tom Russell

31st October, 2005

The climate of Edinburgh is such that the weak succumb young.....
and the strong envy them.

Dr Johnson

8th November,2005

Sometimes......sometimes.....
You've just got to do something bad...
Just to know that you're still alive.

Chris the DJ in Northern Exposure

20th November, 2005

At any moment during a twenty-four-hour day, only one-third of the people in the world are asleep.
The other two-thirds are awake and creating problems.

Admiral Hyman Rickover - suggested by Robert Rickover

26th November, 2005

They're nice people to be in goal with, the British.

Russell Braddon - The Naked Island.

3rd December, 2005

I gave up smoking and drinking in 1969.
It was the worst 20 minutes of my life.

George Best

15th December, 2005

A goldfish starts every move by turning its head in the direction it wants to go.
If you want speed and balance, use your head to start the turn.

Kancho - aikido master.

22nd December, 2005

Keep Ithaka always in your mind,
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with what you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

C.P.Cavafy

6th January, 2006

She was humming something in her high nasal hum, faint evocation of summer bees.
The coals chuckled, settled with easy sifting sounds.
She rocked.
That was how winter came that year.

Cormac McCarthy - The Orchard Keeper

16th January, 2006

If you have a talent, use it in every which way possible.
Don't hoard it.
Don't dole it out like a miser.
Spend it lavishly like a millionaire intent on going broke.

Brendan Behan - suggested by Barney Bardsley

29th January, 2006

I've learnt so much from my mistakes...
I think I'll make another.

Christine Buckley

4th February, 2006

Can Jack and Jill
terrified that each and the other are not terrified become
terrified that each and other are terrified, and
eventually,
not terrified that each and other not be terrified?

RD Laing - suggested by Chris Reason

12th February, 2006

Brainwash yourself before somebody nasty beats you to it.

Rob Brezsny - suggested by Barney Bardsley

21st February, 2006

Full Moon and Little Frieda

A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket -
And you listening.
A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch.
A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror
To tempt a first star to a tremor.

Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath -
A dark river of blood, many boulders,
Balancing unspilled milk.
'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!'

The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work
That points at him amazed.

Ted Hughes

28th February, 2006

EVERYBODY lies
ALL the time.

Stephen Poliakoff

12th March, 2006

....and may you grow strong
to break
all webs of my weaving.

Evangeline Paterson - A Wish for my Children

14th March, 2006

True happiness is knowing you're a hypocrite.

Ivor Cutler - 1923 to 2006 - RIP

26th March, 2006

No one is better at doing what you do than you.
Also, no one is worse at it.

Mick Goodrick - suggested by Dan Wilde

5th April, 2006

If you can't be a good example,
you'll just have to be a horrible warning.

Catherine - suggested by Janet Travers

13th April, 2006

I daydream of Chile -
a place I never want to visit.

Dylan Thomas

24th April, 2006

Where is your enough?

Phra Kru Santi Nontakun - Suggested by James Turner

3rd May, 2006

Stumble into grace.

Emmylou Harris album title.

8th May, 2006

BOY TRAPPED IN OWN BODY

Local newspaper hoarding

16th May, 2006

Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die today...

James Dean - Suggested by James Turner

24th May, 2006

Almost anything you do will be insignificant,
but it's very important that you do it.

Gandhi

29th June, 2006

In a combat between wisdom and feeling
wisdom never wins.

Merlin - Mort d'Artur

14th July, 2006

Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything...
That's how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

8th August, 2006

Rebus : You're either with me or against me. That's my philosophy.
D.S.Templar : That's a shit philosophy.

Ian Rankin

21st September, 2006

Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.

Samuel Beckett - thanks (again) for suggestion to Barney Bardsley

15th October, 2006

People are scared of getting close to what they need.

Mike Gilpin

1st November, 2006

There is a place between right and wrong;
I will meet you there.

Runi

15th November, 2006

Change, change, change.
All this talk about change.
Don't they realise it's bad enough already.

24th November, 2006

I have to be satisfied with the ending even though my editor might say,
"This book ends awfully abruptly."
And then I say, "But it’s over."

Elmore Leonard

5th December, 2006

Life moves pretty fast.
If you don't stop and look around you once in a while....
You could miss it.

Ferris Bueller

20th December, 2006

Captain Reno : Why did you come to Casablanca?
Rick : I came for the waters.
Captain Reno : But there are no waters here. We're in the middle of the desert.
Rick : I was misinformed.

Casablanca

2nd January, 2007

You arrive with nothing;
And you leave with nothing.
So what have you got to loose?
Nothing!

The Life of Brian

12th January, 2007

The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The Second Coming - W.B.Yeats

19th January, 2007

Modern medicine has a lousy record of dealing with the back;
We spend too much time on the front.

Dr Julius Hibbert talking to Homer Simpson - suggested by Lucy Bain

27th January, 2007

Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably.
The lesson is, never try.

Homer Simpson

6th February, 2007

Man's best friend outside of a horse or a dog is a book.
Inside a horse or a dog, it's too dark to read anyway!

Confucius - suggested by Tony Green

2nd March, 2007

Though my soul may set in darkness
It will rise in perfect light.
I have loved the stars too fondly
To be fearful of the night.

Sarah Williams "The Old Astronomer to his Pupil"

21st March, 2007

You don't stop laughing because you grow old.
You grow old because you stop laughing.

Michael Pritchard

31st March, 2007

Give me a space where I can breathe,
a space where I can live my dreams.
A place where no-one will ever say
how I should live my life if their way.

Found on a web forum

14th April, 2007

I always think that bungee jumping is suicide for the un-committed.

Jimmy Carr

27th April, 2007

He had taught her what she needed
But forgotten it himself.

Sean Manning

20th May, 2007

In Japan apprentice suchi cooks spend three years
just watching the suchi master prepare suchi.
When the apprentice finally prepares his first suchi,
he does a good job of it.

Temple Grandin (Animals in Translation)

26th June, 2007

Get the head right and the rest will follow.

Heineken Beer advert.

10th July, 2007

Cardinal Richelieu, first minister to Louis XIII of France
had a sister who thought she had a glass bottom.
She refused to sit on it in case it shattered.

Metro Factfile

21st August, 2007

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts,
than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.

Mahatma Gandhi

7th September, 2007

Forgive the selfishness of the old man
Who claims the past for his own.

Anon

27th September, 2007

"And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?"
"I did."
"And what did you want?"
"To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth."

Raymomd Carver/Last Fragment - thanks to Barney Bardsley for sending me this.

23rd October, 2007

You can't learn everything you need to know legally.

John Irving

16th November, 2007

I'm sorry pretty baby
but I always take the long way home.

Tom Waits

4th December, 2007

Sigmund Freud was a novelist with a scientific background. He just didn't know he was a novelist.
All those damn psychiatrists after him, they didn't know he was a novelist either.

John Irving

29th December, 2007

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life
or whether that station will be held by anybody else,
these pages must show.

Charles Dickens - David Copperfield

15th January, 2008

The supply of words in the world market is plentiful,
but the demand is falling.Lech Walenska

Lech Walenska - suggested by James Turner

27th January, 2008

Hell is other people.

Jean-Paul Sartre

9th February, 2008

All the troubles of men are caused by one single thing,
which is their inability to stay quietly in a room.

Blaise Pascal

20th February, 2008

You can't make someone love you.
All you can do is stalk them and hope that they will eventually give in.

Arthur Smith

12th March, 2008

Ignorance is as constructed as knowledge.

Friedrich Nietzsche

24th March, 2008

A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.

Banksy

9th April, 2008

Whoever needs to sing
will find a song.

Swedish proverb

16th April, 2008

The future's bright;
The future's orange.

Alfons Mucha - 1892

9th May,2008

When I feel like the top of my head would come off, I know that's poetry.
Is there another way?

Emily Dickinson

20th May, 2008

How do you know how much to pay
if you don't know what it's worth?

Peter Carey

7th June, 2008

You can't change the course of nature
by co-ordinating yourself.

F M Alexander

17th June, 2008

The hero's word is "No".

Carl Jung

27th July, 2008

The only people who make me mad
are the people who have the answers.

Alastair Cooke

3rd August, 2008

What I loved in my old life,
I haven't forgotten.
It lives in my spine.

Leonard Cohen

30thAugust, 2008

If you can look back on your life with contentment,
you have one of man's most precious gifts -
a selective memory.

Jim Fiebig

18th September, 2008

Paradise is not a place of arrival,
but a way of travelling.

Ziaddin Sardar - Desperately Seeking Paradise

27th September, 2008

One of the things about war criminals
is that they're all very sentimental about their mothers....
not about anybody else's mothers 'cause they slaughter them.

Ann Leslie

5th October, 2008

Beware any town where the wind has a name.

Gavin Lyall

23rd October, 2008

More light!

Last words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

30th October, 2008

Everybody's gotta be somewhere!

Eccles - suggested by Tony Green

13th November, 2008

There's a right way and a wrong way
to do everything.
And the wrong way is to tell people
to do it the right way.

Bob Flowerdew - Gardeners Question Time

27th November, 2008

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems,
but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Herm Albright - suggested by Alan Hawkins

3rd December, 2008

I'm the sort of person who would join a queue
just to complain about how long the queue is.

Marcus Brigstoke

14th December, 2008

Take it easy.......
But take it.

Studs Terkel

7th January, 2009

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.

Henri Matisse - Suggested by Barney Bardsley

21st January,2009

Before you embark on a journey of revenge,
dig two graves.

Confucius

7th February, 2009

If my devils are to leave me,
I am afraid my angels will take flight as well.

Rilke

26th February, 2009

I was there when I said it.

Murray Walker - suggested by Andre Street

9th March, 2009

He knows nothing: and he thinks he knows everything.
That points clearly to a political career.

George Bernard Shaw

19th March, 2009

Life's too short.....
and the hours are too long.

Ian Rankin

30th March, 2009

Hippos spend their days on the bottom of the river
telling each other jokes.
At night they climb out onto the river bank to laugh.

Maasai saying

24th April, 2009

I don't want to set the world on fire.
I just want to keep my nuts warm.

Sign on peanut vendor's stall in New York

2nd May, 2009

None grow rich
in the sea.

Relic by Ted Hughes

25th May, 2009

Heavy nuns are always agitated.
But you can often carmelite nun.

Anon

31st May, 2009

And one illumined clock against the night,
Proclaimed the time
Was neither wrong nor right.

Robert Frost

12th July, 2009

(On global warming)

World go one way;
People go the other.

The Wire

15th September, 2009

Once upon a time,
Today was the future.

Jeremy Paxton

22nd September, 2009

Just because the director shouts "Action"
Doesn't mean you have to do something.

Marlon Brando

16th October, 2009

In 1939 Jean Paul Satre told Simone de Beauvoire that there was no way the Germans would invade France.
A couple of weeks later, sitting in a Parisian cafe surrounded by German soldiers,
he told her that, apart from the general premise and all the minor details,
he was pleased with himself for being completely accurate in his prediction.

4th November, 2009

Something went wrong with nothing.

Stephen Hawkins

22nd November, 2009

Yes

First word of the poem "Adlestrop" by Edward Thomas

1st December, 2009

I walk the streets
I'm bones, I'm skin.
The wind blows thru'
I let it in.

Joanie Diamond

17th December, 2009

Tyranny is the deliberate
removal of nuance.

Russell Brand

9th January, 2010

Nothing in small print
Is ever good news.

Andy Rodin

31st January, 2010

Damien Hirst - never knowingly boring.

Radio 4 arts reviewer

11th February, 2010

If the rich could hire other people to die for them,
the poor could make a wonderful living.

Yiddish proverb

27th February, 2010

Bloke walks into a fish shop with a cod wrapped round his neck.
Says to the fishmonger, "Got any fish cakes?"
"Nah mate, fresh out" answers the fishmonger.
"Shame", says the bloke with the cod,
"It's his birthday"

Ian Dury

27th March, 2010

The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not
"Eureka!"
but "That's funny...."

Isaac Asimov

15th April, 2010

When you only have a hammer,
Everything looks like a nail.

American traditional

2nd May, 2010

By Richmond I raised my knees
Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.

The Waste Land - TS Eliot

27th May, 2010

Are you going to come quietly
Or will I need ear plugs?

Spike Milligan

12th June, 2010

Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.

Samuel Beckett - suggested by Barney Bardsley

24th June, 2010

If you don't know where you're going,
Any road will take you there.

Lewis Carroll

28th July, 2010

I spent 90% of my money on women and drink.
The rest I wasted.

George Best

5th August, 2010

Beware of falling angels.

Sign posted outside the Santa Maria della Salute Church in Venice in the early 1970s, before the restoration of its marble angels.

20th August, 2010

Die knowing something.
You are not here long.

Walker Evans

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