Proverbs, aphorisms, quotations (English) | by Linux fortune |
"What's this? Trix? Aunt! Trix? You? You're after the prize! What is it?" He picked up the box and studied the back. "A glow-in-the-dark squid! Have you got it out of there yet?" He tilted the box, angling the little colored balls of cereal so as to see the bottom, and nearly spilling them onto the table top. "Here it is!" He hauled out a little cream-colored, glitter-sprinkled squid, three-inches long and made out of rubbery plastic. -- James P. Blaylock, "The Last Coin" | |
Be careful when a loop exits to the same place from side and bottom. | |
Fellow programmer, greetings! You are reading a letter which will bring you luck and good fortune. Just mail (or UUCP) ten copies of this letter to ten of your friends. Before you make the copies, send a chip or other bit of hardware, and 100 lines of 'C' code to the first person on the list given at the bottom of this letter. Then delete their name and add yours to the bottom of the list. Don't break the chain! Make the copy within 48 hours. Gerald R. of San Diego failed to send out his ten copies and woke the next morning to find his job description changed to "COBOL programmer." Fred A. of New York sent out his ten copies and within a month had enough hardware and software to build a Cray dedicated to playing Zork. Martha H. of Chicago laughed at this letter and broke the chain. Shortly thereafter, a fire broke out in her terminal and she now spends her days writing documentation for IBM PC's. Don't break the chain! Send out your ten copies today! For example, if \thinmskip = 3mu, this makes \thickmskip = 6mu. But if you also want to use \skip12 for horizontal glue, whether in math mode or not, the amount of skipping will be in points (e.g., 6pt). The rule is that glue in math mode varies with the size only when it is an \mskip; when moving between an mskip and ordinary skip, the conversion factor 1mu=1pt is always used. The meaning of '\mskip\skip12' and '\baselineskip=\the\thickmskip' should be clear. -- Donald Knuth, TeX 82 -- Comparison with TeX80 | |
A wise man can see more from a mountain top than a fool can from the bottom of a well. | |
A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top. | |
Cohen's Law: There is no bottom to worse. | |
The 357.73 Theory: Auditors always reject expense accounts with a bottom line divisible by 5. | |
Symptom: Floor blurred. Fault: You are looking through bottom of empty glass. Action Required: Find someone who will buy you another beer. Symptom: Floor moving. Fault: You are being carried out. Action Required: Find out if you are taken to another bar. If not, complain loudly that you are being kidnapped. -- Bar Troubleshooting | |
Q: What does it say on the bottom of Coke cans in North Dakota? A: Open other end. | |
Q: What is printed on the bottom of beer bottles in Minnesota? A: Open other end. | |
Q: What lies on the bottom of the ocean and twitches? A: A nervous wreck. | |
"I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it (your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage." -- English Professor, Providence College | |
I do hate sums. There is no greater mistake than to call arithmetic an exact science. There are permutations and aberrations discernible to minds entirely noble like mine; subtle variations which ordinary accountants fail to discover; hidden laws of number which it requires a mind like mine to perceive. For instance, if you add a sum from the bottom up, and then again from the top down, the result is always different. -- Mrs. La Touche | |
When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the stars were lined up in their proper places, you could easily count them from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were set apart, and the smaller yellowing types pushed off to the corners as bodies of a lower grade ... -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad" | |
MOCK APPLE PIE (No Apples Needed) Pastry to two crust 9-inch pie 36 RITZ Crackers 2 cups water 2 cups sugar 2 teaspoons cream of tartar 2 tablespoons lemon juice Grated rind of one lemon Butter or margarine Cinnamon Roll out bottom crust of pastry and fit into 9-inch pie plate. Break RITZ Crackers coarsely into pastry-lined plate. Combine water, sugar and cream of tartar in saucepan, boil gently for 15 minutes. Add lemon juice and rind. Cool. Pour this syrup over Crackers, dot generously with butter or margarine and sprinkle with cinnamon. Cover with top crust. Trim and flute edges together. Cut slits in top crust to let steam escape. Bake in a hot oven (425 F) 30 to 35 minutes, until crust is crisp and golden. Serve warm. Cut into 6 to 8 slices. -- Found lurking on a Ritz Crackers box | |
My pen is at the bottom of a page, Which, being finished, here the story ends; 'Tis to be wished it had been sooner done, But stories somehow lengthen when begun. -- Byron | |
Proposed Country & Western Song Titles She Ain't Much to See, but She Looks Good Through the Bottom of a Glass If Fingerprints Showed Up On Skin, I Wonder Who's I'd Find On You I'm Ashamed to be Here, but Not Ashamed Enough to Leave It's Commode Huggin' Time In The Valley If You Want to Keep the Beer Real Cold, Put It Next to My Ex-wife's Heart If You Get the Feeling That I Don't Love You, Feel Again I'm Ashamed To Be Here, But Not Ashamed Enough To Leave It's the Bottle Against the Bible in the Battle For Daddy's Soul My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend, And I Sure Miss Him Don't Cut Any More Wood, Baby, 'Cause I'll Be Comin' Home With A Load I Loved Her Face, But I Left Her Behind For You | |
Take a look around you, tell me what you see, A girl who thinks she's ordinary lookin' she has got the key. If you can get close enough to look into her eyes There's something special right behind the bitterness she hides. And you're fair game, You never know what she'll decide, you're fair game, Just relax, enjoy the ride. Find a way to reach her, make yourself a fool, But do it with a little class, disregard the rules. 'Cause this one knows the bottom line, couldn't get a date. The ugly duckling striking back, and she'll decide her fate. (chorus) The ones you never notice are the ones you have to watch. She's pleasant and she's friendly while she's looking at your crotch. Try your hand at conversation, gossip is a lie, And sure enough she'll take you home and make you wanna die. (chorus) -- Crosby, Stills, Nash, "Fair Game" | |
The Worst American Poet Julia Moore, "the Sweet Singer of Michigan" (1847-1920) was so bad that Mark Twain said her first book gave him joy for 20 years. Her verse was mainly concerned with violent death -- the great fire of Chicago and the yellow fever epidemic proved natural subjects for her pen. Whether death was by drowning, by fits or by runaway sleigh, the formula was the same: Have you heard of the dreadful fate Of Mr. P.P. Bliss and wife? Of their death I will relate, And also others lost their life (in the) Ashbula Bridge disaster, Where so many people died. Even if you started out reasonably healthy in one of Julia's poems, the chances are that after a few stanzas you would be at the bottom of a river or struck by lightning. A critic of the day said she was "worse than a Gatling gun" and in one slim volume counted 21 killed and 9 wounded. Incredibly, some newspapers were critical of her work, even suggesting that the sweet singer was "semi-literate". Her reply was forthright: "The Editors that has spoken in this scandalous manner have went beyond reason." She added that "literary work is very difficult to do". -- Stephen Pile, "The Book of Heroic Failures" | |
Brandy Davis, an outfielder and teammate of mine with the Pittsburgh Pirates, is my choice for team captain. Cincinnatti was beating us 3-1, and I led off the bottom of the eighth with a walk. The next hitter banged a hard single to right field. Feeling the wind at my back, I rounded second and kept going, sliding safely into third base. With runners at first and third, and home-run hitter Ralph Kiner at bat, our manager put in the fast Brandy Davis to run for the player at first. Even with Kiner hitting and a change to win the game with a home run, Brandy took off for second and made it. Now we had runners at second and third. I'm standing at third, knowing I'm not going anywhere, and see Brandy start to take a lead. All of a sudden, here he comes. He makes a great slide into third, and I scream, "Brandy, where are you going?" He looks up, and shouts, "Back to second if I can make it." -- Joe Garagiola, "It's Anybody's Ball Game" | |
Once there was this conductor see, who had a bass problem. You see, during a portion of Beethovan's Ninth Symphony in which there are no bass violin parts, one of the bassists always passed a bottle of scotch around. So, to remind himself that the basses usually required an extra cue towards the end of the symphony, the conductor would fasten a piece of string around the page of the score before the bass cue. As the basses grew more and more inebriated, two of them fell asleep. The conductor grew quite nervous (he was very concerned about the pitch) because it was the bottom of the ninth; the score was tied and the basses were loaded with two out. | |
The only real game in the world, I think, is baseball... You've got to start way down, at the bottom, when you're six or seven years old. You can't wait until you're fifteen or sixteen. You've got to let it grow up with you, and if you're successful and you try hard enough, you're bound to come out on top, just like these boys have come to the top now. -- Babe Ruth, in his 1948 farewell speech at Yankee Stadium | |
"`...You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anyone or anything.' `But the plans were on display...' `On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.' `That's the display department.' `With a torch.' `Ah, well the lights had probably gone.' `So had the stairs.' `But look you found the notice didn't you?' `Yes,' said Arthur, `yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard".'" - Arthur singing the praises of the local council planning department. | |
"You're one hundred percent positive that the ship which is crashed on the bottom of this ocean is the ship which you said you were one hundred percent positive could one hundred percent positively never crash? " | |
Q: What do you call 50 Microsoft products at the bottom of the ocean? A: A darned good start. | |
Red Hat Unveils New Ad Campaign Linux distributor Red Hat has announced plans for a $650,000 ad campaign. The ads will appear on several major newspapers as well as on a few selected websites. "These ads will be targetted towards Windows users who are fed up but aren't aware of any OS alternatives," a Red Hat spokesman said. "We feel that there is a large audience for this." One of the ads will be a half page spread showing two computers side-by-side: a Wintel and a Linux box. The title asks "Is your operating system ready for the year 2000?" Both computers have a calendar/clock display showing. The Windows box shows "12:00:01AM -- January 1, 1900" while the Linux box shows "12:00:01AM -- January 1, 2000". The tagline at the bottom says "Linux -- a century ahead of the competition." | |
Open Source Beer Revolution Yesterday, Red Hat introduced an 'open source' beer called Red Brew. The recipes for making the beer are available for free over the Net, and microbrewery kits are available at low cost from Red Hat. Says a Red Hat spokesman, "With the proliferation of free (open source) software, it was only a matter of time before open source beer became reality. After all, the only thing hackers like more than free software is free beer!" Following the Red Hat annoucement, other companies are racing to launch their own beer 'distribution'. Caldera is developing an OpenBrew beer. Meanwhile, Patrick Volkerding is working on a SlackBeer distribution, and DebianBrew is expected soon. Traditional breweries and beer distributors are not thrilled about open source beer. "This is ludicrous! People want beer that comes from time-tested, secret recipes -- not beer from recipes invented overnight! Open source is a fad," a spokesman for Buddwizzer Beer, Inc. said. In addition, other beverage distributors are nervous. "First open source beer, and soon open source soft drinks! Before we know it, we'll have RedCoke and SlackPepsi! This open source plague must be stopped before it eats into our bottom line! Don't quote me on that last sentence," the CEO of Croak-a-Cola said. | |
Linux Infiltrates Windows NT Demo SILICON VALLEY, CA -- Attendees at the Microsoft ActiveDemo Conference held this week in San Jose were greeted by a pleasant surprise yesterday: Linux. Somehow a group of Linux enthusiasts were able to replace a Windows NT box with a Linux box right before the "ActiveDemo" of Windows NT 5 beta. "I have no clue how they were able to pull off this prank," a Microserf spokesman said. "Rest assured, Microsoft will do everything to investigate and prosecute the Linux nuts who did this. Our bottom line must be protected." Bill Gates said, "I was showing off the new features in Windows NT 5 when I noticed something odd about the demo computer. It didn't crash. Plus, the font used on the screen wasn't MS San Serif -- trust me, I know. My suspicions were confirmed when, instead of the "Flying Windows" screensaver, a "Don't Fear the Penguins" screensaver appeared. The audience laughed and applauded for five straight minutes. It was so embarrasing -- even more so than the pie incident. One attendee said, "Wow! This Linux is cool -- it didn't crash once during the entire demo! I'd like to see NT do that." Another asked, "You guys got any Linux CDs? I want one. Forget about vaporware NT." Yet another remarked, "I didn't know it was possible to hack Linux to make it look like NT. I can install Linux on my company's computers without my boss knowing!" | |
Boston Software Party BOSTON, MA -- Thousands of disgruntled Linux revolutionaries showed up at the Boston Harbor today to protest "taxation without representation" by the oppressive Microsoft Corporation. Thousands of pounds of Microsoft boxes, CD-ROMs, manuals, license agreements, promotional materials, and registration forms were dumped into the harbor during the First Annual Boston Software Party. Some attendees sold hastily printed T-shirts with slogans like "July 4th, 1999: Microsoft Independence Day!" and "What do you call 10,000 pounds of Microsoft software at the bottom of the ocean? A darned good start!" Others sold fake dollar bills with a portrait of Tux Penguin and the saying, "In Linus We Trust"... | |
Ted Turner Unveils All-Commercial Channel For years, the pundits have predicted that the Web would become more like television. However, media tycoon Ted Turner is pursuing the exact opposite. Taking a cue from pop-under advertisements, Flash ads, get-rich-quick spam emails, viral marketing, and "Gator" programs, Turner has unveiled "TCC", the Turner Commercial Channel, for cable TV. TCC will feature "shows" like "Best Commercials That You've Seen A Million Times", "Life Is A Slogan, Just Buy It", and "Name That Jingle". These shows will occupy about 30% of the screen, while several rows of marquees at the bottom will flash various advertising messages. An animated "TCC" watermark will float around the screen while corporate logos are flashed randomly in the corners. Meanwhile, "pop-up ads" will randomly appear that obscure the other ads. These pop-ups will sometimes be further obscured by meta-pop-ups. Likewise, corporate jingles will play in the background, interfering with other jingles and advertising sounds. | |
I've found my niche. If you're wondering why I'm not there, there was this little hole in the bottom ... -- John Croll | |
<knghtbrd> is it a sign of mental illness to wander aimlessly through the start map, collect your Thunderbolt, hop in the pool, and gib yourself with it just to see your head buouce when it falls through the bottom of the pool? => <knghtbrd> "You know you're a Quake addict when ..." | |
<taniwha> Knghtbrd: it's not bloat if it's used <Knghtbrd> taniwha: how do you explain windoze then? <taniwha> Knghtbrd: most of it is used only as ballast to make sure your harddrive is full <Knghtbrd> taniwha: ballast... Isn't that what makes subs sink to the bottom of the ocean? <Knghtbrd> taniwha: that would explain why winboxes are always going down. | |
Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, "I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom." The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!" But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet, in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!" And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delight to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure. But they cried the more, "Saviour!" all the while clinging to the rocks, making legends of a Saviour. -- Richard Bach | |
The only happiness lies in reason; all the rest of the world is dismal. The highest reason, however, I see in the work of the artist, and he may experience it as such. Happiness lies in the swiftness of feeling and thinking: all the rest of the world is slow, gradual and stupid. Whoever could feel the course of a light ray would be very happy, for it is very swift. Thinking of oneself gives little happiness. If, however, one feels much happiness in this, it is because at bottom one is not thinking of oneself but of one's ideal. This is far, and only the swift shall reach it and are delighted. -- Nietzsche | |
/* * Please skip to the bottom of this file if you ate lunch recently * -- Alan */ -- from Linux kernel pre-2.1.91-1 | |
The hardest part of climbing the ladder of success is getting through the crowd at the bottom. | |
To be or not to be, that is the bottom line. | |
XXXVI: The thickness of the proposal required to win a multimillion dollar contract is about one millimeter per million dollars. If all the proposals conforming to this standard were piled on top of each other at the bottom of the Grand Canyon it would probably be a good idea. XXXVII: Ninety percent of the time things will turn out worse than you expect. The other 10 percent of the time you had no right to expect so much. XXXVIII: The early bird gets the worm. The early worm ... gets eaten. XXXIX: Never promise to complete any project within six months of the end of the year -- in either direction. XL: Most projects start out slowly -- and then sort of taper off. -- Norman Augustine |