Heck Of A Guy

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver
Proverbs 25:11

For many years, I’ve collected quotations based on little more than their appeal on first sight. Today’s offerings are those that (1) have repeatedly proven pertinent and useful and (2) are, at least in my readings and conversations, less commonly referenced. These quotations, as quotations should, stand independently and need no explanations. I have added only brief identifications to those individuals quoted who may not be universally known. The chief difficulty of this list is restricting it to a reasonable length; several of these eminences (Oscar Wilde and Samuel Johnson, for example) appear to have written and spoken exclusively in epigrams.

The Quotations

“I love deadlines; I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
Douglas Adams (Author best known for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series)

“I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.”
Warren Buffett (Investor, businessman and philanthropist who is considered the second richest man in the U.S.)

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt”
Bertrand Russell

“If I’d shot you sooner, I’d be out of jail by now”
Unknown

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
H. L. Mencken (Twentieth-century journalist, literary critic, and freethinker)

“Don’t ever speak more clearly than you think… ”
Attributed to Niels Bohr (Physicist best known for the investigations of atomic structure and his work on the U.S. Atomic Energy Project; winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize for physics)

“I don’t mind that you think slowly but I do mind that you are publishing faster than you think.”
Attributed to F. Dyson (Physicist and mathematician, known for his work in quantum mechanics, nuclear weapons design and policy, and for his theorizing in futurism)

“Don’t be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so”
Thoreau

“Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.”
Margaret Drabble (Novelist, biographer and critic)

It is impossible to criticize unresisting imbecility.
Samuel Johnson

“Say the purpose of sex isn’t procreation or recreation. Say it’s concentration. Say it makes you focus on the person you’re sleeping with, ’cause there’s just too many other people in the world. It’s like biological highlighter.”
From the movie, “The Opposite of Sex,” spoken by character played by Lyle Lovett

“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
Oscar Wilde


“Nothing succeeds like excess”
Oscar Wilde


“Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength & courage to yield to.”
Oscar Wilde


“I’d rather be looked over than overlooked”
Mae West

And my personal favorite,
“You can imagine my embarrassment when I killed the wrong guy”
Joe Valachi (Soldier in New York City’s Vito Genovese crime family, who testified before congressional committee on organized crime that the Mafia did exist)

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