Memorable Quotes of Wit & Wisdom

Health & Well-Being

"Nowadays you have to boil people before you can sleep with them."

John Travolta as Paul Brenner in 'The General's Daughter' (1999)

"You should not drink and bake."

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mark Kaminski in Raw Deal (1986)

"Only rats, roaches and Keith Richards will survive a nuclear war."

Richard Belzer

"One of the keys to happiness is a really bad memory."

Rita Mae Brown

"Most able-bodied men were in the army, or wounded, or dead."

Episode 9 of the 2003 Channel 4 documentary, 'The First World War'.

"Ce qu'il y a de bien des hémorroïdes c'est qu'on en oublie ses rhumatismes."

[trans. "The good thing about hemorrhoids is that you forget your rheumatism."]

Raoul Billerey as Porthos in 'La Fille de d'Artagnan' (1994)

In Defence of Idleness

"It takes character to withstand the rigours of indolence."

John Wood as Lord Thurlow about Rupert Everett's Prince of Wales in 'The Madness of King George' (1994)

"Laziness is nothing more than the habit of resting before you get tired."

Jules Renard

"There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is in having lots to do and not doing it."

Mary Wilson Little

"It's true that hard work never killed anyone but, I figure, why take the chance."

Ronald Reagan

"I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours."

Jerome K. Jerome

Behaviour

"Youth is the time of getting, middle age of improving and old age of spending."

Anne Bradstreet c. 1612 – 1672

"Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep."

Fran Lebowitz

"Blessed be they who, with pleasing discourse, lift up the souls of the helplessly mute; for they shall be called Dentists."

Variation on an original by Ann Landers

"It doesn't matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses."

Mrs Patrick Campbell (1865-1940)

"Any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid."

Hedy Lamarr (1914-2000)

"The English never smash in a face. They merely refrain from asking it to dinner."

Margaret Halsey (1910-1997)

Women on Women & Death

"It goes far towards reconciling me to being a woman when I reflect I am thus in no danger of marrying one."

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762)

"... my husbands have been very unlucky."

Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519) after the murder of her second

"I have a gift for enraging people but if I ever bore you it will be with a knife."

Louise Brooks (1906-1985)

"There's somthing dreadfully decisive about a beheading."

Agnes Smedley (?1894-1950)

"I rang for ice, but this is ridiculous."

Madeline Talmage Astor (1893-1940) from the deck of the sinking Titanic

Insightfulness

"So many windmills, so little time."

Juliet Rylance as Della Street to Matthew Rhys' Perry Mason in HBO's 2020 TV Series.

"There is less to this than meets the eye."

Tallulah Bankhead

"The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"For centuries theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing."

H. L. Mencken

"How do I define history? It's just one fucking thing after another."

Russell Tovey as Peter Rudge in 'The History Boys' (2006)

"It is not true that life ia one damn thing after another - it's one damn thing over and over."

Edna St Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

"Life just took a turn for the same"

Graeme Srigley

"I have a feeling that when my ship comes in I'll be at the airport."

Charlie Brown

"If you don't see a sucker at the table, you're it."

Amarillo Slim

"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us."

Bill Waterson

Insults & Putdowns

"Nest o' schemin' bastards; they couldn’y agree on the colour o' shite."

Brendan Gleeson as Hamish in 'Braveheart' (1995)

"When you grew that moustache you ruined a perfectly good arse!"

Freddie Starr

"Outside of landing the Hindenburg in a lightening storm, that's about the shittiest idea I've ever heard."

Bob Odenkirk as Ben Bagdikian in 'The Post' (2017)

Places not on everyone's World Tour Itinerary

"Canada is useful only to provide me with furs."

Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764)

"What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it."

Margot Asquith (1864-1945)

"One has no great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound."

Jane Austen (1775-1817)

Reading 11 out of 10 on my Weirdometer

"What he doesn't know about Vampirism wouldn't fill a flea's codpiece."

From Hammer Films 1974 release 'Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter‘
Delivered by Horst Janson as Kronos about his hunchbacked assistant, Professor Hieronymous Grost.