"[Man] progresses in all things by making a fool of himself."
— George Bernard Shaw

"What a fine persecution-to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened."
— Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.)

"We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march, but there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it."
— Tom Stoppard (Arcadia)

"Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that's what gets you."
— Jeremy Clarkson

"How hard can it be?"
— Jeremy Clarkson

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy."
— Stephen Fry

"If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking."
— Haruki Murakami

"No matter what they wish for, no matter how far they go, people can never be anything but themselves. That's all."
— Haruki Murakami (Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories)

"You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they don't alter their views to fit the facts; they alter the facts to fit their views."
— Tom Baker

"I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image."
— Stephen W. Hawking

"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

"Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light. "
— Groucho Marx

"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered."
— Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)

"There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it. "
— Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)

"We don't stop talking about how the world might be better just because we have no chance of making it to Prime Minister. We are all politicians. We are all artists. In an open society everything the mind and hands can achieve is our birthright. It is up to us to claim it."
— Stephen Fry (The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within)

"Sometimes there just isn't enough vomit in the world."
— Stephen Fry

"Love is not fashionable anymore; the poets have killed it."
— Oscar Wilde (The Complete Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde)

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

"Let's face it, the gene pool needs a little chlorine."
— Jimmy Carr

"Everybody is corrupted by hotel rooms. You can't help it. It's the only place in the world where you walk in and the first think you do is steal everything before you take your coat off."
— Dylan Moran

"I blame the lentils."
— Beth Fantaskey (Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side)

"The short answer to that is 'no'. The long answer is 'f*** no'."
— Stephen Fry

"It's not hard to grow when you know that you just don't know."
— Damien Rice

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
— Douglas Adams

"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
— Douglas Adams

"You live and learn. At any rate, you live."
— Douglas Adams

"Just like any woman,...we weave our stories out of our bodies. Some of us through our children, or our art; some do it just by living. It's all the same."
— Francesca Lia Block

"Besides, secretly, without knowing it herself, she had been waiting for a Beast to go to."
— Francesca Lia Block (The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold)

"When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
"
— William Shakespeare

"The function of music is to release us from tyranny of conscious thought."
— Thomas Beecham

"Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands – and all you can do is scratch it.

"
— Sir Thomas Beecham

""Try everything once, except folk dancing and incest.""
— Sir Thomas Beecham

"Where we are going, I don't know. It doesn't seem to be the place that is important but the steps in between."
— Mary E. Pearson (The Adoration of Jenna Fox)

"...and time becomes a forgotten detail."
— Mary E. Pearson (The Adoration of Jenna Fox)

"You want weapons? We're in a library! Books, best weapons in the world. This room is the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself."
— The Tenth Doctor