St Vine

Oscar Wilde

We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality. 

Be yourself. Everyone else is taken. 

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is. 

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much. 

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.  

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all morning and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. 

It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it. 

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

G.K. Chesterton

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. 

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost. 

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. 

Churchill 

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. 

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. 

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. 

If you are going through hell, keep going. 

(Attrib.) Lady Astor: 'Sir! - You are drunk!' - Churchill: 'Madam - you are ugly. But in the morning I shall be sober and you will still be ugly.'

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. 

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. 

For myself I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use to be anything else. 

Ayn Rand

Here’s another. Kill man’s sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognise greatness or to achieve it. Great men can’t be ruled. We don’t want any great men. Don’t deny conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept – and you stop the impetus to effort in men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection. Laugh at Roark and hold Peter Keating as a great architect. You’ve destroyed architecture. Build Lois Cook and you’ve destroyed literature. Hail Ike and you’ve destroyed the theatre. Glorify Lancelot Clankey and you’ve destroyed the press. Don’t set out to raze all shrines – you’ll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity - and the shrines are razed.

Then there’s another way. Kill by laughter. Laughter is an instrument of human joy. Learn to use it as a weapon of destruction. Turn it into a sneer. It’s simple. Tell them to laugh at everything. Tell them that a sense of humour is an unlimited virtue. Don't let anything remain sacred in a man’s soul – and his soul won’t be sacred to him. Kill reverence and you’ve killed the hero in man. One doesn’t reverence with a giggle. He’ll obey and he’ll set no limits to obedience – anything goes – nothing is too serious. 
 

Vivian Stanshall

I'm easy to bend,
I begin where I end, 
I'm soft & I'm pink & I'm shy. 
I'm legless & armless & hairless & harmless, 
I'll give you three guesses - who am I? 
I'm a worm. You have two guesses left. 

Do you know what a Palmist once said to me; she said; "Will you let go?!"

That's the problem with Italian airplanes - too much hair on the wings.

If I had all the money I spent on drink - I'd spend it on drink. 

Peter Cook

I have learned from my mistakes and I am sure I can repeat them exactly. 


I am very interested in the Universe - I am specialising in the Universe & all that surrounds it. 

As I looked out into the night sky, across all those infinite stars, it made me realize how insignificant they are. 

You fill me with inertia. 

One of the ways to avoid being beaten by the system is to laugh at it. 

I am going to the theatre to have fun. I do not need rape, sodomy, incest & drugs on stage - I get enough of that at home. 

Everything I've ever told you, including this, is a lie. 

Tom Waits

People say I'm difficult to work with and that I've never had a hit. As if that's a bad thing. 

Maybe the Devil is just God when he's drunk. 

You can learn a lot about a woman by getting smashed with her. 

Champagne for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends. 

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy. 

I never told the truth so I can never tell a lie. 

A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion but doesn't. 

Never have your wallet with you onstage. It's bad luck. You shouldn't play the piano with money in your pocket. Play like you need the money. 

The Universe is making music all the time. 

Most of the people I admire, they usually smell funny and don't get out much. It's true. Most of them are either dead or not feeling well. 

It ain't no sin, to take off your skin and dance around in your bones. 

There's nothing strange about an axe with blood stains in the barn, 
There's always some killing you've got to do around the farm. 

When you're down on your luck and you've lost all your dreams, there's nothing like a campfire and a can of beans. 

Morrissey

We hate it when our friends become successful. 

I honestly begin every single day with the intention of avoiding people. 

I was driving my car, I crashed and broke my spine. So yes there are things worse in life than never being someone's sweetie. 

I'm not sorry for the things I've done. And I'm not looking for just anyone. 

I dreamt about you last night and I fell out of bed twice. 
You can pin and mount me, like a butterfly. 

And if you ever need self validation, Just meet me in the alley by the railway station. 

You're the one for me, fatty. 

Life's incredibly boring. I don't say that in an effort to seem vaguely amusing but the secret of life is that there's no secret, it's just exceedingly boring.