Quotations from Brainy Smurf 87

"If you act like you know what you're doing, you can do anything you want -- except neurosurgery." --Sharon Stone

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 86

"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered." --Tom Stoppard

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 85

"I believe that professional wrestling is clean and everything else in the world is fixed." --Frank Deford

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 84

"I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck, but my lawyer thinks he can get me five." --Steven Wright

"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-- / The Truth must dazzle gradually / Or every man be blind." --Emily Dickinson, poet (1830-1886)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 83

"Good books don't give up all their secrets at once." --Stephen King, novelist (1947- )

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 82

"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes deserves to be called a scholar." --Donald Foster

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 81

"I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life." --Rita Rudner

"There is a coherent plan in the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for." --Fred Hoyle

"Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too." --Richard M. Nixon

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 80

"Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes." --Joseph Roux, priest and writer (1834-1886)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 79

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd." --Voltaire

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 78

"Once upon a time a man whose ax was missing suspected his neighbor's son. The boy walked like a thief, looked like a thief, and spoke like a thief. But the man found his ax while digging in the valley, and the next time he saw his neighbor's son, the boy walked, looked and spoke like any other child." --Lao-tzu, philosopher (6th century B.C.)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 77

"What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance?" --Theodore Roethke, poet (1908-1963)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 76

"At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies." --P.G. Wodehouse

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 75

"The truth is more important than the facts." --Frank Lloyd Wright

"Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see." --Arthur Schopenhauer

"It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right - especially when one is right." --Friedrich Nietzsche

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 74

"As the poet said, 'Only God can make a tree' -- probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on." --Woody Allen

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 73

A very appropriate quote in this era of computer saturation. --Kyle=

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it." --Herbert Alexander Simon, economist, Nobel laureate (1916-2001)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 72

"You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down…so why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. In climbing take careful note of the difficulties along the way; for as you go up you can observe them. Coming down you will no longer see them, but you will know they are there if you have observed them well. There is an art of finding one’s direction in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.” --Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue

A favorite quote of our dear friend Mark Wagoner (1971-2003).

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 71

Latin: "Hic murus aheneus esto -- nil conscire sibi"
English: "Let this be the brazen wall -- to be conscious to one's self of no crime."
--Horace (Ep. I. 1:60, 61)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 70

"Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary." --Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 69

"If there be no nobility of descent, all the more indispensable is it that there should be nobility of ascent, a character in them that bear rule so fine and high and pure that as men come within the circle of its influence they involuntarily pay homage to that which is the one pre-eminent distinction, the royalty of virtue." --- Henry Codman Potter (1835-1908), address at the Washington Centennial Service in St . Paul's Chapel, New York, April 30, 1889

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 68

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." --Anne Lamott, writer (1954- )

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 67

"But life is both a major and a minor key / Just open up the chord." --Travis, "Side"

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 66

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time." --Edith Wharton

"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures." --Daniel Webster

"A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people." --Thomas Mann

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 65

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space." --Douglas Adams

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 64

"A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers." --Robert Quillen, journalist and cartoonist (1887-1948)

Quotations from Brainy Smurf 63

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