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Proverbs and Sayings
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half-done, n.:
This is the best way to eat a kosher dill—when it's still
crunchy, light green, yet full of garlic flavor. The difference between
this and the typical soggy dark green cucumber corpse is like the
difference between life and death.
You may find it difficult to find a good half-done kosher dill
there in Seattle, so what you should do is take a cab out to the airport,
fly to New York, take the JFK Express to Jay Street-Borough Hall, transfer
to an uptown F, get off at East Broadway, walk north on Essex (along the
park), make your first left onto Hester Street, walk about fifteen steps,
turn ninety degrees left, and stop. Say to the man, "Let me have a
nice half-done." Worth the trouble, wasn't it?
—Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
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I believe we have breaks because we need them. So my suggestion is that
you take the break. Eat chocolate.
—Donna Jo Napoli, professor, on why she doesn't give homework
over vacations
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Some affixes are wildly promiscuous.
—Donna Jo Napoli, linguistics professor
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A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
—Ogden Nash
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A mighty creature is the germ,
Though smaller than the pachyderm.
His customary dwelling place
Is deep within the human race.
His childish pride he often pleases
By giving people strange diseases.
Do you, my poppet, feel infirm?
You probably contain a germ.
—Ogden Nash
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Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
—Ogden Nash
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Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
—Ogden Nash
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Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
—Ogden Nash
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I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all.
—Ogden Nash
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Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you
meet reminds you of someone else.
—Ogden Nash
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Parsley
is gharsley.
—Ogden Nash
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People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven't what
they want that they really don't want it.
—Ogden Nash
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People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing
up.
—Ogden Nash
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Progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on too long.
—Ogden Nash
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Some primal termite knocked on wood,
And tasted it, and found it good.
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.
—Ogden Nash
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The Cow
The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk.
—Ogden Nash
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The Rabbits
Here is a verse about rabbits
That doesn't mention their habits.
—Ogden Nash
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The trouble with a kitten is that when it grows up, it's always a cat.
—Ogden Nash
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The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves,
only complicated stupid moves which make the rest of us wonder at the
possibility that we might be missing something.
—Gamal Abdel Nasser
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Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
—George Jean Nathan
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Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own
loveliness.
—George Jean Nathan
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I drink to make other people interesting.
—George Jean Nathan
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What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's
transparency.
—George Jean Nathan
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Avoid Quiet and Placid persons unless you are in Need of Sleep.
—National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
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Fall not in love, therefore; it will stick to your face.
—National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
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Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.
—National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
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Is truth not truth for all?
—Natira, the High Priestess of Yonada, "For the World is Hollow
and I Have Touched the Sky," "Star Trek"
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I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or make you
feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel.
—Gloria Naylor
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Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them.
—Suzanne Necker
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To be in good moral condition requires at least as much training as to be
in good physical condition
—Jawaharlal Nehm
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Of those who say nothing, few are silent.
—Thomas P. Neill
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If it weren't for women, men would still be wearing last week's socks.
—Cynthia Nelms
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If men liked shopping, they'd call it research.
—Cynthia Nelms
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Nobody really cares if you're miserable, so you might as well be
happy.
—Cynthia Nelms
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Nobody believes the official spokesman...but everybody trusts an
unidentified source.
—Ron Nesen
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Political speeches are like steer horns. A point here, a point there, and
a lot of bull in between.
—Alfred E. Neuman
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The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the
right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting
moment.
—Dorothy Nevill
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A general leading the State Department resembles a dragon commanding
ducks.
—"The New York Times," 1981
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DOS computers, manufactured by millions of companies, are by far the most
popular, with about 70 million machines in use worldwide. Macintosh fans,
on the other hand, may note that while cockroaches are far more numerous
than humans, numbers alone do not denote a higher life form.
—"The New York Times"
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Finding out what goes on in the CIA is like performing acupuncture on a
rock.
—"The New York Times," 1981
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You can't swat your dog with a TV set.
—a New York Times staff rationalization for the survival of
newspapers
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Music should be the words of the soul.
—David B. Newberry
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First there was Dial-A-Prayer, then Dial-A-Recipe, and even
Dial-A-Footballer. But the south-east Victorian town of Sale has produced
one to top them all. Dial-A-Wombat.
It all began early yesterday when Sale police received a
telephone call: "You won't believe this, and I'm not drunk, but there's a
wombat in the phone booth outside the town hall," the caller said.
Not firmly convinced about the caller's claim to sobriety,
members of the constabulary drove to the scene, expecting to pick up a
drunk.
But there it was, an annoyed wombat, trapped in a telephone
booth.
The wombat, determined not to be had the better of again,
threw its bulk into the fray. It was eventually lassoed and released in a
nearby scrub.
Then the officers received another message...another wombat in
another phone booth.
There it was: Another angry wombat trapped in a
telephone
booth.
The constables took the miffed marsupial into temporary
custody and released it, too, in the scrub.
But on their way back to the station they happened to pass
another telephone booth, and—you guessed it—another imprisoned
wombat.
After some serious detective work, the lads in blue found a
suspect, and after questioning, released him to be charged on summons.
Their problem...they cannot find a law against placing wombats
in telephone booths.
—"Newcastle Morning Herald," NSW Australia, Aug. 1980
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Lack of willpower has caused more failure than lack of intelligence or
ability.
—Flower A. Newhouse
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Crime does not pay...as well as politics.
—Alfred E. Newman
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America is a really good nation, although it still has a few things to
learn from Europe. The fact that England has a branch of government that
is specifically reserved to be a media circus (i.e. the Royal family) is
probably a good thing—you are no doubt aware that in the US those
responsibilities still rest on the executive branch.
—Ben Newman '01
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Remember, on Earth, you can't walk through walls.
—Tory Newmyer
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Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
—Howard W. Newton
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If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the
shoulders of giants.
—Isaac Newton
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There are ten or twenty basic truths, and life is the process of
discovering them over and over and over.
—David Nichols
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No doubt you are as alarmed as I by the tragic decline in America's
language skills. If 10 people read the following sentence:
Two tanker trucks has just overturned in Alaska, spilling
a totel of 10,000 gallons of beer onto a highway.
two would find an error in subject-verb agreement, two would find an error
in spelling, and six would find a sponge and drive north.
—Mike Nichols
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Will we allow the decline of our language—the language of
Shakespeare, Shaw and Steinbeck? Will we abuse our precious gift of
communication? Will we bite our mother tongue with the teeth of
indifference, crushing the taste buds of clarity and, without prompt
application of the antiseptic of education, causing the gangrene of
strained metaphors? Stand up, America, and let me hear your answer: Ain't
no way, dude!
—Mike Nichols
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Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
—Reinhold Niebuhr
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In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came
for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then
they came for me—and by that time no one was left to speak up.
—Pastor Martin Niemoller
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Architecture in general is frozen music.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not
cease to be insipid.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their
blunders.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it but
degenerated into vice.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with
reality at any point.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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Insanity in individuals is something rare—but in groups, parties,
nations and epochs, it is the rule.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my
reasons for them!
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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One should dies proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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Only sick music makes money today.
—Friedrich Nietzsche, 1888
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Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that
I was not He.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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What does not destroy me, makes me strong.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets
another one.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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Without music, life would be an error.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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You who hate the Jews so, why did you adopt their religion?
—Friedrich Nietzsche, addressing anti-Semitic Christians
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...And remember: if you don't like the news, go out and make some of your
own.
—"Scoop" Nisker, radio reporter
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Everything starts as somebody's daydream.
—Larry Niven
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There is an old custom among my people. When a woman saves a man's life,
he is grateful.
—Nona, the Kanuto witch woman, "A Private Little War," "Star
Trek"
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Changing husbands is only changing troubles.
—Kathleen Norris
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In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.
—Kathleen Norris
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There are men I could spend eternity with. but not this life.
—Kathleen Norris
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When you are unhappy, is there anything more maddening than to be told
that you should be contented with your lot?
—Kathleen Norris
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