QUOTATIONS TO BRIGHTEN ANY WEEKEND -4-

Well, here we are on week 4 of quotations

I wonder if I can ask readers to promote this feature on your blogs in order so get the word round - thanks!

This week is about Money Matters and how the subject seems to have inspired a number of quotations.

A conversation was recorded by the novelist Scott Fitzgerald, who was dazzled by the glamour of the rich:

Fitzgerald: "The rich are different from us."

Ernest Hemingway: "Yes, they have more money!"

The American critic John Leonard made the same point with a little more sophistication:

"The rich are different from you and me because they have more credit."

"Red Hot Momma" blues singer Sophie Tucker summed up her own experience:

"I have been poor and I have been rich. Rich is better!"

The rich, although more fortunate than many, may not yet behave decently. One of the dukes of Argyll remarked:

"As far as I'm concerned there are only two kinds of people in the world.  Those who are nice to their servants and those who are not!"

(Bet I can guess which category he was!)

How rich is rich?  According to multi-millionaire John Jacob Astor III :

"A man who has a million dollars is as well off as if he were rich!"

Wealth is a shield against even the harshest criticisms, as the glittering showman Liberace pointed out:

"What you said hurt me very much.  I cried all the way to the bank!"

American journalist Earl Wilson:

"Success is just a matter of luck. Ask any failure!"

American comedian Jack Benny, famed for his supposed meanness, is said to have been held up one day by a gangster:

Gangster:  "Your money or your life?"

pause

Benny: "I'm thinking it over!"

Much loved and often married, Hollywood star, Zsa Zsa Gabor remembered that:

"I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back!"

One of the United States' Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, handed out much solid practical advise, including this:

"If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some!"

A mis-quote from George Bernard Shaw:
"Lack of money is the root of all evil!"

Evan Esar, "The mint makes it, it is up to you to make it last!"

Elizabeth Taylor, "Money is the best deodorant!"

Bob Hope, "A bank is a place which will lend you money if you can prove you don't need it!"

Little known Eddie Bluelights had a friend who was inspired by a banker's meanness, after declining him a business load.  The mean banker, wearing a glass eye, asked him why he was not looking into his real eye, to which he relied:

"There is so much more humanity in the glass one!"

Film star Lana Turner describes the perfect marriage:

"A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.  A successful woman is one who can find such a man!"

and the last for this week!

Quentin Crisp's view of social mobility:

"Never keep up with the Jones. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper!"

Please keep your quotations coming in - I have a few ready to post but will do a special when I get a sufficient number.

Please send to :  eddiebluelights@googlemail.com

Finally, if you want a few more laughs please visit my friend Eva at Wrestling With Retirement for her Silly Saturday feature.

Have a good weekend and more funnies next week.

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

QUOTATIONS TO BRIGHTEN ANY WEEKEND -2-

Welcome to this second post in my weekly feature.

I hope you enjoy and you are able to join with these happy people in laughter

I am impressed with their white teeth

So straight onto the quotations:

Poul Anderson, writer of science fiction, expressing his confidence in powerful human thinking:
"I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which,  when looked at in the right way, did not become even more complicated."

G. K. Chesterton, English master of paradox, noted the social revolution with the invention of the typewriter and resulting jobs for women:
"Twenty million young women rose to their feet with the cry, 'we shall not be dictated to', and promptly became stenographers."

American poet, Paul Ehrlich was quick to note on rapid advancement of technology:
"To err is human but to really foul things up requires a computer."

Film comedian W. C. Fields, bumbling and bad-tempered, came up with this inspiring thought:
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.  Then give up. No use being a damned fool about it."

Oscar Wilde, on how to secure a stable relationship:
"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

Benjamin Franklin, American revolutionary leader and writer, identified one of the drawbacks of self love:
"He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals."

Film actress Lily Tomlin, on the human condition:
"We're all in this together - by ourselves."

A profoundly self-critical thought from film star Ava Gardner:
"Deep down, I'm pretty superficial."

Oscar Wilde believed that:
"There is one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that us not being talked about."

American art historian, Bernard Berenson:
"Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago."

Eddie Bluelights, feeling bruised by irrational behaviour was once heard to say:
"Tell me, have you always had to work hard to make such cutting remarks, or does it come naturally?"    . . . lol

Firebrand Labour politician Aneurin Bevan had little patience for people sitting on the politician fence:
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road.  They get run over."

American comedienne Phyllis Diller had little time for compromise:
"Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight!"

Sir James Barrie, author of Peter Pan, on youth:
"I am not young enough to know everything!"

Oscar Wilde, on youth in the United States:
In America, the young are always ready to give those who are older than themselves the benefit of their inexperience."

Hollywood star John Barrymore didn't believe that virtue was its own reward.  In fact:-
"The good die young - because they see it's no use living if you've got to be good."

George Bernard Shaw, rather sceptical:
"Youth is a wonderful thing: what a crime to waste it on children.

Oscar Wilde, again:
"He is old enough to know worse."

American essayist, Logan Pearall Smith:
"There is more felicity on the far side of baldness than young men can possibly imagine."

William Feather, American author:
"Setting a good example for the children takes all the fun out of middle age!"




Oh! if you want a few more laughs . . . 

please visit my friend Eva at Wrestling With Retirement for her weekly slot

Weekend Silliness



More from both of us next week
Enjoy the remainder of the weekend.

QUOTATIONS TO BRIGHTEN ANY WEEKEND -1-

Hello Folks!

And welcome to my new regular end of week feature

Quotations To Brighten Any Weekend

. . . .  where we can relax after our busy week, have a few laughs and share some famous words of wisdom and humour.

In England we have a saying "Poet's Day" which means "Push Off Early, tomorrow is Saturday!" . . . so in a sense our weekend starts in Friday afternoon.  I believe the American equivalent is TGIF, meaning "Thank God It's Friday!"

I have a very funny book, which I have enjoyed for over 30 years.  Some of these famous wisecracks are taken straight from it, with others from various sources elsewhere:

Ready? - well here goes! and hope you like them!

I'll start with a few Instant Quips!

Essayist Charles Lamb said:

"The greatest pleasure I know is to do good by stealth, and to have it found out by accident."

Jerome L. Jerome, author of 'Three Men In A Boat' argued:

"It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless of course  you are an exceptionally good liar."

Winston Churchill considers:

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick them selves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

Mark Twain was a genius and had two things to say, worthy of note about righteousness:

"To be good is noble, but to teach others to be good is nobler - and less trouble!"

"Always do right: this will gratify some people and astonish the rest!"

The Frenchman, Talleyrand, in 1815 uttered these famous words:

"Mistrust first impulses, they are always good." 

Robert Musil was rather sceptical of advancing technology, when he said:

"Progress would be a wonderful thing - if only it would stop!

George Bernard Shaw had a slightly different take on a well established quotation:

"Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you.  Their tastes may not be the same."

Heinrich Heine, German poet:

"One should forgive ones enemies, but not before they are hanged!"

Will Rogers, American humorist:

"Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else!"

American novelist James Branch Cabell:

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."

Arthur Bloch, shrewd commenter,

"The man who can smile when things go wrong has thought of someone he can blame it on,"

Robert Frost, American Poet:

"The brain is a wonderful organ.  It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office."

More next Weekend - enjoy this one!

. . . .  and please stop by at EVA's for some more laughs at her highly hilarious Weekend Silliness slot.