Glauben Sie wirklich, der Mond ist nicht da, außer wenn jemand hinschaut?
        -- Albert Einstein zu Vertretern der Quantentheorie.

Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint.

        -- Mark Twain


A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is
shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
        -- Mark Twain


In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.
        -- Mark Twain, on New England weather


Delay not, Caesar.  Read it instantly.
        -- Shakespeare, "Julius Caesar" 3,1

Here is a letter, read it at your leisure.
        -- Shakespeare, "Merchant of Venice" 5,1

    [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4,
    when referring to I/O system services.]


question = ( to ) ? be : ! be;
        -- Wm. Shakespeare


For the fashion of Minas Tirith was such that it was built on seven levels, each delved into a hill, and about each was set a wall, d in each wall was a gate.
        -- J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Return of the King"

    [Quoted in "VMS Internals and Data Structures", V4.4,
    when referring to system overview.]


To be or not to be.
        -- Shakespeare
To do is to be.
        -- Nietzsche
To be is to do.
        -- Sartre
Do be do be do.
        -- Sinatra


No violence, gentlemen -- no violence, I beg of you!  Consider the furniture!
        -- Sherlock Holmes


Don't go around saying the world owes you a living.  The world owes you nothing.  It was here first.
        -- Mark Twain


A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)
    -- by Charles Dickens

A man in love with a girl who loves another man who looks just like him has his head chopped off in France because of a mean lady who knits.

Crime and Punishment LITE(tm)
    -- by Fyodor Dostoevski

A man sends a nasty letter to a pawnbroker, but later feels guilty and apologizes.

The Odyssey LITE(tm)
    -- by Homer

After working late, a valiant warrior gets lost on his way home.

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
        -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"


A Tale of Two Cities LITE(tm)
    -- by Charles Dickens

A lawyer who looks like a French Nobleman is executed in his place.

The Metamorphosis LITE(tm)
    -- by Franz Kafka

A man turns into a bug and his family gets annoyed.

Lord of the Rings LITE(tm)
    -- by J. R. R. Tolkien

Some guys take a long vacation to throw a ring into a volcano.

Hamlet LITE(tm)
    -- by Wm. Shakespeare

A college student on vacation with family problems, a screwy girl-friend and a mother who won't act her age.

There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three form a rising scale of compliment:

1. to tell him you have read one of his books;
2. to tell him you have read all of his books;
   
3. to ask him to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book.

No. 1 admits you to his respect;
No. 2 admits you to his admiration;
No. 3 carries you clear into his heart.
        -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"


Like an expensive sports car, fine-tuned and well-built, Portia was sleek, shapely, and gorgeous, her red jumpsuit moulding her body, which was as warm as seatcovers in July, her hair as dark as new tires, her eyes flashing like bright hubcaps, and her lips as dewy as the beads of fresh rain on the hood; she was a woman driven -- fueled by a single accelerant -- and she needed a man, a man who wouldn't shift from his views, a man to steer her along the right road: a man like Alf Romeo.
        -- Rachel Sheeley, winner

The hair ball blocking the drain of the shower reminded Laura she would never see her little dog Pritzi again.
        -- Claudia Fields, runner-up

It could have been an organically based disturbance of the brain -- perhaps a tumor or a metabolic deficiency -- but afterathorough neurological exam it was determined that Byron was simply a jerk.
        -- Jeff Jahnke, runner-up

Winners in the 7th Annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest.
The contest is named after the author of the immortal lines:  "It
was a dark and stormy night."  The object of the contest is to
write the opening sentence of the worst possible novel.


Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
    -- Confucius


Sage es mir, und ich vergesse es.
Sage es mir, und ich erinnere mich.
Lass es mich tun, und ich weiß es.
    -- Konfuzius


Gone With The Wind LITE(tm)
    -- by Margaret Mitchell

A woman only likes men she can't have and the South gets trashed.

Gift of the Magi LITE(tm)
    -- by O. Henry

A husband and wife forget to register their gift preferences.

The Old Man and the Sea LITE(tm)
    -- by Ernest Hemingway

An old man goes fishing, but doesn't have much luck.

As soon as we started programming, we found to our surprise that it wasn't as easy to get programs right as we had thought. Debugging had to be discovered. I can remember the exact instant when I realized that a large part of my life from then on was going to be spent in finding mistakes in my own programs.
                -- Maurice Wilkes discovers debugging, 1949


All generalizations are false, including this one.
        -- Mark Twain


Es ist allgemein rezipiert, Madame, daß man einen Monolog hällt, ehe man sich totschießt. Die meisten Menschen benutzen bei solcher Gelegenheit das Hamletsche "Sein oder Nichtsein". Es ist eine gute Stelle, und ich hätte sie hier auch gern zitiert - aber jeder ist sich selbst der Nächste, und hat man, wie ich, ebenfalls Tragödien geschrieben, worin solche Lebensabiturientenreden enthalten sind, (...), so ist es sehr natürlich, dass man seinen eigenen Worten, sogar vor den Shakespearschen, den Vorzug gibt.
    -- Heinrich Heine, Le Grand


We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stay there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid.  She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
        -- Mark Twain


"I wonder", he said to himself, "what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures and battles."
        -- Bastian B. Bux


Ich habe mich stets gewundert, warum jeder sich selbst am meisten liebt, aber seines Nachbarn meinung über sich höher schätzt als seine eigene.
        -- Mark Aurel (römischer Kaiser, 121-180)


Ich bemühe mich, Programme zum Abschießen von W95 zu bekommen... Dabei liefert M$ die für W95 Enduser schon gleich beim BS mit
        -- Soenke Lange


The PowerPC memory management is so ugly that you can scare small children with it.
        -- Linus Torwalds