Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
Stop! Whoever crosseth the bridge of Death, must answer first these questions three, ere the other side he see! "What is your name?" "Sir Brian of Bell." "What is your quest?" "I seek the Holy Grail." "What are four lowercase letters that are not legal flag arguments to the Berkeley UNIX version of `ls'?" "I, er.... AIIIEEEEEE!" | |
Again she fled, but swift he came. Tin'uviel! Tin'uviel! He called her by her elvish name; And there she halted listening. One moment stood she, and a spell His voice laid on her: Beren came And doom fell on Tin'uviel That in his arms lay glistening. As Beren looked into her eyes Within the shadows of her hair, The trembling starlight of the skies He saw there mirrored shimmering. Tin'uviel the elven-fair, Immortal maiden elven-wise, About him cast her shadowy hair And arms like silver glimmering. Long was the way that fate them bore, O'er stony mountains cold and grey, Through halls of iron and darkling door, And woods of nightshade morrowless. The Sundering Seas between them lay, And yet at last they met once more, And long ago they passed away In the forest singing sorrowless. -- J. R. R. Tolkien | |
Everything's great in this good old world; (This is the stuff they can always use.) God's in his heaven, the hill's dew-pearled; (This will provide for baby's shoes.) Hunger and War do not mean a thing; Everything's rosy where'er we roam; Hark, how the little birds gaily sing! (This is what fetches the bacon home.) -- Dorothy Parker, "The Far Sighted Muse" | |
Hier liegt ein Mann ganz obnegleich; Im Leibe dick, an Suden reich. Wir haben ihn in das Grab gesteckt, Here lies a man with sundry flaws Weil es uns dunkt er sei verreckt. And numerous Sins upon his head; We buried him today because As far as we can tell, he's dead. -- PDQ Bach's epitaph, as requested by his cousin Betty Sue Bach and written by the local doggeral catcher; "The Definitive Biography of PDQ Bach", Peter Schickele | |
I'm N-ary the tree, I am, N-ary the tree, I am, I am. I'm getting traversed by the parser next door, She's traversed me seven times before. And ev'ry time it was an N-ary (N-ary!) Never wouldn't ever do a binary. (No sir!) I'm 'er eighth tree that was N-ary. N-ary the tree I am, I am, N-ary the tree I am. -- Stolen from Paul Revere and the Raiders | |
Once again dread deed is done. Canon sleeps, his all-knowing eye shaded to human chance and circumstance. Peace reigns anew o'er Pine Valley, but Canon's sleep is troubled. Beware, scant days past the Ides of July. Impatient hands wait eagerly to grasp, to hold scant moments of time wrested from life in the full glory of Canon's power; held captive by his unblinking eye. Three golden orbs stand watch; one each to toll the day, hour, minute until predestiny decrees his reawakening. When that feared moment arives, "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee." -- "I extended the loan on your Camera, at the Pine Valley Pawn Shop today" | |
Please stand for the National Anthem: God save our Gracious Queen! Long live our Noble Queen! God save the Queen! Send her victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign o'er us! God save the Queen! Thank you. You may resume your seat. | |
Please stand for the National Anthem: Oh, say can you see by dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave? Thank you. You may resume your seat. | |
Power, like a desolating pestilence, Pollutes whate'er it touches... -- Percy Bysshe Shelley | |
The smiling Spring comes in rejoicing, And surly Winter grimly flies. Now crystal clear are the falling waters, And bonnie blue are the sunny skies. Fresh o'er the mountains breaks forth the morning, The ev'ning gilds the oceans's swell: All creatures joy in the sun's returning, And I rejoice in my bonnie Bell. The flowery Spring leads sunny Summer, The yellow Autumn presses near; Then in his turn come gloomy Winter, Till smiling Spring again appear. Thus seasons dancing, life advancing, Old Time and Nature their changes tell; But never ranging, still unchanging, I adore my bonnie Bell. -- Robert Burns, "My Bonnie Bell" | |
We're Knights of the Round Table We dance whene'er we're able We do routines and chorus scenes We're knights of the Round Table With footwork impeccable Our shows are formidable We dine well here in Camelot But many times We eat ham and jam and Spam a lot. We're given rhymes That are quite unsingable In war we're tough and able, We're opera mad in Camelot Quite indefatigable We sing from the diaphragm a lot. Between our quests We sequin vests And impersonate Clark Gable It's a busy life in Camelot. I have to push the pram a lot. -- Monty Python | |
What, still alive at twenty-two, A clean upstanding chap like you? Sure, if your throat 'tis hard to slit, Slit your girl's, and swing for it. Like enough, you won't be glad, When they come to hang you, lad: But bacon's not the only thing That's cured by hanging from a string. So, when the spilt ink of the night Spreads o'er the blotting pad of light, Lads whose job is still to do Shall whet their knives, and think of you. -- Hugh Kingsmill | |
"`Er, hey Earthman...' `Arthur,' said Arthur. `Yeah, could you just sort of keep this robot with you and guard this end of the passageway. OK?' `Guard?' said Arthur. `What from? You just said there's no one here.' `Yeah, well, just for safety, OK?' said Zaphod. `Whose? Yours or mine?'" - Arthur drawing the short straw on Magrathea. | |
ARTHUR It probably seems a terrible thing to say, but you know what I sometimes think would be useful in these situations? LINT. What? ARTHUR A gun of some sort. LINT.2 Will this help? ARTHUR What is it? LINT.2 A gun of some sort. ARTHUR Oh, that'll help. Can you make it fire? LINT. Er... F/X DEAFENING ROAR LINT. Yes. - Arthur and the Lintillas gaining the upper hand, Fit the Twelfth. | |
Missouri Town Changes Name to 'Linux' LINUX, MO -- The small Missouri town of Linn, county seat of Osage County, announced yesterday that it will be henceforth called 'Linux'. Mayor Bob Farrow said, "Linn needed something to put it on the map. A few weeks ago my daughter mentioned that she installed Linux on her computer and how great she thought it was. I thought to myself, 'Self, changing the town's name to 'Linux' could be an opportunity to attract attention -- and money -- to our town. We could even hold a Linux Convention at the community center.' So I approached the city council about the idea, and they loved it. The rest is history." Farrow's daughter is organizing the Linux Linux User Group. She hopes to be able to hold a Linux Convention this fall. "The Linn, er, Linux community center probably won't be big enough, we'll probably have to hold it in nearby Jefferson City," she said. The mayor does have one reservation. "How the hell do you pronounce Linux?" One of the mayor's contenders in the next election, Mr. Noah Morals, says he will start an ad campaign calling Bob Farrow "the Incumbent Liar of LIE-nucks". Needless to say, the mayor usually pronounces Linux as "LIH-nucks". | |
Brief History Of Linux (#22) RMS had a horrible, terrible dream set in 2020 in which all of society was held captive by copyright law. In particular, everyone's brain waves were monitored by the US Dept. of Copyrights. If your thoughts referenced a copyrighted idea, you had to pay a royalty. To make it worse, a handful of corporations held fully 99.9% of all intellectual property rights. Coincidentally, Bill Gates experienced a similar dream that same night. To him, however, it was not a horrible, terrible nightmare, but a wonderful utopian vision. The thought of lemmings... er, customers paying a royalty everytime they hummed a copyrighted song in their head or remembered a passage in a book was simply too marvelous for the budding monopolist. RMS, waking up from his nightmare, vowed to fight the oncoming Copyright Nightmare. The GNU Project was born. His plan called for a kernel, compiler, editor, and other tools. Unfortunately, RMS became bogged down with Emacs that the kernel, HURD, was shoved on the back burner. Built with LISP (Lots of Incomprehensible Statements with Parentheses), Emacs became bloated in a way no non-Microsoft program ever has. Indeed, for a short while RMS pretended that Emacs really was the GNU OS kernel. | |
Won't Somebody Please Think Of The Microsoft Shareholder's Children? The Evil Monopoly will soon be a duopoly of MICROS~1 and MICROS~2 now that Judge Jackson has made his ruling. Geeks everywhere are shedding tears of joy, while Microsoft investors are shedding real tears. But not everybody is ecstatic about the ruling. "It dawned on me today that if Microsoft is broken up, we won't have anyone to bash anymore. We can have that," said Rob Graustein, the founder of the new "Save Microsoft Now! Campaign". Rob continued, "I know what you're thinking! I have not been assimilated... er, hired... by Microsoft. I'm not crazy. I haven't been paid off. My life as a geek revolves around bashing Microsoft. I mean, I own the world's largest collection of anti-Microsoft T-shirts and underwear. It's time to take a stand against the elimination of Geek Enemy #1." Most observers agree that Mr. Graustein's brain has gone 404. "This guy is nuts! Support Microsoft? I can't believe I'm hearing this. Even fake news sites couldn't make up this kind of insanity." | |
<joeyh> netgod: er, are these 2.2.0 packages 2.0.0pre9 or do you have a direct line with the gods? <netgod> joeyh: i have the direct line | |
<|Rain|> with sane code, maybe I could figure out the renderer :) <LordHavoc> rain: I'd probably be the one writing the renderer <|Rain|> well, er, uh | |
"Linux was made by foreign terrorists to take money from true US companies like Microsoft." - Some AOL'er. "To this end we dedicate ourselves..." -Don -- From the sig of "Don", don@cs.byu.edu | |
Die TeX-Artikel [..] aber doch inzwischen wohl nicht mehr an den Fingern zweier Hände abzählbar (außer vielleicht von Informatikern, die bekanntlich mit den Fingern bis 1023 zählen können. -- Anselm Lingnau | |
I don't like this official/unofficial distinction. It sound, er, officious. -- Larry Wall in <199702221943.LAA20388@wall.org> | |
P.S. Perl's master plan (or what passes for one) is to take over the world like English did. Er, *as* English did... -- Larry Wall in <199705201832.LAA28393@wall.org> | |
Boss: You forgot to assign the result of your map! Hacker: Dang, I'm always forgetting my assignations... Boss: And what's that "goto" doing there?!? Hacker: Er, I guess my finger slipped when I was typing "getservbyport"... Boss: Ah well, accidents will happen. Maybe we should have picked APL. -- Larry Wall in <199710311732.JAA19169@wall.org> | |
Er, Tom, I hate to be the one to point this out, but your fix list is starting to resemble a feature list. You must be human or something. -- Larry Wall in <199801081824.KAA29602@wall.org> |