2301) "Happiness is like a mystery, like religion, and should never be ratonalised."-GK Chesterton
2302) "Everyone chases after happiness, not noticing that happiness is at their heels."-Bertolt Brecht
2303) "Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form."-Andre Maurois
2304) "Happiness: an agreeable sensation arising from comtemplating the misery of another."-Ambrose Blence
2305) "[The 'corporate takeover of people's lives'] also accounts for a lot of homogenization of culture. There are fast food restaurants everywhere. Every place tastes the same."-Ani DiFranco
2306) "I don't pray because I don't want God to know where I am."-Marsha Doble
2307) "...love triumphs, at least in this life, not by eliminating evil once for all, but by resisting and overcoming it anew every day."-Thomas Merton
2308) "...if evil is fought with evil, then only evil can prevail, but if evil is fought with good, then it can produce either of the two."-Michelle
2309) "I don't know if the unborn has rights, but I do know that being born again doesn't give you more rights."-A. Whitney Brown
2310) "Have you ever noticed....Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"-George Carlin
2311) "I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewelry."-Rita Rudner
2312) "I would love to speak a foreign language but I can't. So I grew hair under my arms instead."-Sue Kolinsky
2313) "The reason most people play golf is to wear clothes they would not be caught dead in otherwise."-Roger Simon
2314) "Don't spend two dollars to dry clean a shirt. Donate it to the Salvation Army instead. They'll clean it and put it on a hanger. Next morning buy it back for seventy-five cents."-William Coronel
2315) "My mom said she learned how to swim. Someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. That's how she learned how to swim. I said, 'Mom, they weren't trying to teach you how to swim.'"-Paula Poundstone
2316) "I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else."-Lily Tomlin
2317) "Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I'm halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God...I could be eating a slow learner."-Lynda Montgomery
2318) Why is it that when we talk to God we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us we're schizophrenic?"-Lily Tomlin
2319) "Where lipstick is concerned, the important thing is not color, but to accept God's final word on where your lips end."-Jerry Seinfeld
2320) "I just wanted my daughter to grow up, get married, have children and get divorced like everyone else."-Cher
2321) "If love is not enough, then what's enough?"-Peter Mulvey
2322) "What do you love more than love?"-Dar Williams, "What Do You Love More Than Love?"
2323) "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying."-Woody Allen
2324) "People say you should follow your heart, but they also say that love is blind. So if you follow your blind heart, where does that lead you? And where does that leave you? Because indeed, those are two very different things."-Kayte Siegle
2325) "Loneliness is counterproductive to rest."-Kayte Siegle
2326) "I've not had the time to write, sadly. Not [in my webpage journal], not in my notebooks, not anywhere, and I feel sick from it, like there's something wrong inside my body, like I'm not processing bile or something and it's got me all backed up and sickly."-Kayte Siegle
2327) "The humor is the sort born of ironic necessity; they use it to salve the wounds in insensitity."-Leah Hager Cohen
2328) "If he was a rock, he has long since gone to dust, and any fossils left behind were left by others, just as the ink on the pages has been left by others..."-Leah Hager Cohen
2329) "Unfortunately, being physically equipped to hear has little to do with the actual predilection to listen. Sharing a common tongue does not ensure earnest or successful communication. Missed connections occur among hearing people all the time, splitting open countless minor chasms and yawning gulches, fissures that no vaccine or technilogical advance will ever be able to mend or prevent. That task will always fail to us."-Leah Hager Cohen
2330) "It's not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is."-Hermann Hesse
2331) "I have to remind myself that time only frightens me when I think of having to spend it alone. Sometimes I scare myself with how many of my thoughts revolve around making me feel better about sleeping alone in a room."-Douglas Coupland
2332) "Now: I believe that you've had most of your important memories by the time you're thirty. After that, memory becomes water overflowing into an already full cup. New experiences just don't register in the same way or with the same impact. I could be shooting heroin with the Princess of Wales, naked in a crashing jet, and the experience still couldn't compare to the time the cops chased us after we threw the Taylors' patio furniture into their pool in eleventh grade. You know what I mean."-Douglas Coupland
2333) "If you want the rainbow, you're going to have to put up with the rain."-Dolly Parton
2334) "for god's sakes, i'm 22 years old now. i think i'm a little old to be answering to snotty people and apologizing for my life. (that's what jr high is for.)"-Kayte Siegle
2335) "All-consuming, my thoughts of you, creeping up on me in the dark of late-night like a cancer. I change position, brush them away in hopes that sleep will replace them, and they shrink back into unconciousness for the moment, but slowly, slowly, they come creeping back out, nosing into the half-waking, half-dream state before true sleep, nestling themselves around me, curling into the blanket at my side like cats, stubbourn, sending out claws if I try to remove them. We are at an impasse."-Kayte Siegle
2336) "A cynic is just a man who found out when he was about ten that there wasn't any Santa Claus, and he's still upset."-James Gould Cozzens
2337) "I have always thought str8's (breeders) and gays have a nice symbiotic relationship...we need them to make more of us and they need us to do their hair!"-James
2338) "If nobody quotes you, you haven't said a thing worth saying."-Nicole Blackman
2339) "A Puritan is 'someone who is terribly afraid that someone else, somewhere else, is having a good time.'"-H. L. Mencken
2340) "Look like th' innocent flower,/ But be the serpent under't."-William Shakespeare
2341) "I honor every woman who has strength enough to step out of the beaten path when she feels her walk lies in another."-Harriet Hosmer
2342) "Mistakes are the dues one pays for a full life."-Sophia Loren
2343) "Fortune favors the prepared mind."
2344) "As the places where Americans dwell become evermore depressing and impossible, Disneyworld is where they escape to worship the nation in the abstract, a cartoon capital of a cartoon republic enshrining the falsehoods, half-truths, and delusions that prop up the squishy thing the national character has become--for instance, that we are a nation of families; that we care about our fellow citizens; that history matters; that there is a place called home."-James Howard Kunstler
2345) "Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue."
2346) "There are very few personal problems that cannot be solved through a suitable application of high explosives."
2347) "The more crap you put up with, the more crap you are going to get."
2348) "The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it."-George Bernard Shaw
2349) "If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it."-Schopenhauer
2350) "I don't want to die. There's too much fun in this world, and a lot of them. And good books to read and fish to catch and pretty women to admire and good men to know. Why, life is a joy."-Professor John Franklin Smith
2351) "The graveyards are full of indispensable men."-Charles de Gaulle
2352) "The way I see it, the men that I'm with, whoever they are, it's like look, you have to accept that I like ice cream, and I know it shows up on my hips but if you can't accept that, then leave. Go away. Toodles. It is non-negotiable."-Tori Amos
2353) "There are no events but thoughts and the heart's turning, the heart's slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times."-Annie Dillard
2354) "He is mad about being small when you were big, but no, that's not it, he is mad about being helpless when you were powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent when you were necessary, not quite it, he is insane because when he loved you, you didn't notice."-Donald Barthelme
2355) "The chief point of contention in this battle [between deaf and hearing people over medical technology] is the cochlear implant....Imagine coming up with a 'cure' for any other cultural minority or oppressed group--African Americans, say, or women, or Jewish people. Most hearing people find this analogy strained. After all, deafness is a handicap. No one could disagree that a person's life would be made easier if she could be cured of deafness. But couldn't we say the same thing about black people and women and Jews? In our society, isn't it more convenient to be white and male and Christian? Isn't life generally easier for members of the dominant culture? Yet we wouldn't dream of searching for ways to 'cure' blackness or femaleness or Jewishness. Even if it were medically possible, it would be ethnically abhorrent, a kind of cultural genocide. This is how many culturally deaf people view the efforts of the medical establishment to prevent, correct, and minimize the effects of hearing impairment."-Leah Hager Cohen, Train Go Sorry
2356) "His deafness is neither a talisman nor a curse, but something at once more prosaic and profound: an aspect of himself."-Leah Hager Cohen, Train Go Sorry
2357) "in life, i have found that the best way to approach people is not necessarily the nicest, but it -is- often the most efficient: approach every new person you meet as though they are, to a degree, quite stupid. i have found that approaching humanity this way, dissapointment is rare....people, generally, are indeed quite stupid, and as a result, tend to ask some really stupid questions."-Kayte Siegle
2358) "Oh, now there's only one kind of love that lasts. That's unrequited love. It stays with you forever."-Woody Allen
2359) "I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition--about what we can endure, dream, fail at, and still survive."-Maya Angelou
2360) "A woman is like a teabag--you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water."-Nancy Reagan
2361) "I wonder why men can get serious at all. They have this delicate long thing hanging outside their bodies, which goes up and down by its own will...If I were a man I would always be laughing at myself."-Yoko Ono
2362) "The only sin is mediocrity."-Martha Graham
2363) "I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates."-Angela Carter
2364) "The poor wish to be rich, the rich wish to be happy, the single wish to be married, and the married wish to be dead."-Ann Landers
2365) "There's a time when you have to explain to your children why they're born, and it's a marvelous thing if you know the reason by then."-Hazel Scott
2366) "You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex."-Mary McCarthy
2367) "Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself."-Rita Mae Brown
2368) "There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver."-Charlotte Perkins Gilman
2369) "Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all--the apathy of human beings."-Helen Keller
2370) "If men can rule the world, why can't they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck?"-Linda Ellerbee
2371) "I just broke up with someone and the last thing she said to me was, 'You'll never find anyone like me again.' I'm thinking, 'I should hope not! If I don't want you, why would I want someone like you?'"-Larry Miller
2372) "Relationships are hard. It's like a full-time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks' notice. There should be severance pay, and before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp."-Bob Ettinger
2373) "I can linger here forever, but I'll still be alone. Something inside me is itching to go, so I'll go."-Li'en
2374) "I'm getting to the age where my idea of an 'older woman' is younger than me!"-Lawrence W. Lipman
2375) "I was the best man at the wedding. If I'm the best man, why is she marrying him?"-Jerry Seinfeld
2376) "And all we are waiting for is for something worth waiting for."-Nicole Blackman
2377) "no matter how many stupid people i meet, i'm still constantly amazed by the sheer array of varieties of stupid... the sheer breadth of the moronic nature! it's astounding! it's frightening! it's everywhere! it's colorful, like parrots!"-Kayte Siegle
2378) "[My roommate and I] wondered how it could be that otherwise intelligent people smoke. There are several major reasons against it, any one of which should be a sufficient deterrant, any two of which should be more than enough. It's severely unhealthy, as everyone knows. Buying cigarrettes supports not only the tobacco industry, (arguably one of the most evil institutions in the world, with their policies of blatant deception, youth indoctrination, and drug-lordesque 3rd world country addiction programs) but the politicians THEY support, namely right-wing, conservative republicans like Jesse Helms. It's expensive- many a friend when asked how much they spend on cigs per year offers a cavalier, '$2,000.' It's nasty: Teeth, hands, skin, need I say more? It makes it harder to breathe...and therefore sing, act, dance, play sports, and just generally exist. It shows that you are a weak person, giving in to (admittedly BRILLIANT) advertising and brainwashing. I mean, they even have a NONCONFORMIST brand, for those of us who don't want to be a 'Marlboro Man' or a 'Virginia Slim Baby.'...I just don't understand. I see it... a few of my friends see it... but so many of the people around me don't. Why? Am I so much more intelligent than they are? More perceptive? I am truly puzzled.... It can be seductive. We're manipulated into believing that smoking will bring us friends, joy, attractiveness, relaxation, escape. There's an enigma about it, a mystery. 'Why is she smoking? What pain she must have gone through. It's so...sad. And beautiful. And MYSTERIOUS.' Why do people allow themselves to be so overtly & skillfully played? AAAARRRGGGHHHH....I origionally only wanted to post a plea to people who smoke to, if you won't quit, at least be considerate of those around you, especially in situations where there is little opportunity for escape....Doing that to your own body is your own stupid business, doing it to others', no matter how tolerant they are, is just wrong. I'm like a canary in a coal mine- when the bird dies, that's when they deem that conditions are unhealthy for those with bigger lungs. As usual, I ran off a bit. Hey, it's late Friday night and I have nothing better to do. If I could just get a significant other, I wouldn't have so much time on my hands. But I am foiled always with an instant turn-off: everyone I start to get a crush on...smokes."-Arjuna Greist
2379) "But staying home won't get me anywhere. It's not often that I find affairs waiting for me in the refrigerator. Ben and Jerry were in there earlier in the week, but I already settled our business. It was enjoyable, but brief. No bowl."-"My Affairs" Punk Maneuverability
2380) "I don't know how long I can go on being fun-loving [Anonymous Roommate], the cellibate opposite of a boy magnet."-Anonymous Roommate
2381) "Is love not sacred? Is there nothing left in this mixed-up, turbulent world to hold dear and true when friends forsake us and lovers abandon us, leaving us a shell of who we once were with no one left to pick up the tattered remains!!!???"-Jen Tosti
2382) "The hardest fight a man has to fight is to live in a world where every single day someone is trying to make you someone you do not want to be--"-e.e. cummings
2383) "Empty your cup so that it may be filled."-Zen saying
2384) "Human interaction is a blessing; it's such a waste to discriminate."-Mark Drolsbaugh, Deaf Again
2385) "The best things in life come in threes, like friends, dreams, and memories."
2386) "[Matthew believed that we are all] part of the same family called Humanity, and each and every one of us should treat all people with respect and dignity, and that each of us has the right to live a full and rewarding life."-Matthew Shepard's parents
2387) "I had a smile/ I gave my smile away./ The milkman and the postman/ Enjoyed it every day./ I took it to the shop,/ I had it on the street./ I gave it without thinking/ To all I chanced to meet./ I gave my smile away,/ As thoughtless as can be./ And every time I gave it/ My smile came back to me."-F.T. Cosgau, "The Smile That Came Back"
2388) "I'd rather be thought of as a lesbian than thought of as a bigot."-straight mom in PFLAG
2389) "...perhaps there is some element of good even in the simple act of living, so long as the evils of existence do not preponderate too heavily."-Aristotle
2390) "Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality overcomes everything."-George Lois
2391) "She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but because the world was so beautiful and life was so short."-Brian Andreas
2392) "I can't go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."-Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
2393) "...in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand."-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
2394) "I will not wish thee riches nor the glow of greatness, but that wherever thou go, some weary heart shall gladden at thy smile, or shadowed life know sunshine for awhile. And so thy path shall be a track of light, like angels' footsteps passing through the night."-words on a church wall in Upwaltham, England
2395) "What intelligent being, what being capable of responding emotionally to a beautiful sight, can look at the jagged, silvery lunar crescent trembling in the azure sky, even through the weakest of telescopes, and not be struck by it in an intensely pleasurable way, not feel cut off from everyday life here on Earth and transported toward that first step on celestial journeys?"-Camille Flammarion
2396) "Watching the moon/ at dawn,/ solitary, mid-sky,/ I knew myself completely:/ no part left out."-Izumi Shikibu
2397) "It's like magic. When you live by yourself, all your annoying habits are gone!"-Merrill Markoe
2398) "Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless."-Mother Teresa
2399) "A little bit of fear is okay. It makes you watch your step. Too much fear will disable you."-Rich
2400) "My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."-Abraham Lincoln