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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

I had another dream the other day about music critics.  They were small
and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a
painting by Goya.
                -- Stravinsky
If God had intended Man to Watch TV, He would have given him Rabbit Ears.
Auribus teneo lupum.
        [I hold a wolf by the ears.]
        [Boy, it *sounds* good.  But what does it *mean*?]
The bone-chilling scream split the warm summer night in two, the first
half being before the scream when it was fairly balmy and calm and
pleasant, the second half still balmy and quite pleasant for those who
hadn't heard the scream at all, but not calm or balmy or even very nice
for those who did hear the scream, discounting the little period of time
during the actual scream itself when your ears might have been hearing it
but your brain wasn't reacting yet to let you know.
                -- Winning sentence, 1986 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.
VMS-F-PDGERS, pudding between the ears
God gave man two ears and one tongue so that we listen twice as much as
we speak.
                -- Arab proverb
When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut.
People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns...behind his
ears.  I think he's weird because he wears false teeth...with braces on them.
-- Steven Wright
"A mind is a terrible thing to have leaking out your ears."
-- The League of Sadistic Telepaths
QOTD:
        "You want me to put *holes* in my ears and hang things from them?
        How...  tribal."
We have ears, earther...FOUR OF THEM!
"Mind if I smoke?"
        "Yes, I'd like to see that, does it come out of your ears or what?"
Minnesota --
        home of the blonde hair and blue ears.
        mosquito supplier to the free world.
        come fall in love with a loon.
        where visitors turn blue with envy.
        one day it's warm, the rest of the year it's cold.
        land of many cultures -- mostly throat.
        where the elite meet sleet.
        glove it or leave it.
        many are cold, but few are frozen.
        land of the ski and home of the crazed.
        land of 10,000 Petersons.
One day this guy is finally fed up with his middle-class existence and
decides to do something about it.  He calls up his best friend, who is a
mathematical genius.  "Look," he says, "do you suppose you could find some
way mathematically of guaranteeing winning at the race track?  We could
make a lot of money and retire and enjoy life."  The mathematician thinks
this over a bit and walks away mumbling to himself.
        A week later his friend drops by to ask the genius if he's had any
success.  The genius, looking a little bleary-eyed, replies, "Well, yes,
actually I do have an idea, and I'm reasonably sure that it will work, but
there a number of details to be figured out.
        After the second week the mathematician appears at his friend's house,
looking quite a bit rumpled, and announces, "I think I've got it! I still have
some of the theory to work out, but now I'm certain that I'm on the right
track."
        At the end of the third week the mathematician wakes his friend by
pounding on his door at three in the morning.  He has dark circles under his
eyes.  His hair hasn't been combed for many days.  He appears to be wearing
the same clothes as the last time.  He has several pencils sticking out from
behind his ears and an almost maniacal expression on his face.  "WE CAN DO
IT!  WE CAN DO IT!!" he shrieks. "I have discovered the perfect solution!!
And it's so EASY!  First, we assume that horses are perfect spheres in simple
harmonic motion..."
The astronomer Francesco Sizi, a contemporary of Galileo, argues that
Jupiter can have no satellites:

        There are seven windows in the head, two nostrils, two ears, two
eyes, and a mouth; so in the heavens there are two favorable stars, two
unpropitious, two luminaries, and Mercury alone undecided and indifferent.
From which and many other similar phenomena of nature such as the seven
metals, etc., which it were tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number
of planets is necessarily seven. [...]
        Moreover, the satellites are invisible to the naked eye and
therefore can have no influence on the earth and therefore would be useless
and therefore do not exist.
It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly,
since it has no ears.
                -- Marcus Porcius Cato
A lady with one of her ears applied
To an open keyhole heard, inside,
Two female gossips in converse free --
The subject engaging them was she.
"I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
That she's a prying, inquisitive minx!"
As soon as no more of it she could hear
The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
"I will not stay," she said with a pout,
"To hear my character lied about!"
                -- Gopete Sherany
Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes
Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn;
Less dear than army ants in apple pies
Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn,
Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit;
Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose
They suck, and like the double-breasted suit
Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose,
Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed;
And stem the produce of thy waspish wits:
Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed;
Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits.
Be off, I say; go bug somebody new,
Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
Hey! now!  Come hoy now!  Whither do you wander?
Up, down, near or far, here, there or yonder?
Sharp-ears, Wise-nose, Swish-tail and Bumpkin,
White-socks my little lad, and old Fatty Lumpkin!
                -- J. R. R. Tolkien
You will obey or molten silver will be poured into your ears.
Son, someday a man is going to walk up to you with a deck of cards on which
the seal is not yet broken.  And he is going to offer to bet you that he can
make the Ace of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ears.
But son, do not bet this man, for you will end up with a ear full of cider.
                -- Sky Masterson's Father
"Arthur yawed wildly as his skin tried to jump one way and
his skeleton the other, whilst his brain tried to work out
which of his ears it most wanted to crawl out of.
`Bet you weren't expecting to see me again,' said the
monster, which Arthur couldn't help thinking was a strange
remark for it to make, seeing as he had never met the
creature before. He could tell that he hadn't met the
creature before from the simple fact that he was able to
sleep at nights."

- Arthur discovering who had diverted him from going to a
party.
Dave Finton gazes into his crystal ball...

January 2099: Rob Malda Finally Gets His Damned Nano-Technology

The Linux hacker community finally breathed a collective sigh of relief
when it was announced that Rob Malda finally got his damned
nanotechnology.

"It's about time!" exclaimed one Dothead. "He been going on about that
crap since god-knows-when. Now that he's got that and those wearable
computers, maybe we can read about something interesting on Slashdot!"

Observers were skeptical, however. Already the now-immortal Rob Malda
nano-cyborg (who reportedly changed his name to "18 of 49, tertiary
adjunct of something-or-other") has picked up a few new causes to shout
about to the high heavens until everyone's ears start bleeding. In one
Slashdot article, Malda writes "Here's an article about the potential of
large greyish high-tech mile-wide cubes flying through space, all
controlled by a collective mind set upon intergalactic conquest.
Personally, I can't wait. Yum."
A green hunting cap squeezed the top of the fleshy balloon of a head.  The
green earflaps, full of large ears and uncut hair and the fine bristles that
grew in the ears themselvse, stuck out on either side like turn signals
indicating two directions at once.  Full, pursed lips protruded beneath the
bushy black moustache and, at their corners, sank into little folds filled
with disapproval and potato chip crumbs.  In the shadow under the green visor
of the cap Ignatius J. Reilly's supercilious blue and yellow eyes looked down
upon the other people waiting under the clock at the D.H. Holmes department
store, studying the crowd of people for signs of bad taste in dress.  Several
of the outfits, Ignatius noticed, were new enough and expensive enough to be
properly considered offenses against taste and decency.  Possession of
anything new or expensive only reflected a person's lack of theology and
geometry; it could even cast doubts upon one's soul.
                -- John Kennedy Toole, "Confederacy of Dunces"
As many of you know, I am taking a class here at UNC on Personality.
One of the tests to determine personality in our book was so incredibly
useful and interesting, I just had to share it.

Answer each of the following items "true" or "false"

1. I think beavers work too hard.
2. I use shoe polish to excess.
3. God is love.
4. I like mannish children.
5. I have always been diturbed by the sight of Lincoln's ears.
6. I always let people get ahead of me at swimming pools.
7. Most of the time I go to sleep without saying goodbye.
8. I am not afraid of picking up door knobs.
9. I believe I smell as good as most people.
10. Frantic screams make me nervous.
11. It's hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room
    full of mice.
12. I would never tell my nickname in a crisis.
13. A wide necktie is a sign of disease.
14. As a child I was deprived of licorice.
15. I would never shake hands with a gardener.
16. My eyes are always cold.
17. Cousins are not to be trusted.
18. When I look down from a high spot, I want to spit.
19. I am never startled by a fish.
20. I have never gone to pieces over the weekend.
Nobody knows what goes between his cold toes and his warm ears.
                -- Roy Harper
A blind rabbit was hopping through the woods, tripping over logs and crashing
into trees.  At the same time, a blind snake was slithering through the same
forest, with identical results.  They chanced to collide head-on in a clearing.
        "Please excuse me, sir, I'm blind and I bumped into you accidentally,"
apologized the rabbit.
        "That's quite all right," replied the snake, "I have the same
problem!"
        "All my life I've been wondering what I am," said the rabbit, "Do
you think you could help me find out?"
        "I'll try," said the snake.  He gently coiled himself around the
rabbit. "Well, you're covered with soft fur, you have a little fluffy tail
and long ears.  You're... hmmm... you're probably a bunny rabbit!"
        "Great!" said the rabbit.  "Thanks, I really owe you one!"
        "Well," replied the snake, "I don't know what I am, either.  Do you
suppose you could try and tell me?"
        The rabbit ran his paws all over the snake.  "Well, you're low, cold
and slimey..."  And, as he ran one paw underneath the snake, "and you have
no balls.  You must be an attorney!"
Fortune's Real-Life Courtroom Quote #37:

Q:  Did he pick the dog up by the ears?
A:  No.
Q:  What was he doing with the dog's ears?
A:  Picking them up in the air.
Q:  Where was the dog at this time?
A:  Attached to the ears.
I want EARS!  I want two ROUND BLACK EARS to make me feel warm 'n secure!!
My EARS are GONE!!
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
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