Great Throughts Treasury

"Men only treat women like princesses when they want to use them like prostitutes."

"Mothers do not have love affairs. Before their children they have dreams, and after their children they have delusions. If the father is involved somewhere, they have fantasies."

"Mom always said I was born to sit in the electric chair, but I'm proving her wrong. I'm going to die on my knees, begging for my life."

"Moderation: a median with no means, praised by those with no misfortunes, practiced by those with no merits."

"Neighbors are the most indecent sort of folk around. Nothing but voyeurs and gossipers. As a community we would be much better off without them."

"Night clubs are where Americans learn the laws of motion."

"Modern wife: A position thought to require great ambition to fill. After initially showing some skill at a maid service or department store, the husband takes her home to find that she has risen too high in the world to generalize that skill, which drives him to drink."

"Never proscribe a child?s vitality ? prescribe it."

"Nothing is more attractive than universal appeal. That is what makes androgyny the peacekeeping persuasion."

"Nothing else matters now that you love me.' - suicide note"

"One nation, under God, with consciousness ? the practical man serves the highest abstraction with juggling training."

"People who practice freedom of expression are terrorizing our grammatical way of life."

"People are always insinuating that I?m rude. They say things like Shh, and Careful what you say, and I think that guy?s listening in on our conversation."

"Performance enhancements are most impressive when used by that sedentary athlete, the videogamer. After he turns to hitchhiking in disgrace, his giant thumbs can take him anywhere."

"Pure joy is rare. That?s why for every meal I eat a really bloody steak."

"One never owns a book. It sits on your shelf in a fine edition like a piece of furniture, and you are its admiring ward until it flies off from you in a time of financial hardship. If it is a tattered paperback, she is your casual mistress you use a few times. If you have read it a hundred times then it is your wife, and a source of infinite mystery."

"Religious fasting is the best way to cure an anorexic's spirit: in heaven her condition will be normal."

"Quote: a banal proverb that is considered profound when uttered by a celebrity."

"Political debate: when charlatans come together to discuss their principles."

"Privatization will always be a timid ideology as long as architects are allowed to unveil their buildings."

"Rioter: a person who wants dinner, and needs a TV to eat it with."

"Some people won't have kids, but I?m not going to have parents. I?m burning their birth certificates and defacing their gravestones tonight."

"Somewhere in the background of magnificence lurks the kitchen staff. But a magnificent person only forgets about his origins, never his brunch."

"Spending one?s last moments prostrated before the toilet is the supreme act of repentance. It allows one to relieve a heavy inner burden."

"Seize something wonderful; don't lose your chance waiting for it to become legal."

"So many things happen that we can't control, its best not to worry about what we can. Believing you can change the world has a terrible effect on one's ego."

"Sending love letters to first-graders will teach them lessons in cursive. But writing back will test their commitment."

"Selfishness is a bad habit. That?s why I always rationally think through my decisions to act without regard for others."

"Self-awareness of one?s faults, far from being the first step to growth, is very often the second foot in the mud."

"Sometimes I wonder what happened to great speeches, but then I turn on the TV and I?m in wonder at how good my candidate looks."

"Spontaneous abortion: the opposite of immaculate conception. God has compensated for Christianity?s violent history by revealing that innocent blood does not have to be spilt."

"Spontaneous human combustion is for superstitious atheists. I believe in deliberate human combustion."

"Sympathy is why when a man is getting mugged, you let him keep his shirt after you take his life. Funerals are respectable affairs, after all."

"Teacher: a master who, through personal example, inspires students to rebel against learning."

"The lampshade on my head is for my bright ideas. I won't be able to convey them until Monday, when my curtain gets out of the dry cleaners."

"The only way to be completely self-consistent is to be constantly uttering paradoxes."

"The idealist hopes. The romantic sees doom. The postmodernist sees doom and hopes."

"The only way to tell a fable is to introduce a human. The only way to tell a proverb is to introduce your grandfather."

"The amount of educational programming on television today is simply desensitizing. The only reason left to go to school is to see gun violence."

"The French: a people who have used their sophisticated culture and beautiful language to bequeath to the world the sliced potato."

"The problem with our society is that our values aren?t in the right place. There?s an awful lot of bleeding and naked bodies on prime-time networks, but not nearly enough cable television on public programming."

"The smaller the dinner table, the better the side conversation: you can gossip about the guests without fearing whether you will be overheard. It just isn't good table manners to exclude someone from their own ridicule. That's why the juiciest side conversations occur at a table for one."

"The stars have a strong effect on our daily shopping lives. Hollywood is astrology?s only credible conspiracy."

"There are lots of things sons shouldn?t imagine about their mothers, above all what it was like to become one."

"To die famous is the goal of the immortal. To die young is the goal of the healthy. To die memorably is the goal of the survivor."

"There is an enduring freshness in what remains strange and obscure which the cliches of greatness can only evoke nostalgia for."

"Trees are corrupting our parks. They should be arrested for loitering. For deciduous trees, add littering and indecent exposure to that list of offenses."

"The stoic contemplates fallen leaves; the epicure rakes them into a loveseat."

"Treat each other like human beings? But the other great apes have no class hierarchy."

"Unrequited love is the only possible way to give yourself to another without being held in indentured servitude."