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Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) by Linux fortune

Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of
wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund is
astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman --
unfortunately, divided lengthwise.  She enchants Sigmund, who is careful
not to make any poultry jokes.
                -- Woody Allen
The Great Movie Posters:

KATHERINE HEPBURN as the lying, stealing, singing, preying witch girl
of the Ozarks... "Low down white trash"?  Maybe so -- but let her hear
you say it and she'll break your head to prove herself a lady!
                -- Spitfire (1934)

Do Native Women Live With Apes?
                -- Love Life of a Gorilla (1937)

JUNGLE KISS!!
        When she looked into his eyes, felt his arms around her -- she
was no longer Tura, mysterious white goddess of the jungle tribes --
she was no longer the frozen-hearted high priestess under whose hypnotic
spell the worshippers of the great crocodile god meekly bowed -- she
was a girl in love!
        SEE the ravening charge of the hundred scared CROCODILES!
                -- Her Jungle Love (1938)

LOVE! HATE! JOY! FEAR! TORMENT! PANIC! SHAME! RAGE!
                -- Intermezzo (1939)
There are two types of Linux developers - those who can spell, and
those who can't. There is a constant pitched battle between the two.
(From one of the post-1.1.54 kernel update messages posted to c.o.l.a)
They spell it "da Vinci" and pronounce it "da Vinchy".  Foreigners
always spell better than they pronounce.
                -- Mark Twain
`Lasu' Releases SAG 0.3 -- Freeware Book Takes Paves For New World Order
by staff writers

        ...
        The SAG is one of the major products developed via the Information
Superhighway, the brain child of Al Gore, US Vice President.  The ISHW
is being developed with massive govenment funding, since studies show
that it already has more than four hundred users, three years before
the first prototypes are ready.  Asked whether he was worried about the
foreign influence in an expensive American Dream, the vice president
said, ``Finland?  Oh, we've already bought them, but we haven't told
anyone yet.  They're great at building model airplanes as well.  And _I
can spell potato.''  House representatives are not mollified, however,
wanting to see the terms of the deal first, fearing another Alaska.
        Rumors about the SAG release have imbalanced the American stock
market for weeks.  Several major publishing houses reached an all time
low in the New York Stock Exchange, while publicly competing for the
publishing agreement with Mr. Wirzenius.  The negotiations did not work
out, tough.  ``Not enough dough,'' says the author, although spokesmen
at both Prentice-Hall and Playboy, Inc., claim the author was incapable
of expressing his wishes in a coherent form during face to face talks,
preferring to communicate via e-mail.  ``He kept muttering something
about jiffies and pegs,'' they say.
        ...
                -- Lars Wirzenius <wirzeniu@cs.helsinki.fi>
                   [comp.os.linux.announce]
Q: I cant spell worth a dam.  I hope your going too tell me what to do?

A: Don't worry about how your articles look.  Remember it's the message
that counts, not the way it's presented.  Ignore the fact that sloppy
spelling in a purely written forum sends out the same silent messages that
soiled clothing would when addressing an audience.

-- Brad Templeton, _Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette_
Collaboration, n.:
        A literary partnership based on the false assumption that the
        other fellow can spell.
program, n.:
        A magic spell cast over a computer allowing it to turn one's input
        into error messages.  tr.v. To engage in a pastime similar to banging
        one's head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.
Second Law of Business Meetings:
        If there are two possible ways to spell a person's name, you
        will pick the wrong one.

Corollary:
        If there is only one way to spell a name,
        you will spell it wrong, anyway.
Q:        Heard about the <ethnic> who couldn't spell?
A:        He spent the night in a warehouse.
A synonym is a word you use when you can't spell the word you first
thought of.
                -- Burt Bacharach
Three Midwesterners, a Kansan, a Missourian and an Iowan,
all appearing on a quiz program, were asked to complete this sentence:
"Old MacDonald had a . . ."

        "Old MacDonald had a carburetor," answered the Kansan.
        "Sorry, that's wrong," the game show host said.
        "Old MacDonald had a free brake alignment down at the
                service station," said the Missourian.
        "Wrong."
        "Old MacDonald had a farm," said the Iowan.
        "CORRECT!" shouts the quizmaster.  "Now for $100,000, spell 'farm.'"
        "Easy," said the Iowan. "E-I-E-I-O."
Traveling through New England, a motorist stopped for gas in a tiny village.
"What's this place called?" he asked the station attendant.
        "All depends," the native drawled.  "Do you mean by them that has
to live in this dad-blamed, moth-eaten, dust-covered, one-hoss dump, or
by them that's merely enjoying its quaint and picturesque rustic charms
for a short spell?"
A is for awk, which runs like a snail, and
B is for biff, which reads all your mail.
C is for cc, as hackers recall, while
D is for dd, the command that does all.
E is for emacs, which rebinds your keys, and
F is for fsck, which rebuilds your trees.
G is for grep, a clever detective, while
H is for halt, which may seem defective.
I is for indent, which rarely amuses, and
J is for join, which nobody uses.
K is for kill, which makes you the boss, while
L is for lex, which is missing from DOS.
M is for more, from which less was begot, and
N is for nice, which it really is not.
O is for od, which prints out things nice, while
P is for passwd, which reads in strings twice.
Q is for quota, a Berkeley-type fable, and
R is for ranlib, for sorting ar table.
S is for spell, which attempts to belittle, while
T is for true, which does very little.
U is for uniq, which is used after sort, and
V is for vi, which is hard to abort.
W is for whoami, which tells you your name, while
X is, well, X, of dubious fame.
Y is for yes, which makes an impression, and
Z is for zcat, which handles compression.
                -- THE ABC'S OF UNIX
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
I have learned
To spell hors d'oeuvres
Which still grates on
Some people's n'oeuvres.
                -- Warren Knox
I shot a query into the net.
I haven't got an answer yet,                A posted message called me rotten
But seven people gave me hell                For ignoring mail I'd never gotten;
And said I ought to learn to spell;        An angry message asked me, Please
                                        Don't send such drivel overseas;
A lawyer sent me private mail
And swore he'd slap my ass in jail --        One netter thought it was a hoax:
I'd mentioned Un*x in my gem                "Hereafter, post to net dot jokes!";
And failed to add the T and M;                Another called my grammar vile
                                        And criticized my writing style.
Each day I scan each Subject line
In hopes the topic will be mine;
I shot a query into the net.
I haven't got an answer yet...
                -- Ed Nather
If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?
Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go commit siouxeyesighed.
                -- Charles Follen Adams, "An Orthographic Lament"
Mummy dust to make me old;
To shroud my clothes, the black of night;
To age my voice, an old hag's cackle;
To whiten my hair, a scream of fright;
A blast of wind to fan my hate;
A thunderbolt to mix it well --
Now begin thy magic spell!
                -- Walter Disney, "Snow White"
"The story goes that I first had the idea for THHGTTG while
lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck (or `Spain' as the BBC
TV publicity department authorititively has it, probably
because it's easier to spell)." - Foreward by DNA.

FORD         Six pints of bitter. And quickly please, the
world's about to
        end.
BARMAN        Oh yes, sir? Nice weather for it.
Jargon Coiner (#13)

An irregular feature that aims to give you advance warning of new jargon
that we've just made up.

* NINETY-NINERS: In 1849, a horde of people ("Forty-niners") headed to
  California to pan gold and get rich quick. In 1999, a horde of people
  ("Ninety-niners") headed to California to invest in Linux companies and
  get rich quick. Some things never change.

* ZOO: The ubiquitous shelf of O'Reilly Animal Books that many nerds keep
  next to their computer

* THEY'RE MULTIPLYING LIKE PORTALS: The proliferation of Linux portals
  that have the latest headlines from Slashdot and LinuxToday but offer
  little original content.

* YOU CAN SPELL EVIL WITHOUT vi: A curse uttered by freshman Computer
  Science students struggling with vi's insert mode for the first time.
Yes, we're all anti-american terrorists who plan to make the
US economy collapse by inventing lots of new words which will
have to be added to the dictionary, making the US economy
unable to support the ever-growing dictionaries and ensuring  
the Americans will be unable to (learn to) spell, leaving them
dead in the water if there's ever a linguistic war between
them and the UK.

        - Rik van Riel explaining the real reason behind spelling
          mistakes in the linux kernel
* knghtbrd does the ET thing
<knghtbrd> anybody got a speak-n-spell?
There are two types of Linux developers - those who can spell, and
those who can't.  There is a constant pitched battle between the two.
        -- From one of the post-1.1.54 kernel update messages posted to c.o.l.a
That gets us out of deciding how to spell Reg[eE]xp?|RE . . .
Of course, then we have to decide what ref $re returns...  :-)
             -- Larry Wall in <199710171838.LAA24968@wall.org>
"A wizard cannot do everything; a fact most magicians are reticent to admit,
let alone discuss with prospective clients.  Still, the fact remains that
there are certain objects, and people, that are, for one reason or another,
completely immune to any direct magical spell.  It is for this group of
beings that the magician learns the subtleties of using indirect spells.
It also does no harm, in dealing with these matters, to carry a large club
near your person at all times."
                -- The Teachings of Ebenezum, Volume VIII
Watch Rincewind.

Look at him.  Scrawny, like most wizards, and clad in a dark red robe on
which a few mystic sigils were embroidered in tarnished sequins. Some might
have taken him for a mere apprentice enchanter who had run away from his
master out of defiance, boredom, fear and a lingering taste for
heterosexuality.  Yet around his neck was a chain bearing the bronze octagon
that marked him as an alumnus of Unseen University, the high school of magic
whose time-and-space transcendent campus is never precisely Here or There.
Graduates were usually destined for mageship at least, but Rincewind--after
an unfortunate event--had left knowing only one spell and made a living of
sorts around the town by capitalizing on an innate gift for languages.  He
avoided work as a rule, but had a quickness of wit that put his
acquaintances in mind of a bright rodent.
                -- Terry Pratchett, "The Colour of Magic"
No guarantee of accuracy or completeness!
©TU Chemnitz, 2006-2024
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