"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Once I had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: "No good in a bed, but fine up against a wall."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
— Douglas Adams

"A learning experience is one of those things that says, "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.""
— Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time)

"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."
— Douglas Adams

"I am not young enough to know everything."
— Oscar Wilde

"This wallpaper is dreadful, one of us will have to go."
— Oscar Wilde

"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal."
— Jane Austen

"For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?"
— Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

"Mary wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how."
— Jane Austen

"Ice-cream is exquisite.
What a pity it isn't illegal."
— Voltaire

"Doubt is uncomfortable, certainty is ridiculous."
— Voltaire

"We must cultivate our garden "
— Voltaire (Candide, or Optimism)

"Let us read and let us dance — two amusements that will never do any harm to the world."
— Voltaire

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well I have others."
— Groucho Marx

"Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while"
— Groucho Marx

"I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal."
— Groucho Marx

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'."
— Groucho Marx

"Be grateful you’re not in the forest in France
Where the average young person just hasn’t a chance
To escape from the perilous pants eating plants
But your pants are safe, you’re a fortunate guy
You ought to be shouting how lucky am I"
— Dr. Seuss

"All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by frost."
— J.R.R. Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring)

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
— Miss Piggy

"The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."
— Terry Pratchett (Diggers)

"Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry."
— Terry Pratchett (Thief of Time)

"A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read."
— Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards!)

"Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one."
— Terry Pratchett

"Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken."
— Terry Pratchett (Eric)

"Studies have shown that an ant can carry one hundred times its own weight, but there is no known limit to the lifting power of the average tiny eighty-year-old Spanish peasant grandmother."
— Terry Pratchett (Reaper Man)

"She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you."
— Terry Pratchett (Equal Rites)

"A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?
I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true."
— Terry Pratchett

"There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do."
— Terry Pratchett (A Hat Full of Sky)

"Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck."
— Terry Pratchett (Lords and Ladies)

"'What's a philosopher?' said Brutha.
'Someone who's bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,' said a voice in his head."
— Terry Pratchett (Small Gods)

"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it."
— Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment)

"This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic."
— Terry Pratchett

"Who shall I shoot? You choose. Now, listen very carefully: where's your coffee? You've got coffee, haven't you? C'mon, everyone's got coffee! Spill the beans!"
— Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment)

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
— Virginia Woolf

"As a woman, I have no country. As a woman my country is the world. "
— Virginia Woolf

"I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. "
— Virginia Woolf

"Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.
"
— Simone de Beauvoir

"Some things I loved have vanished. A great many others have been given to me"
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)

"People seem to think that if you keep your head empty you automatically fill your balls."
— Simone de Beauvoir (The Mandarins)

"One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, and compassion"
— Simone de Beauvoir

"Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul."
— Joyce Carol Oates

"In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which are frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you...And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. "
— Italo Calvino (If On a Winter's Night a Traveler)

"Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say."
— Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities)

"I like to have a martini,
Two at the very most.
After three I'm under the table,
after four I'm under my host."
— Dorothy Parker

"If I didn't care for fun and such,
I'd probably amount to much.
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn."
— Dorothy Parker