This is a collection of quotes that is still growing. If you have any comments on these quotes, or others you'd like to share email me but PLEASE don't send me any anonymous or self quotes.
"One day I sat thinking, almost in despair; a hand fell on my shoulder and a voice said reassuringly: 'Cheer up, things could get worse.' So I cheered up and sure enough, things got worse." - James Hagerty
"Don't be afraid to ask dumb questions. They're more easily handled than dumb mistakes." - William Wister Haines
"I am only one. But I am one. I can?t do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do." - Edward Everett Hale
"Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don't know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it." - Sir William Haley
"The people who say you are not facing reality actually mean that you are not facing their idea of reality. Reality is above all else a variable. With a firm enough commitment, you can sometimes create a reality which did not exist before." - Margaret Halsey
"In some circumstances, the refusal to be defeated is a refusal to be educated." - Margaret Halsey
"Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?" - Philip G. Hamerton, The Intellectual Life
"A book of quotations... can never be complete." -Robert M. Hamilton
"Never 'for the sake of peace and quiet' deny your own experience or convictions." - Dag Hammerskjold
"Joe: I could do a lot of things if it was necessary.
Queenie: Then why don't you?
Joe: It ain't necessary." - Oscar Hammerstein II, Showboat
"If the things we dream about don't happen to be so that's just an unimportant technicality" - Oscar Hammerstein II, Showboat
"Why sit alone with your sorrow and kill the day? There may be sunshine tomorrow to fill the day" - Oscar Hammerstein II, Showboat
"I am a man of no convictions; at least I think I am." - Christopher Hampton
"I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees." - Charles Hamton
"In Lubbock, we grew up with two main things: God loves you and he's gonna send you to hell, and that sex is bad and dirty and nasty and awful and you should save it for the one you love." - Butch Hancock
"As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way." - Jack Handey
"Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them you are a mile away... and you have their shoes" - Jack Handey
"Children need encouragement. If a kid gets an answer right, tell him it was a lucky guess. That way, he develops a good, lucky feeling." - Jack Handey
"Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess was why several of us died of tuberculosis.' - Jack Handey
"A good way to keep a mob of peasants from killing your monster is when they break into your castle, make them be real quiet, then open a door and there's the monster, sound asleep." - Jack Handey
"He was a cowboy, mister, and he loved the land. He loved it so much he made a woman out of dirt and married her. But when he kissed her, she disintegrated. Later, at the funeral, when the preacher said, 'Dust to dust,' some people laughed, and the cowboy shot them. At his hanging, he told the others, 'I'll be waiting for you in heaven---with a gun.'" - Jack Handey
"I believe in making the world safer for our children, but not our children's children, because I don't think children should be having sex." - Jack Handey
"I bet the main reason the police keep people away from a plane crash is they don't want anybody walking in and lying down in the crash stuff, then when somebody comes up act like they just woke up and go, 'What was THAT?!'" - Jack Handey
"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it." - Jack Handey
"I don't pretend to have all the answers. I don't pretend to even know what the questions are. Hey, where am I?" - Jack Handey
"I hope in the future Americans are thought of as a warlike, vicious people, because I bet a lot of high schools would pick 'Americans' as their mascot." - Jack Handey
"I hope that someday we will be able to put away our fears and prejudices and just laugh at people." - Jack Handey
"I remember one day I was at Grandpa's farm, and I asked him about sex. He sort of smiled and said, 'Maybe instead of telling you what sex is, why don't we go out to the horse pasture and I'll show you. So we did, and there on the ground were my parents having sex." - Jack Handey
"I remember when I was in the army, we had the toughest drill sergeant in the world. He'd get right up next to your face and yell, and if you didn't have the right answers, mister, you'd be peeling potatoes or changing the latrine. Hey, wait. I wasn't in the army. Then who WAS that guy?!" - Jack Handey
"I scrambled to the top of the precipice where Nick was waiting. 'That was fun,' I said. 'You bet it was,' said Nick. 'Let's climb higher.' 'No,' I said. 'I think we should be heading back now.' 'We have time,' Nick insisted. I said we didn't, and Nick said we did. We argued back and forth like that for about twenty minutes, then finally decided to head back. I didn't say it was an interesting story." - Jack Handey
"I think a good gift for the president would be a chocolate revolver. And since he's so busy, you'd probably have to run up to him real quick and hand it to him." - Jack Handey
"I think the mistake a lot of us make is thinking the state-appointed psychiatrist is our 'friend'" - Jack Handey
"If I ever get real rich, I hope I'm not real mean to poor people, like I am now." - Jack Handey
"If you ever feel like you're on the verge of a nervous breakdown, just follow these simple rules: First, calm down; second, come on over and wash my car; third, shine all my shoes. There, isn't that better?" - Jack Handey
"If you want to be the popular one at a party, here's a good thing to do: Go up to some people who are talking and laughing and say, 'Well, technically that's illegal.' It might fit in with what somebody just said. And even if it doesn't, so what, I hate this stupid party" - Jack Handey
"If your friend is dead, and being eaten by vultures, I think it's okay to feed some bits of your friend to one of the vultures, to teach him to do some tricks. But ONLY if you're serious about adopting the vulture." - Jack Handey
"Instead of a trap door, what about a trap window? The guy looks out it, and if he leans too far, he falls out. Wait. I guess that's like a regular window." - Jack Handey
"Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. Also, you're drunk." - Jack Handey
"It's so easy to sit there and say you'd like to have more money. And I guess that's what I like about it. It's easy. Just sitting there, rocking back and forth, wanting that money." - Jack Handey
"A man doesn't automatically get my respect. He has to get down in the dirt and beg for it." - Jack Handey
"Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself. Mankind. Basically, it's made up of two words - 'mank' and 'ind.' What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind." - Jack Handey
"Most of the time it was real bad being stuck down in a dungeon. But some days, when there was a bad storm outside you'd look out your little window and think, 'Boy I'm glad I'm not in THAT.'" - Jack Handey
"Sometimes I think I'd be better off dead. No, wait. Not me, you." - Jack Handey
"Sometimes I think the world has gone completely mad. And then I think, 'Aw, who cares?' And the I think, 'Hey, what's for supper?'" - Jack Handey
"Sometimes I think you have to march right in and demand your rights, even if you don't know what your rights are, or who the person is you're talking to. Then, on the way out, slam the door." - Jack Handey
"When Gary told me he had found Jesus, I thought, Yahoo! We're rich! But it turned out to be something different." - Jack Handey
"When I found the skull in the woods, the first thing I did was call the police. But then I got curious about it. I picked it up, and started wondering who this person was, and why he had deer horns." - Jack Handey
"When I was a child, there were times when we had to entertain ourselves. And usually the best way to do that was to turn on the TV." - Jack Handey
"When you go for a job interview, I think a good thing to ask is if they ever press charges." - Jack Handey
"Whenever I hear the sparrow chirping, watch the woodpecker chirp, catch a chirping trout, or listen to the sad howl of the chirp rat, I think: Oh boy! I'm going insane again." - Jack Handey
"Whenever you read a good book, it's like the author is right there, in the room, talking to you, which is why I don't like to read good books." - Jack Handey
"You know what would be the most terrifying thing that could ever happen to a flea? Getting caught inside a watch somehow. You don't even care, do you?" ? Jack Handey
"Regi: You must have a lot of friends that could give you a job.
Ted: That'd be a fine friend who'd give you a job. No friend of mine had better try anything like that on me." - Hands Across the Table
"How much time must there be before one knows what one feels?" - Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
"War will cease when men refuse to fight." - Fridtsof Hansen
"Helen: We're not laughing at you, we're laughing with you.
Joy: But I'm not laughing." - Happiness
"The word 'politics' is derived from the word 'poly,' meaning 'many,' and the word 'ticks,' meaning 'blood sucking parasites." - Larry Hardiman
"I don't understand these complaints about the postal service. Time was, you could put a two-cent stamp on a letter and mail it, and it would arrive at its destination in two days. Now you put a twenty-five-cent stamp on a letter and it can take three to four weeks to arrive. Still only a penny a day!" - letter in Harper's Magazine
"Many people know how to work hard; many others know how to play well; but the rarest talent in the world is the ability to introduce elements of playfulness into work, and to put some constructive labor into our leisure." - Sydney J. Harris
"Maturity begins when we're content to feel we're right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong." - Sydney J. Harris
"It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which 'I' is capitalized; in many other languages 'You' is capitalized and the 'i' is lower case." - Sydney J. Harris
"Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better." - Sydney J. Harris
"There's no point in burying a hatchet if you're going to put up a marker on the site." - Sydney Harris
"When I hear somebody sigh that 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'" - Sydney Harris
"Beware of people carrying ideas. Beware of ideas carrying people." - Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
"The most painful moral struggles are not those between good and evil, but between good and a lesser good." - Barbara Grizzuti Harrison
"I am afraid to show you who I really am, because if I show you who I really am, you might not like it--and that's all I got." - Sabrina Ward Harrison
"Let me be your freedom, let daylight dry your tears... Let me be your shelter, let me be your light, you're safe, no one will find you, your fears are far behind you... let me lead you from your solitude. Say you need me with you, here beside you. Anywhere you go let me go too... Love me. That's all I ask of you." - Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe, Phantom of the Opera
"Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive." - Josephine Hart
"I've wrestled with reality for thirty-five years, and... I've finally won out over it" - Harvey
"One who looks for a friend without faults will have none." - Hasidic Saying
"For a woman there is nothing more erotic than being understood." - Molly Haskell
"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." - Vaclav Havel
"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road." - Steven Hawkins
"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one is true." - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"If the truth were to be known, everyone would be wearing a scarlet letter of one form or another. - Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
"Should our moral beliefs really prove to be dependent on factual assumptions shown to be incorrect, it would be hardly moral to defend them by refusing to acknowledge the facts." - F.A. Hayek
"I used to drown my sorrows but the bastards learned to swim." - Headless Chickens
"I zipped up my mouth with my tongue but forgot that my eyes were undone." - Headless Chickens
"If you want a piece of my mind be sure to get my good side." - Headless Chickens
"If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being... you'd be a game show host." - Heathers
"I had a stick of CareFree gum, but it didn't work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality." - Mitch Hedberg
"I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it." - Mitch Hedberg
"I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later." - Mitch Hedberg
"Tommy: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior
Hedwig: No, but I love his work." - Hedwig and the Angry Inch
"To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great." - G.W.F. Hegel
"A man who will paint your house will cook you meat loaf. A man who will cook you meat loaf will want to watch you shave your legs. A man who will want to watch you shave your legs will hold your hand and cry at sad AT&T commercials. A man who will hold your hand and cry at sad AT&T commercials will fall apart if you leave him.
We can't stand this. It makes us feel all weird and responsible and claustrophobic, as if this man who paints our house can't tell where his personality ends and ours begins. A man who paints our house is a man, we feel, who wants to merge... A door mat. Door mats are scary; they need too much. We like someone we can collide with who won't fall down; we like resistance... Someone who doesn't need us is a lot less scary than someone who needs us too much." - Cynthia Heimel, Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Goodbye!
"MY DAY
11:30 A.M. Wake up. Realize I don't have a boyfriend. Go back to sleep again.
12:45 P.M. Wake up. Realize I don't have a boyfriend but do have a need for sustenance. Stagger into kitchen. Make coffee. Run mind over assorted boyfriend possibilities.
1:07 P.M. Greta calling from office. She went to party last night, met cute guy. Twenty years old, too young. Also has girlfriend, but may be breaking up with her soon. We discuss possibility of starting a newsletter announcing up-to-the-second status of all heterosexual relationships in Manhattan. Girls, we figure, would line up outside office on night of publication, waiting for first copies. We would clean up. Then decide feasibility is limited - too much legwork, too depressing.
But we digress. Back to cute guy last night." - Cynthia Heimel, Sex Tips for Girls
"Why am I upset when I think that I'm different from everybody else, but angry when I realize that I'm the same?" - Heather Heine
"Wherever they burn books, sooner or later they will burn human beings also." - Heinrich Heine
"'All is fair in love and war' - what a contemptible lie!" - Robert Heinlein
"Avoid making decisions while tired or hungry." - Robert Heinlein
"Being intelligent is not a felony. But most societies evaluate it as being at least a misdemeanor." - Robert A. Heinlein
"The hardest part of gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche." - Robert Heinlein
"Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." - Robert A. Heinlein
"Never appeal to a man's 'better nature.' He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage." - Robert Heinlein
"No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law." - Robert Heinlein
"Of course the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you -- if you don't play, you can't win." - Robert Heinlein
"Progress is made by lazy men looking for an easier way to do things." - Robert A. Heinlein
"To be 'matter of fact' about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful." - Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"You live and learn. Or you don't live long." - Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
"I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts -- because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting." - Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
"I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashion." - Lillian Hellman
"People change and forget to tell each other." - Lillian Hellman
"Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?" - Lillian Hellman
"I don't know Brooklyn. No one does really. People always go there and never come back." - Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale
"To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves." - Claude Adrien Helvetius
"Strength is born in the deep silence of long-suffering hearts; not amid joy." - Felicia D. Hemas
"So many of us define ourselves by what we have, what we wear, what kind of house we live in and what kind of car we drive... If you think of yourself as the woman in the Cartier watch and the Hermes scarf, a house fire will destroy not only your possessions but yourself." - Linda Henley
"I'm not trying to change the world. I'm trying to stop the world from changing me." - Ammon Hennacy
"Become illiterate, save a tree" - Darryl Henriques, 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Pave the Earth
"If the Venus de Milo had been made of Styrofoam, she would still have arms" - Darryl Henriques, 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Pave the Earth
"Luckily, 97% of the world's water reserves are in the oceans. As our love of salt water grows, seawater will taste better than tap water. Some marine biologists predicted that when we start drinking seawater we will evolve back into sea creatures." - Darryl Henriques, 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Pave the Earth
"We need a president who's fluent in at least one language." - Buck Henry
"The filming of Shakespeare is always problematic, because he hates posing for the camera" - Lenny Henry
"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun." - Katherine Hepburn
"There is nothing permanent except change." - Heraclitus
"The people I distrust most are those who want to improve our lives but have only one course of action." - Frank Herbert
"Many things are lost for want of asking." - George Herbert
"Why do some heroes have to be so blind?" - Herbs
"I'M PROUD OF MY TINKY WINKY. PARENTS AND FRIENDS OF LESBIANS AND TELETUBBIES" - sign at Heritage of Pride Parade '99
"Be yourself. No one can ever tell you you're doing it wrong." - James Leo Herlihy
"We're all heroes, if you catch us at the right moment." - Hero
"There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have." - Don Herold
"Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no." - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them." - Herman Hesse
To get quotes from me and others in the mail:
Quotes of Aa through Am
Quotes of Ha through He
Quotes I've heard from people I've known