DEEn Dictionary De - En
DeEs De - Es
DePt De - Pt
 Vocabulary trainer

Spec. subjects Grammar Abbreviations Random search Preferences
Search in Sprachauswahl
speak
Search for:
Mini search box
 
Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

Can't act.  Slightly bald.  Also dances.
                -- RKO executive, reacting to Fred Astaire's screen test.
                   Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
Eeny, Meeny, Jelly Beanie, the spirits are about to speak!
                -- Bullwinkle Moose
If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient
evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.
                -- Fran Lebowitz, "Metropolitan Life"
No Civil War picture ever made a nickel.
                -- MGM executive Irving Thalberg to Louis B. Mayer about
                   film rights to "Gone With the Wind".
                   Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
Rembrandt is not to be compared in the painting of character with our
extraordinarily gifted English artist, Mr. Rippingille.
                -- John Hunt, British editor, scholar and art critic
                   Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
The human brain is a wonderful thing.  It starts working the moment
you are born, and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.
                -- Sir George Jessel
If you have received a letter inviting you to speak at the dedication of a
new cat hospital, and you hate cats, your reply, declining the invitation,
does not necessarily have to cover the full range of your emotions.  You must
make it clear that you will not attend, but you do not have to let fly at cats.
The writer of the letter asked a civil question; attack cats, then, only if
you can do so with good humor, good taste, and in such a way that your answer
will be courteous as well as responsive.  Since you are out of sympathy with
cats, you may quite properly give this as a reason for not appearing at the
dedication ceremonies of a cat hospital.  But bear in mind that your opinion
of cats was not sought, only your services as a speaker.  Try to keep things
straight.
                -- Strunk and White, "The Elements of Style"
"If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot
of different places, just write a Unix operating system."
(By Linus Torvalds)
..you could spend *all day* customizing the title bar.  Believe me.  I
speak from experience."
(By Matt Welsh)
Your modem doesn't speak English.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear.  Except a
creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely
a loose misapplication of the word.  Consider the flea!--incomparably the
bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.
Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact
that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth
to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the
very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more
afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by
an earthquake ten centuries before.  When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam
as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea--and
put him at the head of the procession.
                -- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
"Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though
ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak,
mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee.  Of all divers,
thou has dived the deepest.  That head upon which the upper sun now gleams has
moved amid the world's foundations.  Where unrecorded names and navies rust,
and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate
earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful
water-land, there was thy most familiar home.  Thou hast been where bell or
diver never went; has slept by many a sailer's side, where sleepless mothers
would give their lives to lay them down.  Thou saw'st the locked lovers when
leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting
wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them.  Thou saw'st the
murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell
into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed
on unharmed -- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would
have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms.  O head! thou has
seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one
syllable is thine!"
                -- H. Melville, "Moby Dick"
We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength.  But there was
also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard song at a
French restaurant. [...]
        I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her milk
white BMW and her Jordache smile.  There had been a fight.  I had punched her
boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls.  Everyone told him, "You ride the
bull, senor.  You do not fight it."  But he was lean and tough like a bad
rib-eye and he fought the bull.  And then he fought me.  And when we finished
there were no winners, just men doing what men must do. [...]
        "Stop the car," the girl said.
        There was a look of terrible sadness in her eyes.  She knew about the
woman of the tollway.  I knew not how.  I started to speak, but she raised an
arm and spoke with a quiet and peace I will never forget.
        "I do not ask for whom's the tollway belle," she said, "the tollway
belle's for thee."
        The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie.
Life is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured whiskey
onto my granola and faced a new day.
                -- Peter Applebome, International Imitation Hemingway
                   Competition
        "You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?"
        "The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks as --"
        "My blushes, Watson," Holmes murmured, in a deprecating voice.
        "I was about to say 'as he is unknown to the public.'"
                -- A. Conan Doyle, "The Valley of Fear"
This "brain-damaged" epithet is getting sorely overworked.  When we can
speak of someone or something being flawed, impaired, marred, spoiled;
batty, bedlamite, bonkers, buggy, cracked, crazed, cuckoo, daft, demented,
deranged, loco, lunatic, mad, maniac, mindless, non compos mentis, nuts,
Reaganite, screwy, teched, unbalanced, unsound, witless, wrong;  senseless,
spastic, spasmodic, convulsive; doped, spaced-out, stoned, zonked;  {beef,
beetle,block,dung,thick}headed, dense, doltish, dull, duncical, numskulled,
pinhead;  asinine, fatuous, foolish, silly, simple;  brute, lumbering, oafish;
half-assed, incompetent; backward, retarded, imbecilic, moronic; when we have
a whole precisely nuanced vocabulary of intellectual abuse to draw upon,
individually and in combination, isn't it a little <fill in the blank> to be
limited to a single, now quite trite, adjective?
We may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely
intellectual fields.  But which are the best ones to start with?  Many people
think that a very abstract activity, like the playing of chess, would be
best.  It can also be maintained that it is best to provide the machine with
the best sense organs that money can buy, and then teach it to understand
and speak English.
                -- Alan M. Turing
God gave man two ears and one tongue so that we listen twice as much as
we speak.
                -- Arab proverb
But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to
thee, to speak these words?  Hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the
wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?
[2 Kings 18:27 (KJV)]
Even if you can deceive people about a product through misleading statements,
sooner or later the product will speak for itself.
- Hajime Karatsu
   It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all
primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach
of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings
arise, which in their intensification lead the individual to forget himself
completely. . . .Not only does the bond between man and man come to be forged
once again by the magic of the Dionysian rite, but alienated, hostile, or
subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation with her prodigal son,
man.
- Fred Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy
The characteristic property of hallucinogens, to suspend the boundaries between
the experiencing self and the outer world in an ecstatic, emotional experience,
makes it posible with their help, and after suitable internal and external
perparation...to evoke a mystical experience according to plan, so to speak...
I see the true importance of LSD in the possibility of providing materail aid
to meditation aimed at the mystical experience of a deeper, comprehensive
reality.  Such a use accords entirely with the essence and working character
of LSD as a sacred drug.
- Dr. Albert Hoffman, the discoverer of LSD
Already the spirit of our schooling is permeated with the feeling that
every subject, every topic, every fact, every professed truth must be
submitted to a certain publicity and impartiality.  All proffered
samples of learning must go to the same assay-room and be subjected to
common tests.  It is the essence of all dogmatic faiths to hold that
any such "show-down" is sacrilegious and perverse.  The characteristic
of religion, from their point of view, is that it is intellectually
secret, not public; peculiarly revealed, not generall known;
authoritatively declared, not communicated and tested in ordinary
ways...It is pertinent to point out that, as long as religion is
conceived as it is now by the great majority of professed religionists,
there is something self-contradictory in speaking of education in
religion in the same sense in which we speak of education in topics
where the method of free inquiry has made its way.  The "religious"
would be the last to be willing that either the history of the
content of religion should be taught in this spirit; while those
to whom the scientific standpoint is not merely a technical device,
but is the embodiment of the integrity of mind, must protest against
its being taught in any other spirit.
- John Dewey (1859-1953), American philosopher,
  from "Democracy in the Schools", 1908
One evening Mr. Rudolph Block, of New York, found himself seated at dinner
alongside Mr. Percival Pollard, the distinguished critic.
   "Mr. Pollard," said he, "my book, _The Biography of a Dead Cow_, is
published anonymously, but you can hardly be ignorant of its authorship.
Yet in reviewing it you speak of it as the work of the Idiot of the Century.
Do you think that fair criticism?"
   "I am very sorry, sir," replied the critic, amiably, "but it did not
occur to me that you really might not wish the public to know who wrote it."
-- Ambrose Bierce
"The stars are made of the same atoms as the earth."  I usually pick one small
topic like this to give a lecture on.  Poets say science takes away from the
beauty of the stars -- mere gobs of gas atoms.  Nothing is "mere."  I too can
see the stars on a desert night, and feel them.  But do I see less or more?
The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination -- stuck on this carousel
my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light.  A vast pattern -- of which
I am a part -- perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one
is belching there.  Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all
apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together.
What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the *why?*  It does not do harm to the
mystery to know a little about it.  For far more marvelous is the truth than
any artists of the past imagined!  Why do the poets of the present not speak
of it?  What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were like a man, but
if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
-- Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988)
        Well, punk is kind of anti-ethical, anyway.  Its ethics, so to speak,
include a disdain for ethics in general.  If you have to think about some-
thing so hard, then it's bullshit anyway; that's the idea.  Punks are anti-
ismists, to coin a term.  But nonetheless, they have a pretty clearly defined
stance and image, and THAT is what we hang the term `punk' on.
-- Jeff G. Bone
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak."  
-- Phil Wayne
I might have gone to West Point, but I was too proud to speak to a congressman.
                -- Will Rogers
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
Politicians speak for their parties, and parties never are, never have
been, and never will be wrong.
                -- Walter Dwight
Ten persons who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.
                -- Napoleon I
To think contrary to one's era is heroism.  But to speak against it is madness.
                -- Eugene Ionesco
The human instinct to censor thrives, as it always will, living in
irrepressible conflict with the human instinct to speak.  Outrage,
self-righteousness, and paranoia feed the maw of censorship.
Squelching speech, however, never reduces society's net paranoia
quotient; it simply redirects it, drives it underground, where it
festers into more dangerous hysterias.  In the words of Justice
Brandeis, "Men feared witches and burned women."
                -- Rodney Smolla, "Free Speech in an Open Society", p. 43.
Bagbiter:
        1. n.; Equipment or program that fails, usually intermittently.  2.
adj.: Failing hardware or software.  "This bagbiting system won't let me get
out of spacewar." Usage: verges on obscenity.  Grammatically separable; one
may speak of "biting the bag".  Synonyms: LOSER, LOSING, CRETINOUS,
BLETCHEROUS, BARFUCIOUS, CHOMPER, CHOMPING.
default, n.:
        [Possibly from Black English "De fault wid dis system is you,
        mon."] The vain attempt to avoid errors by inactivity.  "Nothing will
        come of nothing: speak again." -- King Lear.
                -- Stan Kelly-Bootle, "The Devil's DP Dictionary"
FORTUNE EXPLAINS WHAT JOB REVIEW CATCH PHRASES MEAN:        #1
skilled oral communicator:
        Mumbles inaudibly when attempting to speak.  Talks to self.
        Argues with self.  Loses these arguments.

skilled written communicator:
        Scribbles well.  Memos are invariable illegible, except for
        the portions that attribute recent failures to someone else.

growth potential:
        With proper guidance, periodic counselling, and remedial training,
        the reviewee may, given enough time and close supervision, meet
        the minimum requirements expected of him by the company.

key company figure:
        Serves as the perfect counter example.
The five rules of Socialism:
        (1) Don't think.
        (2) If you do think, don't speak.
        (3) If you think and speak, don't write.
        (4) If you think, speak and write, don't sign.
        (5) If you think, speak, write and sign, don't be surprised.
                -- being told in Poland, 1987
U.S. of A.:
        "Don't speak to the bus driver."
Germany:
        "It is strictly forbidden for passengers to speak to the driver."
England:
        "You are requested to refrain from speaking to the driver."
Scotland:
        "What have you got to gain by speaking to the driver?"
Italy:
        "Don't answer the driver."
Don't speak about Time, until you have spoken to him.
What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
                -- Wittgenstein
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
                -- Wittgenstein
Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak
it to?
                -- Clarence Darrow
Fortune presents:
        USEFUL PHRASES IN ESPERANTO, #1.

^Cu vi parolas angle?                        Do you speak English?
Mi ne komprenas.                        I don't understand.
Vi estas la sola esperantisto kiun mi        You're the only Esperanto speaker
        renkontas.                                I've met.
La ^ceko estas enpo^stigita.                The check is in the mail.
Oni ne povas, ^gin netrovi.                You can't miss it.
Mi nur rigardadas.                        I'm just looking around.
Nu, ^sajnis bona ideo.                        Well, it seemed like a good idea.
Gay shlafen:  Yiddish for "go to sleep".

Now doesn't "gay shlafen" have a softer, more soothing sound than the
harsh, staccato "go to sleep"?  Listen to the difference:
        "Go to sleep, you little wretch!" ... "Gay shlafen, darling."
Obvious, isn't it?
        Clearly the best thing you can do for you children is to start
speaking Yiddish right now and never speak another word of English as
long as you live.  This will, of course, entail teaching Yiddish to all
your friends, business associates, the people at the supermarket, and
so on, but that's just the point.  It has to start with committed
individuals and then grow....
        Some minor adjustments will have to be made, of course: those
signs written in what look like Yiddish letters won't be funny when
everything is written in Yiddish.  And we'll have to start driving on
the left side of the road so we won't be reading the street signs
backwards.  But is that too high a price to pay for world peace?
I think not, my friend, I think not.
                -- Arthur Naiman, "Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish"
        "Somewhere", said Father Vittorini, "did Blake not speak of the
Machineries of Joy?  That is, did not God promote environments, then
intimidate these Natures by provoking the existence of flesh, toy men and
women, such as are we all?  And thus happily sent forth, at our best, with
good grace and fine wit, on calm noons, in fair climes, are we not God's
Machineries of Joy?"
        "If Blake said that", said Father Brian, "he never lived in Dublin."
                -- R. Bradbury, "The Machineries of Joy"
The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach
their children to speak it.
                -- G. B. Shaw
There was this New Yorker that had a lifelong ambition to be an Texan.
Fortunately, he had an Texan friend and went to him for advice.  "Mike,
you know I've always wanted to be a Texan.  You're a *____real* Texan, what
should I do?"
        "Well," answered Mike, "The first thing you've got to do is look
like a Texan.  That means you have to dress right.  The second thing
you've got to do is speak in a southern drawl."
        "Thanks, Mike, I'll give it a try," replied the New Yorker.
        A few weeks passed and the New Yorker saunters into a store dressed
in a ten-gallon hat, cowboy boots, Levi jeans and a bandanna.  "Hey, there,
pardner, I'd like some beef, not too rare, and some of them fresh biscuits,"
he tells the counterman.
        The guy behind the counter takes a long look at him and then says,
"You must be from New York."
        The New Yorker blushes, and says, "Well, yes, I am.  How did
you know?"
        "Because this is a hardware store."
To a New Yorker, all Californians are blond, even the blacks.  There are,
in fact, whole neighborhoods that are zoned only for blond people.  The
only way to tell the difference between California and Sweden is that the
Swedes speak better English."
        -- From "East vs. West: The War Between the Coasts
You know you're in a small town when...
        You don't use turn signals because everybody knows where you're going.
        You're born on June 13 and your family receives gifts from the local
                merchants because you're the first baby of the year.
        Everyone knows whose credit is good, and whose wife isn't.
        You speak to each dog you pass, by name... and he wags his tail.
        You dial the wrong number, and talk for 15 minutes anyway.
        You write a check on the wrong bank and it covers you anyway.
But you who live on dreams, you are better pleased with the sophistical
reasoning and frauds of talkers about great and uncertain matters than
those who speak of certain and natural matters, not of such lofty nature.
                -- Leonardo Da Vinci, "The Codex on the Flight of Birds"
FORTUNE'S GUIDE TO DEALING WITH REAL-LIFE SCIENCE FICTION: #2
What to do...
    if you get a phone call from Mars:
        Speak slowly and be sure to enunciate your words properly.  Limit
        your vocabulary to simple words.  Try to determine if you are
        speaking to someone in a leadership capacity, or an ordinary citizen.

    if he, she or it doesn't speak English?
        Hang up.  There's no sense in trying to learn Martian over the phone.
        If your Martian really had something important to say to you, he, she
        or it would have taken the trouble to learn the language before
        calling.

    if you get a phone call from Jupiter?
        Explain to your caller, politely but firmly, that being from Jupiter,
        he, she or it is not "life as we know it".  Try to terminate the
        conversation as soon as possible.  It will not profit you, and the
        charges may have been reversed.
        In the beginning there was only one kind of Mathematician, created by
the Great Mathamatical Spirit form the Book: the Topologist.  And they grew to
large numbers and prospered.
        One day they looked up in the heavens and desired to reach up as far
as the eye could see.  So they set out in building a Mathematical edifice that
was to reach up as far as "up" went.  Further and further up they went ...
until one night the edifice collapsed under the weight of paradox.
        The following morning saw only rubble where there once was a huge
structure reaching to the heavens.  One by one, the Mathematicians climbed
out from under the rubble.  It was a miracle that nobody was killed; but when
they began to speak to one another, SUPRISE of all suprises! they could not
understand each other.  They all spoke different languages.  They all fought
amongst themselves and each went about their own way.  To this day the
Topologists remain the original Mathematicians.
                -- The Story of Babel
In the course of reading Hadamard's "The Psychology of Invention in the
Mathematical Field", I have come across evidence supporting a fact
which we coffee achievers have long appreciated:  no really creative,
intelligent thought is possible without a good cup of coffee.  On page
14, Hadamard is discussing Poincare's theory of fuchsian groups and
fuchsian functions, which he describes as "... one of his greatest
discoveries, the first which consecrated his glory ..."  Hadamard refers
to Poincare having had a "... sleepless night which initiated all that
memorable work ..." and gives the following, very revealing quote:

        "One evening, contrary to my custom, I drank black coffee and
        could not sleep.  Ideas rose in crowds;  I felt them collide
        until pairs interlocked, so to speak, making a stable
        combination."

Too bad drinking black coffee was contrary to his custom.  Maybe he
could really have amounted to something as a coffee achiever.
The bomb will never go off.  I speak as an expert in explosives.
                -- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project
Chinese saying: "He who speak with forked tongue, not need chopsticks."
Calm down, it's only ones and zeroes,
Calm down, it's only bits and bytes,
Calm down, and speak to me in English,
Please realize that I'm not one of your computerites.
Go placidly amid the noise and waste,
And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.
Avoid quiet and passive persons, unless you are in need of sleep.
Rotate your tires.
Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself,
And heed well their advice -- even though they be turkeys.
Know what to kiss -- and when.
Remember that two wrongs never make a right,
But that three do.
Wherever possible, put people on "HOLD".
Be comforted, that in the face of all aridity and disillusionment,
And despite the changing fortunes of time,
There is always a big future in computer maintenance.

        You are a fluke of the universe ...
        You have no right to be here.
        Whether you can hear it or not, the universe
        Is laughing behind your back.
                -- National Lampoon, "Deteriorata"
How doth the VAX's C-compiler
        Improve its object code.
And even as we speak does it
        Increase the system load.

How patiently it seems to run
        And spit out error flags,
While users, with frustration, all
        Tear their clothes to rags.
Speak roughly to your little boy,
        And beat him when he sneezes:
He only does it to annoy
        Because he knows it teases.
        Wow!  wow!  wow!

I speak severely to my boy,
        And beat him when he sneezes:
For he can thoroughly enjoy
        The pepper when he pleases!
        Wow!  wow!  wow!
                -- Lewis Carrol, "Alice in Wonderland"
Speak roughly to your little VAX,
        And boot it when it crashes;
It knows that one cannot relax
        Because the paging thrashes!
        Wow!  Wow!  Wow!

I speak severely to my VAX,
        And boot it when it crashes;
In spite of all my favorite hacks
        My jobs it always thrashes!
        Wow!  Wow!  Wow!
The truth you speak has no past and no future.
It is, and that's all it needs to be.
Then here's to the City of Boston,
The town of the cries and the groans.
Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks,
And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns.
                -- Franklin Pierce Adams
To everything there is a season, a time for every pupose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to gain, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate;
A time of war, and a time of peace.
                Ecclesiastes 3:1-9
When the leaders speak of peace
The common folk know
That war is coming
When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out.

Every day, to earn my daily bread
I go to the market where lies are bought
Hopefully
I take my place among the sellers.
                -- Bertolt Brecht, "Hollywood"
Ruth made a great mistake when he gave up pitching.  Working once a week,
he might have lasted a long time and become a great star.
                -- Tris Speaker, commenting on Babe Ruth's plan to change
                   from being a pitcher to an outfielder.
                   Cerf/Navasky, "The Experts Speak"
You speak of courage.  Obviously you do not know the difference between
courage and foolhardiness.  Always it is the brave ones who die, the soldiers.
                -- Kor, the Klingon Commander, "Errand of Mercy",
                   stardate 3201.7
Like you,  I am frequently haunted by profound questions related to man's
place in the Scheme of Things.  Here are just a few:

        Q -- Is there life after death?
        A -- Definitely.  I speak from personal experience here.  On New
Year's Eve, 1970, I drank a full pitcher of a drink called "Black Russian",
then crawled out on the lawn and died within a matter of minutes, which was
fine with me because I had come to realize that if I had lived I would have
spent the rest of my life in the grip of the most excruciatingly painful
headache.  Thanks to the miracle of modern orange juice, I was brought back
to life several days later, but in the interim I was definitely dead.  I
guess my main impression of the afterlife is that it isn't so bad as long
as you keep the television turned down and don't try to eat any solid foods.
                -- Dave Barry
If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of
different places, just write a Unix operating system.

   -- Linus Torvalds
Humorix Holiday Gift Idea #6

Hearing Un-aid
US$129.95 at The Fuzzier Projection Co.

It's a scene we can all identify with: you're at a boring company meeting,
trying to read the latest Slashdot headlines on your PalmPilot, but you can't
concentrate because the PHB is rambling in a loud, booming voice about
e-infomediary-substrategic-paradigms and
meta-content-aggregation-relationship-corridors.

With the Hearing Un-aid(tm), you can put a stop to incessant buzzword-speak by
your boss. Unlike a hearing aid, which amplifies sound, the Hearing Un-aid
dampens noise, so you can easily tune out the board meeting and instead focus
on something far more important, such as downloading Humorix stories.

If you happen to miss something important (yeah, right) and your boss accuses
you of not paying attention, you can simply point to your hearing "aid" and
respond, "What was that? I couldn't hear you because of my temporary hearing
loss."
If you think before you speak the other guy gets his joke in first.
If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced
in it.  People in disguise speak freely.
In good speaking, should not the mind of the speaker know the truth of
the matter about which he is to speak?
                -- Plato
It may be bad manners to talk with your mouth full, but it isn't too
good either if you speak when your head is empty.
It takes two to tell the truth: one to speak and one to hear.
Never speak ill of yourself, your friends will always say enough on
that subject.
                -- Charles-Maurice De Talleyrand
Since we have to speak well of the dead, let's knock them while they're alive.
                -- John Sloan
Speak softly and carry a +6 two-handed sword.
Speak softly and own a big, mean Doberman.
                -- Dave Millman
We prefer to speak evil of ourselves rather than not speak of ourselves at all.
When you speak to others for their own good it's advice;
when they speak to you for your own good it's interference.
A brave and passionate man will kill or be killed.
A brave and calm man will always preserve life.
Of these two which is good and which is harmful?
Some things are not favored by heaven.  Who knows why?
Even the sage is unsure of this.

The Tao of heaven does not strive, and yet it overcomes.
It does not speak, and yet is answered.
It does not ask, yet is supplied with all its needs.
It seems to have no aim and yet its purpose is fulfilled.

Heaven's net casts wide.
Though its meshes are course, nothing slips through.
        A young married couple had their first child.  Their original pride
and joy slowly turned to concern however, for after a couple of years the
child had never uttered any form of speech.  They hired the best speech
therapists, doctors, psychiatrists, all to no avail.  The child simply refused
to speak.  One morning when the child was five, while the husband was reading
the paper, and the wife was feeding the dog, the little kid looks up from
his bowl and said, "My cereal's cold."
        The couple is stunned.  The man, in tears, confronts his son.  "Son,
after all these years, why have you waited so long to say something?".
        Shrugs the kid, "Everything's been okay 'til now".
* knghtbrd does the ET thing
<knghtbrd> anybody got a speak-n-spell?
"Otherwise, please speak to a doctor about removing your head from your
ass, I believe it would be beneficial to all involved."
        -- Zephaniah E. Hull, flaming someone on a mailing list
<|Rain|> I *love* SWB!!
<|Rain|> Or, press 5 to speak to a representitive..
<|Rain|> *5*
<|Rain|> You are being transferred, please hold...
<|Rain|> ...
<|Rain|> ...
<|Rain|> We're sorry, this number can not be completed as dialed.
<|Rain|> Please check the number and try again.
He who knows, does not speak.  He who speaks, does not know.
                -- Lao Tsu
        One day it was announced that the young monk Kyogen had reached
an enlightened state.  Much impressed by this news, several of his peers
went to speak with him.
        "We have heard that you are enlightened.  Is this true?" his fellow
students inquired.
        "It is", Kyogen answered.
        "Tell us", said a friend, "how do you feel?"
        "As miserable as ever", replied the enlightened Kyogen.
The truth you speak has no past and no future.  It is, and that's all it
needs to be.
If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot
of different places, just write a Unix operating system.
        -- Linus Torvalds
..you could spend *all day* customizing the title bar.  Believe me.  I
speak from experience.
        -- Matt Welsh
Be sociable. Speak to the person next to you in the unemployment line tomorrow.
        Then a man said: Speak to us of Expectations.
        He then said: If a man does not see or hear the waters of the
Jordan, then he should not taste the pomegranate or ply his wares in an
open market.
        If a man would not labour in the salt and rock quarries then he
should not accept of the Earth that which he refuses to give of
himself.

        Such a man would expect a pear of a peach tree.
        Such a man would expect a stone to lay an egg.
        Such a man would expect Sears to assemble a lawnmower.
                -- Kehlog Albran, "The Profit"
Double *sigh*.  _04 is going onto thousands of CDs even as we speak,
so to speak.
             -- Larry Wall in <199710221718.KAA24299@wall.org>
"How do you know she is a unicorn?" Molly demanded.  "And why were you afraid
to let her touch you?  I saw you.  You were afraid of her."
        "I doubt that I will feel like talking for very long," the cat
replied without rancor.  "I would not waste time in foolishness if I were
you.  As to your first question, no cat out of its first fur can ever be
deceived by appearances.  Unlike human beings, who enjoy them.  As for your
second question --"  Here he faltered, and suddenly became very interested
in washing; nor would he speak until he had licked himself fluffy and then
licked himself smooth again.  Even then he would not look at Molly, but
examined his claws.
        "If she had touched me," he said very softly, "I would have been
hers and not my own, not ever again."
                -- Peter S. Beagle, "The Last Unicorn"
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
Your feedback:
Ad partners