BS: Obscure quotations

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Feb 16 - 02:24 PM

Bloke on Radcliffe Parks Dept. (going back nearly fifty years now), referring to the somewhat unworldly and rather effeminate parks superintendent, "he thinks his dick's fer pissin' out of."

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 25 Feb 16 - 01:40 PM

Some of the old buggers I worked with when an apprentice;

"Like a wooden dog with a tin prick."

"One of the finest men ever to piss through a tin trumpet"

"As much use as a one legged bloke at an arse kicking contest."

The BBC comedy writer Johnny Speight put a wonderful line for Alf Garnett "If you want to achieve true democracy, you've got to be prepared to shoot a few people."

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Mrrzy
Date: 25 Feb 16 - 01:18 PM

"la science progresse d'erreur en erreur" - if you can find who said that, I'd be happy. I learned it from a physics teacher in a French high school in Abidjan.

It translates roughly as Science advances from mistake to mistake.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 25 Feb 16 - 06:13 AM

"He couldn't stop a pig in an entry" - my gran about a bloke with bandy legs. Unfortunately, Mrs Steve is beginning to think she could use it against me...

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST
Date: 25 Feb 16 - 05:08 AM

Fun Fact: if a biker asks you for a 'hump' give him a cigarette (preferably Camel straight)

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 24 Feb 16 - 09:11 AM

Big Red, there are two basic breeds of camels:
1 Bactrian, with two humps.   This is a beast of burden.
2 Dromedary, with one hump.   This is a running camel.
The "drome" in that word means "run" or "running"
For a very long time, there has been a lot of camel
racing in the Middle East, using Dromedaries.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: BobL
Date: 24 Feb 16 - 04:07 AM

Never let your principles keep you from doing what is right (or something to that effect) - Isaac Asimov.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: kendall
Date: 23 Feb 16 - 10:18 AM

I don't care what they do, as long as they don't do it in the street and frighten the horses. (Lady Campbell)

I sometimes post this sort of thing at the top of my FB page.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: gillymor
Date: 23 Feb 16 - 07:15 AM

Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told.
Religion is doing what you are told regardless of what is right.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: banjoman
Date: 23 Feb 16 - 06:22 AM

From my music teacher over 65 years ago
"Musically speaking this pupil is dead from the neck up"
He wrote this on a report sent to my parents. I have kept it as a reminder of why I took up the banjo all those years ago.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Mr Red
Date: 23 Feb 16 - 03:45 AM

Second line of GFS above reminds mew inevitably that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. it is also said that:

a camel is a race horse designed by a committee.

But then the Autralians breed racing camels. Go figure!

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,№22
Date: 23 Feb 16 - 03:41 AM

Everyone born is on the field of life's game, but not everyone does wear the jersey of vision! Some people are fair players and others are injury causers; you joke with the later and they hit you down in pain and blood stains! Israelmore Ayivor

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 23 Feb 16 - 03:31 AM

A few of my personal favourites.
My mother had a few that stuck with me through life
Her response to bluff, bullshit and equivocation; "You're all wind and pee - like the barber's cat".
When I first tried my hand at singing I was told, "If you were singing for shit, you wouldn't get the smell of it", late adapted to, "not bad, for a beginner".
She described someone of small stature as; "He has to stand on tuppence to look over thruppence.
A local dancing master around here was asked how a now internationally famous veteran box player who as going to him to learn music was progressing - "Ah, he's doin' his best, poor feller".
Dubliners have a couple of nice ones for people who have done them a good turn: "Your blood's worth bottlin'" or "You're handier than a small pot"
Liverpool bar staff had a string of sayings to deal with customers who couldn't hold their drink - I heard one barman ask a man who had spilled his beer all down his shirt-front, "Do you intend to drink that or wear it?"
The Radio Ballads team spent a time recording miners in Wales and in the N.E. telling stories for 'The Big Hewer' - they were told of a Trades Union leader who had sold out his men during a strike.
He addressed a pit-head meeting with the opening line; "I suppose you think I've sold you out to the bosses?"
A voice shouted out from the body of the hall, "No - they buy gold, not shit".
During a late-night conversation we had with Joe Heaney in a tatty caff in Euston, not long before he died, he complained about growing old, "It takes me all night to do what I used to do all night".
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 23 Feb 16 - 02:57 AM

I always get off on your posts Goofus. One day I must get around to reading them.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 23 Feb 16 - 12:46 AM

Glad you read 'em...hope you got off on some of them.

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Feb 16 - 12:29 AM

...reminds ME, buggerit!

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Feb 16 - 12:28 AM

Second line of GFS above reminds mew inevitably that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity
Date: 22 Feb 16 - 10:06 PM

"In a family argument, if it turns out you are right -- apologize at once!"

"An elephant is a mouse built to government specifications."

"Money is a powerful aphrodisiac. But flowers work almost as well."

"Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax collectors and miss."

"Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things"

"Atheism is a non-prophet organization"

"A lot of the people who keep a gun at home for safety are the same ones who refuse to wear a seat belt"

"I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, "Where's the self-help section?" She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose"

"I do this real moron thing, it's called thinking, and I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."

"I couldn't commit suicide if my life depended on it"

"If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?"

"The next time they give you all that civic bullshit about voting, keep in mind that Hitler was elected in a full, free democratic election"

"The reason I talk to myself is that I'm the only one whose answers I accept".

"Have you ever noticed? Anybody going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac"

"Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist"

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

"The only good thing ever to come out of religion was the music"

"Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time."

"Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit"

""I am" is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that "I do" is the longest sentence?"

"People who say they don't care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don't care what people think"

"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth"

"In labor news, longshoremen walked off the piers today; rescue operations are continuing"

"When you step on the brakes your life is in your foot's hands"

"The word bipartisan means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out"

OK..enough...

GfS

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 22 Feb 16 - 06:43 PM

"I drank to drown my troubles. But the
damn things learned to swim!"
                         --Freda Kahlo

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: kendall
Date: 23 Dec 15 - 08:08 PM

It doesn't matter, and, it doesn't matter that it doesn't matter.

Sometimes it is well to remember that, with one minor exception, the universe is made up of others.

When I was young, I thought about sex all the time. Now, the only time I think about sex is when I'm awake.

I'm not the man I used to think I was.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 23 Dec 15 - 03:46 PM

"We prematurely write off people as failures. We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail."

Malcolm Gladwell

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Mr Red
Date: 23 Dec 15 - 03:05 PM

Foreplay pretty much starts at the end of the previous orgasm. (in a TED talk given by Esther Perel The secret to desire in a long-term relationship ) You have to listen to the whole thing to get the full impact!

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,Git Parker
Date: 31 Oct 15 - 08:15 PM

Not many really obscure - so -

'Always get over a stile'

Richard Jefferies c. 1870?

Always worked for me in the broader sense.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Oct 15 - 08:24 PM

"Law is a thing which is insensible, and inexorable, more beneficial and more profitious to the weak than to the strong; it admits of no mitigation nor pardon, once you have overstepped its limits."―Livy

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Oct 15 - 10:23 AM

"" This poem has been called obscure. I refuse to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence, or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime, it is more compressed.""
Dylan Thomas

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Oct 15 - 10:21 AM

"" It's better for the whole world to know you, even as a sex star, than never to be known at all.""
Marilyn Monroe

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Oct 15 - 10:17 AM

"" In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.""
Edgar Allan Poe

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Oct 15 - 10:13 AM

Bruce Schneier on "the Security Mirage" on TED.com
If its in the news don't worry about it, News is something almost never happens.

THE RIME OF THE ANCYENT MARINERE, IN SEVEN PARTS from
Lyrical Ballads
[London: J. & A. Arch, 1798]

I have lered (or is it learnt?) something today! And something else!

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Oct 15 - 10:00 AM

OK, OK it is an eye rhyme!

Technology is anything invented after you are born. Alan Kay
Technology is anything that doesn't work yet. Danny Hillis

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Oct 15 - 09:41 AM

It is actually "The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere" according to Wikipedia.

But, then, we don't often refer in full to "The Tragedie of Macbeth King of Scotland" either, do we?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Mr Red
Date: 30 Oct 15 - 07:56 AM

call me a pedant BUT:

The Ancient Mariner [one of the most quoted and quotable of poems} --
is it not "the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner"?

And just for the sake of more pedantry
"Water, water everywhere and all the boards did shrink.
Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink"

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Oct 15 - 05:17 AM

Bill D's above above about not looking back reminds me of that wonderful stanza from Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner [one of the most quoted and quotable of poems} --

Like one, that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

Brrrrr!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,salve
Date: 29 Oct 15 - 11:17 PM

Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders.-- Sloan Wilson

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Oct 15 - 08:44 PM

"Well, it's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in."--LBJ on J. Edgar Hoover

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Oct 15 - 06:08 PM

"Don't look back...somthin' may be gainin' on you."
          Satchel Paige

"Don't do too good of a job, folks will begin to expect it"
                Talkin' John, an old carpenter

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 29 Oct 15 - 07:48 AM

"There are two circumstances that lead to arrogance: one is when you're wrong and you can't face it; the other is when you're right and nobody else can face it." 
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 29 Oct 15 - 07:41 AM

"Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, "What else could this mean?" 
― Shannon L. Alder

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Oct 15 - 03:08 AM

Be true to your teeth and they won't be false to you.-- Soupy Sales

Half of being smart is knowing what you are dumb about.-- Solomon Short

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: PHJim
Date: 29 Oct 15 - 12:31 AM

But I believe Steve Allen said, "I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy."

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: PHJim
Date: 29 Oct 15 - 12:30 AM

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy"

- credited to (and probably said by) Dorothy Parker, W.C.Fields, Steve Allen, Fred Allen, Tom Waits and several other folks.

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 08:29 AM

"Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information." 
― Idries Shah, Reflections

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 08:26 AM

"History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant." 
― Idries Shah, Reflections

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: GUEST,Sol
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 08:15 AM

Talking to the famous footballer Kenny Dalglish, a radio interviewer said "I suppose you'll take a lot of secrets to your grave, Kenny"
Dalglish replied, "You'll never know".

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 06:06 AM

"You can't come in here saying you want to know, you know."

"But I do want to know, you know."

Exchange between Mr Tite Barnacle & Arthur Clennam in Dickens' Little Dorrit

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 28 Oct 15 - 06:03 AM

"You think you won't but you will." Truculent barrister in Shaw's 'You Never Can Tell -- repeated, and varied as e.g "You think it isn't but it is" &c. Useful for deployment in Mudcat threads...!

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 05:00 PM

""Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I've ever known.""
― Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 01:22 PM

Why has nobody yet quoted the very apposite remark of Dorothy L Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey?:--
"Always a quotation for everything. It saves original thinking."

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 08:24 AM

"Be careful about reading health books. Some fine day you'll die of a misprint." 
― Markus Herz

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Mr Red
Date: 27 Oct 15 - 07:34 AM

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

Subject: RE: BS: Obscure quotations
From: Ed T
Date: 26 Oct 15 - 12:55 PM

""Some men look at a problem like this and try to find a solution. I prefer to figure out whose fault it is and let them take care of it."" Red Green