Customs do not concern themselves
with right or wrong or reason.
But they have to be obeyed;
one reasons all around them until he is tired,
but he must not transgress them, it is sternly forbidden.
- Mark Twain
Laws are sand, customs are rock.
Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped,
but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.
The penalty may be unfair, unrighteous, illogical, and a cruelty;
no matter, it will be inflicted, just the same.
Certainly, then, there can be but one wise thing
for a visiting stranger to do -
find out what the country's customs are,
and refrain from offending against them.
- Mark Twain
I don't like to think of laws
as rules you have to follow,
but more as suggestions.
- George Carlin
As far as the laws of mathematics
refer to reality, they are not certain,
and as far as they are certain,
they do not refer to reality.
- Albert Einstein
True friendship's laws are by this rule express'd,
Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest.
- Alexander Pope
I consider my greatest accomplishment to be lifelong celibacy.
- Isaac Newton
(discoverer of the laws of gravitation and motion,
famous mathematician, and perhaps the greatest scientist ever)
The more laws and order are made prominent,
the more thieves and robbers there will be.
- Lao Tzu
If the misery of the poor be caused
not by the laws of nature,
but by our institutions,
great is our sin.
- Charles Darwin
Every actual State is corrupt.
Good men must not obey laws too well.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
If we spend the time we waste in sighing
for the perfect golden fruit
in fulfilling the conditions of its growth,
happiness will come, must come.
It is guaranteed in the very laws of the universe.
If it involves some chastening and renunciation, well,
the fruit will be all the sweeter for this touch of holiness.
- Helen Keller
The road to freedom lies not through
mysteries or occult performances,
but through the intelligent use
of natural forces and laws.
- Ernest Holmes
Good men must not obey the laws too well.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe,
nay whole systems of universes, to be governed by laws,
but the smallest insect, we wish
to be created at once by special act.
- Charles Darwin
Nature never breaks her own laws.
- Leonardo da Vinci
The future has nothing in common with the past -
except natural laws and human nature.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Whose laws have priority in your life?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
What is human warfare but just this;
an effort to make the laws of God and
nature take sides with one party.
- Henry David Thoreau
As you simplify your life,
the laws of the universe will be simpler;
solitude will not be solitude,
poverty will not be poverty,
nor weakness weakness.
- Henry David Thoreau
Nothing is more destructive of respect
for the government and the law of the land
than passing laws which cannot be enforced.
- Albert Einstein
Happiness is the final and perfect fruit
of obedience to the laws of life.
- Helen Keller
There is no logical way to the discovery
of these elemental laws.
There is only the way of intuition,
which is helped by a feeling
for the order lying behind the appearance.
- Albert Einstein
What is a miracle? To some, it is an act of God.
To others, something amazing, extraordinary, or unexpected.
To me, Life is a miracle.
Everything that happens is a miracle.
There is no reason for me to exist as I do -
no reason for humanity, the universe, or the laws of Nature.
Energy, mass, gravity and the rest of existence
are all so improbable.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
I hope we shall crush in its birth
the aristocracy of our monied corporations
which dare already to challenge our government
to a trial by strength,
and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
- Thomas Jefferson (from a letter to George Logan, Nov. 12th, 1816)
A miracle is nothing more or less than this...
Anyone who has come into a knowledge
of his true identity,
of his oneness with
the all-pervading wisdom and power,
this makes it possible for laws higher
than the ordinary mind knows of
to be revealed to him.
- Ralph Waldo Trine
My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for
grinding general laws out of large collections of facts.
- Charles Darwin
If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary;
new, universal, and more liberal laws
will begin to establish themselves around and within him;
or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor
in a more liberal sense,
and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.
- Henry David Thoreau
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions,
but laws and institutions must go hand in hand
with the progress of the human mind.
As that becomes more developed, more enlightened,
as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered
and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances,
institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.
- Thomas Jefferson [inscribed in the Jefferson Memorial]
Life is like a ten speed bicycle.
Most of us have gears we never use.
- Charles M. Schulz
Yesterday is like a dung heap;
you can complain about the smell,
or you can use it to fertilize tomorrow's garden.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Life is like jumping out of an airplane without a parachute -
only the last couple seconds are fatal,
but most people are scared to death the whole way down.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
If I had known what it would be like to have it all -
I might have been willing to settle for less.
- Lily Tomlin
Damn it boss, I like you too much not to say it.
You've got everything except one thing: madness!
- the movie Zorba The Greek
I think you're the opposite of a paranoid.
I think you go around with the insane delusion that people like you.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
Love is like an hourglass,
with the heart filling up as the brain empties.
- Jules Renard
One cannot have everything the way he would like it.
A man has no business to be depressed by a disappointment,
anyway; he ought to make up his mind to get even.
- Mark Twain
I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell -
you see, I have friends in both places.
- Mark Twain
I'd like to kiss ya, but I just washed ma hair.
- the movie The Cabin in the Cotton
A man's friendships are, like his will,
invalidated by marriage -
but they are also no less invalidated
by the marriage of his friends.
- Samuel Butler
Life's like Vegas. You're up, you're down,
but in the end the house always wins.
Doesn't mean you didn't have fun.
- the Woody Allen movie Deconstructing Harry
Men always want to be a woman's first love -
women like to be a man's last romance.
- Oscar Wilde
A honeymoon should be like a table:
four bare legs and no drawers.
- Anonymous
It looks like we're up chocolate creek without a Popsicle stick!
- the movie Shrek 2 (2004)
Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.
- H. L. Mencken
Husbands should be like Kleenex:
soft, strong, and disposable.
- the movie Clue (1985)
When you are courting a nice girl
an hour seems like a second.
When you sit on a red-hot cinder
a second seems like an hour.
That's relativity.
- Albert Einstein
Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes
in the hope of pulling out an eel.
- Leonardo da Vinci
A relationship, I think, is like a shark.
You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies.
And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.
- the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall (1977)
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter
quite like unrequited love.
- Charlie Brown in Charles M. Schulz' Peanuts comic
I'm not used to feeling so human.
Is it always like this?
- Edward, from Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer
It's cookies, he smells like cookies,
and the smell gets stronger when he's in heat.
- the movie Michael
Personally, I'm always ready to learn,
although I do not always like being taught.
- Winston Churchill
Nothing echoes like an empty mailbox.
- Charles M. Schulz' cartoon Peanuts
I want a girl just like good old mom,
who is different in every way.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Always remember that you are absolutely unique.
Just like everyone else.
- Margaret Mead
Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.
- Laurence J. Peter
There is so much that must be done
in a civilized barbarism like war.
- Amelia Earhart
I like a man who grins when he fights.
- Winston Churchill
Technological progress is like an axe
in the hands of a pathological criminal.
- Albert Einstein
Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60.
They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
When I hear a man preach,
I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.
- Abraham Lincoln
I have spent many years of my life in opposition,
and I rather like the role.
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Being a leader is like being a lady,
if you have to go around telling people you are one, you aren't.
- Margaret Thatcher
True love is like ghosts,
which everyone talks about and few have seen.
- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Life is like a roller coaster - scream Whee... on the way down,
and let the momentum carry you back up the next hill.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Gods always behave like the people who make them.
- Zora Neale Hurston
It's like deja-vu, all over again.
- Yogi Berra
Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.
- Albert Schweitzer
The feeling of friendship is like that
of being comfortably filled with roast beef;
love, like being enlivened with champagne.
- Samuel Johnson
I am always ready to learn
although I do not always like being taught.
- Winston Churchill
Life is like a sewer...
what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
- Tom Lehrer
It's so sweet, I feel like my teeth
are rotting when I listen to the radio.
- Bono
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
All materials & writings are copyright © Jonathan Lockwood Huie, except for quotes and other specifically identified material which belong to their respective copyright holders if applicable.