Larry McMurtry
- Call's Fight, Lonesome Dove
Call saw that everyone was looking at him, the hands and cowboys and townspeople alike. The anger had drained out of him, leaving him feeling tired. He didn't remember the fight, particularly, but people were looking at him as if they were stunned. He felt he should make some explanation, though it seemed to him a simple situation. "I hate a man that talks rude," he said. "I won't tolerate it."
Larry McMurtry
- Gus, Lonesome Dove
I'm glad I've been wrong enough to keep in practice... You can't avoid it, you've got to learn to handle it. If you only come face to face with your own mistakes once or twice in your life it's bound to be extra painful. I face mine every day - that way they ain't usually much worse than a dry shave.
Larry McMurtry
- Gus, Lonesome Dove
If you want one thing too much it's likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk - and feisty gentlemen.
Marcus Aurelius
- Meditations, Book V
Some people, when they do someone a favor, are always looking for a chance to call it in. And some aren't, but they're still aware of it - still regard it as a debt. But others don't even do that. They're like a vine that produces grapes without looking for anything in return.
Marcus Aurelius
- Meditations, Book II
A man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember... that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, d. 65 A.D.
- Natural Questions (excerpt)
The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject... There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.
Shakespeare
- Hamlet examines Yorick's skull
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.
Shakespeare
- Advice to Laertes from Polonius, "Hamlet"
Look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar but by no means vulgar. Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel, but do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade.
Percy Shelley
- Ozymandias (excerpt)
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings; Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.
Augustine of Hippo
- Wonder
People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.
anonymous
- Antenna Love
Did you hear that two antennas met on a rooftop, fell in love, and got married? The ceremony wasn't much to talk about, but the reception was wonderful.
anonymous
- Cafeteria Sign
The policy of this establishment is that shoes are required to eat in this cafeteria. Socks, on the other hand, can eat in any place they would like to eat.
Plato
- The Symposium
The vicious lover is the follower of earthly Love who desires the body rather than the soul; his heart is set on what is mutable and must therefore be inconstant. And as soon as the body he loves begins to pass the first flower of its beauty, he "spreads his wings and flies away," giving the lie to all his pretty speeches and dishonoring his vows, whereas the lover whose heart is touched by moral beauties is constant all his life, for he has become one with what will never fade.
Plato
- The Republic
The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward... Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956
In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.
Michael Scott
- The Office: Diversity Day
Abraham Lincoln once said that "If you are a racist, I will attack you with the North," and those are the principles I carry with me in the workplace.
Dwight Schrute
- The Office
I don't have a lot of experience with vampires, but I have hunted werewolves. I shot one once, but by the time I got to it, it had turned back into my neighbor's dog.
Dwight Schrute
- The Office
Would I ever leave this company? Look, I'm all about loyalty. In fact, I feel like part of what I'm being paid for here is my loyalty. But if there were somewhere else that valued loyalty more highly... I'm going wherever they value loyalty the most.
Mitch Murphy
- Home Alone (1990)
Hi, I'm Mitch Murphy. I live across the street. You guys going out of town? We're going to Orlando, Florida. Well, actually, first we're going to Missouri to pick up my grandma. Did you know the McCallisters are going to France? Do you know if it's cold there? Do these vans get good gas mileage?
Peter Gibbons
- Office Space (1999)
So I was sitting in my cubicle today and I realized ever since I started working every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.
