QUOTATIONS TO BRIGHTEN ANY WEEKEND -3-

Well, here we are again . . .  my third weekly dip into that seemingly endless treasure chest of famous and sometimes infamous quotation gems.

I am pleased to see my feature is exercising your chuckle muscles and several of you have kindly given me some very funny material, which I am posting today for us.

Please keep your contributions coming and I will feature them weekly (provided they are printable, of course):

I am indebted to a lovely lady calling herself the Other Mary (Bach) who has a delightful poetry blog,  Writing In The Bachs 

(She tells me her uncle is non other than J S Bach  . . . . crumbs!  Is that a Prelude to more news or just a complicated Fugue? . . . . and does she hear Bach often or Offenbach . . . . 

. . . . and she loves music jokes and has never flown off the Handel with anyone and never confuses Mister Rimsky-Korsakov with Mister Rip your Corsets Off . . . lol)

Mary has no less than three contributions today - you see she is such a fount of wisdom; thank you Mary:

1.  Lewis Carroll, "I have believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast"

(Seven if he could possibly imagine my efforts at cooked breakfasts!)

2. E.B. White, "I get up every morning determined both to change the world and to have one hell of a good time.  Sometimes this makes planning the day difficult."

(He sounds just like me!! - not much planning here either)

3. Groucho Marx, "Learn by the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself!"

(I love Groucho - very true!  He also said, "You are only as old as the woman you feel!" - naughty boy!  I have a lot of Groucho for us - he is priceless)


And another one from my good friend Jinksy of Napple Notes.

She adds this little addenda to Oscar Wilde's quote, "He's old enough to know worse".

 " I'm definitely old enough to know worse - and I recommend it to anyone!"

(Thanks Pen)

And another, quoting her grandfather, an Anonymous Scottish Gentleman from Fife: 
"You can't make racehorses out of donkeys!"

(So true)


Keep them coming folks and let's Evangelise this feature to all your bloggy pals, right across BlogLand. 


Now to the formal business of the day, which is more quotes:

On the subject of music Rossini was not very complimentary to Wagner when he said:
"Wagner has beautiful moments but awful quarters of an hour!"

(Heresy!! I can just see Wagner purists seething and jumping up and down in fury as they listen to The Ring Cycle)


I've got to include this one . . . lol . . . 

Tchaikovsky on Brahms:
"What a gift less Bastard!" 

(I agree - I hate his music!)


Richard Strauss on himself:
"I may not be a first-rate composer but I am a first-class, second-rate composer!"

(I'm dying laughing here keying this lot in - I've found a new source. . . . ROFL)


A music shop in Bath had a delightful "Gone to Lunch" note on the door, simply saying, "Bach In A Minuet"

( Don't you just love it?  . . . . They could have said "Gone Chopin'  . .to get some groceries!! . . lol)


Away from music for a while - I've lot's left over for another day.

(No that was not a quote - just a statement!!)



American humorist Kin Hubbard thought being 'grown up' and good was a delusion:
"Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle - aged men."

French film star Maurice Chevalier:
"Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative."

Of one of his characters, American novelist Joseph Heller writes:
"He decided to live for ever, or die in the attempt".

(Boy that one is priceless)

In the French film Breathless, a smoothie writer is asked whether he has any ambition remaining in his successful and eventful life. He replied there was not much left except:

"To become immortal, and then to die!"

(Gosh . . . where do they get 'em!)

American comedian Woody Allen:
"It's not that I'm afraid to die.  I just don't want to be there when it happens."

Summing up the meaning of human existence, writer- performer Quentin Crisp says:
"Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave."

I have a couple of famous Winston Churchill quotes centring on his well-known clashes with Lady Nancy Astor:

Lady Astor:  "Sir, if you were my husband I would give you poison!"
Churchill: "Madam, if I was your husband I would take it!"

and

Lady Astor: "Sir, you are drunk!"
Churchill: "And Madam you are ugly . . but I shall be sober in the morning!"

(Aren't they side splitting?  . . . .such wit!  Did they have an affair I wonder? Anyone know?)


An Irishman, when asked by a motorist the way to Dublin:
"If I were you I wouldn't start from here!"

(Where else, nit-wit?)

Another Irishman, or he could be the same one, when observing and telling a motorist he had a tyre punctured,

"It could be worse, it is only flat at the bottom!"

Lord Melbourne, British Prime Minister and friend of Queen Victoria - upon hearing a sermon in church:
"Things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade the sphere of private life."

C.E. Montague, a journalist, served at the front in WW1 but found that there was more hysteria behind the lines. He wrote, modifying Shakespeare a little:
"Hell hath no fury like a non-combatant."



Well not all quotes are happy ones and I end on a somber note with this almost unbelievable quote from Mark Twain, just before his death bed and summing up his entire human existence and just what life meant to him as an atheist, with nothing whatsoever to hope for:

 "A myriad of men are born, they labour and sweat and struggle for bread. They squabble and scold and fight. They scramble for little mean advantages over each other. Age creeps upon them. Infirmities follow.  Shames and humiliations bring down their prides and their vanities. Those they love are taken from them and the joy of life has turned to aching grief. The burden of pain and care and misery grows heavier year by year. At length, ambition is dead. Pride is dead. Vanity is dead. Longing for release is in their place. It comes at last.  Death, the only un-poisoned gift earth ever had for them. And they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence, where they achieved nothing, where they were a mistake and a failure and a foolishness, where they have left no sign that they have existed in a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever. And then another myriad takes their place and copies all they did and goes along the same profitless road and vanishes as they vanished to make room for another and another and millions of myriads to follow the same arid path through the same desert and accomplish what the first myriad and all the myriads that came after it accomplished . . . . nothing." 

(I find this utterly astonishing!  This remarkable genius summing up his life like that)

Well next week I shall be back to happy quotes, I promise.

All about Money Matters

I shall be very interested to receive your quote contributions:

My email address is: 

eddiebluelights@googlemail.com


And for a few more laughs please visit my good friend Eva from across the pond for her regular feature Weekend Silliness