PEARLS BEFORE PIGS
W o r d s O f W i s d o m A n d P l e a s a n t r y
Chapter 16 - 20
Chapter 16 On parents and children
Chapter 17 On nature and wildlife
Chapter 18 On science, discoveries and statistics
Chapter 19 On past and future
Chapter 20 On death
Chapter 16 On parents and children(240904)
Mortar and bricks can make up ahouse, but children's laughter makes a home.
-Irish proverb
In a agreed family happiness comes naturally.
-Chinese proverb
A man who attracks small children and dogs without calling them, is a good human being.
-Th.G.Hippel
Children do fill a home with peace - when they are asleep.
-Gunilla Dahlgren
The hand that rock the craddle, runs the world.
-Scandinavian proverb
The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.
-Clarence Darrow
There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire someone,or forbid your kids to do it.
-Monta Crane
Children are a great comfort in your old age - and they help you reach it faster too.
-Lionel Kauffman
Let children be children while they are young or they will remain children all their life.
-Unknown
Mothers can dry your tears via the phone.
-Pam Brown
When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one,
I was astonished at how the old man had learned in seven years.
-Mark Twain
When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.
-Mark Twain
Human beings are the only creatures on the earth that allow their children to come back home.
-Bill Cosby
The sweet with children is the grownups respons to them.
-Mikal Rode
Parents are the last people on earth that should have children.
-Samuel Butler
How many children have you got by now, Even? asked the priest.
I don't know. It's the wife who counts as I chase them back in at night.
-Alf Prøysen, Norwegian singer, writer and humorist
When the divorce was final, both parents wanted to stay in the house, but neither of them wanted the children.
-Kristian Rakvåg
Boys: Of all wild beasts, the most difficult to manage.
-Plato
Hallo, grandma, are you there? it whispered in the phone.
Yes, but why are you so low-voiced?
Because the police is here.
I see.
And the Red Cross youths are also here.
Well?
Now I soon have to hang up, granny.
Why?
The priest is coming.
What is he doing?
Sure he will talk to mam.
But why are the Red Cross as well as the police there?
Everyone is seeking.
Seeking for whom?
Me.
-From a NRK-TV humour program.
My mother never saw the irony in calling me a soon-of-a-bitch.
-Jack Nicholson
My father told me all about the birds and the bees, the liar - I went steady with a woodpecker till I was twenty-one.
-Bob Hope
What the mothers earlier called sin, the daughters now use to call experience.
-Unknown
Where did the mothers learn all the things they warn their daughters against?
-Unknown
We are the people our parents warned us about.
-Jimmy Buffett
The value of marriage is not that adults produce children but that children produce adults.
-Peter de Vries
At times it seems like parenthood is nothing more than feeding little mouths that bite you.
-Peter de Vries
Insanity is heraditary - you get it from your teenage children.
-Unknown
One can't weigh worries, but many mothers have a heavy heart.
-Irish proverb
Children never put up until tomorrow anything that might keep them from going to bed tonight.
-Jean Charles
People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.
-Leo J. Burke
Children in the back seat cause accidents, accidents in the back seat cause children.
-Unknown
You can't beat anything into a child, but you can caress much out from it.
-Astrid Lindgren
Never raise your hand to your children. It leaves your midsection unprotected.
-Erma Bombeck
It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool out of him.
-Helen Rowland
There is two things in this life for which we are never fully prepared, and that is - twins.
Josh Billings
You suggest that we might have a child with yours looks and my intelligence? The chances are 50-50 that it would end up with my looks and
your intelligence.
-Albert Einstein's answer to a Hollywood starlette
Inheritance is something you believe in when you get an intelligent child.
-Pablo Picasso
Children should know as much about sex that they understand where the grownups come from.
-Henrik Tikkanen, Finland
Grownups - they only exist in children's imagination.
-Piet Hein
Who is it you bring here today?
You should be able to recognize Anders, your son.
Is Anders my son? And you haven't told me that until now?
-From an autentic dialog between a Norwegian man with senile dementia and his wife, visiting him in an institution
A jumper is a clothing that a child is wearing when mother is freezing.
-Barbara Johnson
Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.
-John Wilmot
Today's children are required to learn what most people in former times were forbidden to know.
-Ashleigh Brilliant
A cautious mother had many times told her little Lisa to never point at - or talk in loud voice about - other people, especially persons of
unuseral sizes or shape. She was told to wait with her questions until they got home.
One day they saw an old lady struggling along on crutches: Mommy, that is the sort of person we can talk about when we come home, said
the small one triumphantly.
-Berit Nesse, Bergen, Norway
You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.
-Franklin P. Jones
A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.
-Carl Sandberg
Seriously Pete, please take care of yourself and don't be a hero. I don't need a Medal of Honor winner. I need a son. Love, Mom.
-A mother to her son going to fight in the Vietnam War
We have become the happy parents of a big boy!
Randi Johansen and Odd Nyborg?
-The question mark after the father's name was added at the Norwegian newspaper by a misprint
Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.
-Laurence Peter
All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.
-English children song
I stopped believing in Santa Claus at age six when my mother took me to see him in a store and he asked for my autograph.
-Shirley Temple
Play carefully - grownups are driving
-Norwegian traffic info
Use contraception - new teachers are born every day.
-Grafitti on a school wall in Molde, Norway
Today I'm very tired, so you must be obidient. On my way home from my cabidge yesterday, I was attacked by a big deer, so it isn't
so easy to be a teacher, I can tell you.
Little Lise raised her hand: But how could that deer know that you are a teacher?
-Norwegian joke
Children are our most valuable natural resource.
-Herbert Clark Hoover
Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parent, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.
-Socrates
Children need love, especially when they don't deserve it.
-Harold Hulbert
Premature children can be an annoyance, but childish adults
are always a pestilince.
-Knud Holst
There are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents.
-Leon R. Yankwich
The wealth of the poor is represented by their children, that of the rich by their parents.
-Massimo Troisi
At the age of 10 I was an eager freehand map drawer. After I had finished Norway
and Sweden, the lovely country in the south was next. But
because of all the islands and the belts between them, the Danish format became too big compared with the two Scandinavian brother nations.
That explains why the headline got the wording: DENMARK -
STRONGLY ENLARGED.
-Kristian Rakvåg
Attention was aroused when John D. Rockerfeller ordered a single room at a hotel where his son always used to stay in a suite.
My son has a rich father, I am not so lucky, he explained.
People who are in love hold hands so the rings won`t fall off.
Because they cost too much money.
-Tine 7 years
The body consists of 90% water, 2 % bone and flesh, and
has nails according to need.
-Erik 9 years
One should never drink anything standing on one's head.
-Jonas 7 years
The body needs food to survive. Italian salad costs more than five kroner per
square metre.
-Henrik 7 years
One looses some of the gravitational force in
the stomach as one get older, and starts falling in more easily.
-Claus, 10 years
A skelaton is a rack on which one wears ones body.
-8 years old child
The spines is a series of bones that run right through the body. On the one end sits the head, on the other end we sit.
-9 year old child
A mother-in-law is the punishment one gets for marrying someone you don't know.
-Pål, 7 years old
When women are about forty or fifity, they stop laying eggs, i.e. they can't produce people.
-Johannes, 8 years old
Old maids are ladies that have their cornea intact.
-Siw, 10 years old
One horsepower is the force you need to move a horse 500 metres in one second.
-Eyvind, 10 years old
A vibration is a movement that doesn't know which direction it will go.
-Rune, 8 years old
Mushrooms are growing at humid places. it's therefore they look like umbrellas.
-Henrik, 8 years old
Some men has a hairy back. Especially criminals and bathing watches.
-Stine, 6 years
Women's corners are softer than the men's.
-Pia, 6 years
Blueberries are tasting fantastic, because there are jam inside them.
-Bjørn, 5 years
Anarchy is a country where the king is a queen.
-Tore, 11 years
You should not drink anything when standing on your head.
-Jonas, 7 years
Even five-stage rockets and nuclear physics become child's play when a newborn baby with a single glance proves the existence of God.
-André Bjerke, Norwegian writer
But, Bjarne, really! Your tongue is hanging out of your mouth.
I know that. I hung it there meself.
-Bjarne Gunders, Norwegian entertainer
Already at the age of five, I was a cunning tactician. Even if the shock from the electric fence did not really make an indelible impression on me, I
still started crying immediately.
-Kristian Rakvåg
When you say that nothing is faster than the thought, that is not quite true. Because my little brother dirtied his pants yesterday, and that
happened a lot faster then he had thought.
-Norwegian joke
I was playing the part of the beautiful Helen's husband, and one evening my family was present in the theatre. As I was standing on stage singing
a song beginning with the words I am old and I am ugly - I am old and I am ugly, a scream was suddenly heard from my five-year-old daughter
in the audience: No, daddy, you're not!
-Henki Kolstad, Norwegian actor
At the age of ten, I was an eager free-hand drawer of maps. After having conquered Norway and Sweden, the lovely land to the south was next in
line. But because of all the islands and «Belt»s (straits) between them, the format of Denmark became much too large compared to the two
Scandinavian brother nations. This fact explains the headline: DENMARK - HIGHLY ENLARGED.
-Kristian Rakvåg
Suddenly my mother says desperately: Oh Jesus, he's coming.. Five-year-old Einar acted quickly, and ran across the corridor to the woman
next-door with this message: You have to come over to my mother at once, Jesus is coming!
There are those who found that report to be somewhat exaggerated.
-Rolf Gerhardsens describing his older brother Einar's reaction on his birth+++
When i was born i was so astonished that i couldnt say a sensible word for one and a half year.
-Gracie Allen
Chapter 17 On nature and wildlife(170105)
Everybody want to go back to nature, but not by foot.
-Petra Keller
Nature never makes any blunders; when she makes a fool she means it.
-Josh Billings
A poet understands Nature better than a scientist.
-Novalis
Nature is commanded by obeying her.
-Francis Bacon
Nothing is evil that happens in harmony with nature.
-Marcus Aurelius
Mountain's lasso around my heart.
-Book title used by Guttorm Hansen, Norway
Botany is the worst thing flowers know.
-Nordahl Grieg, Norwegian writer
The branch which bends, doesn't break.
-Norwegian proverb
Even a sunflower casts a shadow.
-Unknown
What do you do when you see an endangered animal eating an endangered plant?
-Unknown
Why not go out on the limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?
-Frank Scully
No roses withoyt thorns.
-Unknown
A thorn defends the rose, harming only those who would steal the blossom.
-Chinese proverb
Observe carefully how the field lilies grow. They neighter torn nor spin, but I tell you that even Salomon in all his splendor was never dressed
like one of these.
-Jesus, Matthew 7: 28-29
The roots in the earth ask for no reward to make the branches fertile.
-Tagore
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
-Tagore
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
-Unknown
A forest bird never wants a cage.
-Henrik Ibsen
Even the lonely woodpecker owes his success to the fact that he uses his head.
-Joe Marcucci
When I got the new scarecrow this morning, the crow became so scared that it immediately asked for permittance to return the two strawberries
it had stolen yesterday.
-Strawberry-farmer from Valldal, Norway
If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe.
-Abraham Lincoln
When the mouse laughs at the cat, there is a hole nearby.
-Nigerian proverb
No matter how much the cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.
-Abraham Lincoln
Thousands of years ago, cats were worshiped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this.
-Unknown
Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God.
-Unknown
As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat.
-Ellen Perry Berkeley
Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it
would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
- Mark Twain, Notebook - 1894
A dog is prose - a cat is poetry.
-Unknown
Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you later.
-Mary Bly
Cats are smarter than dogs. You can't get eight cats to pull a sled through snow.
-Jeff Valdez
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
-Sir Winston Churchill
I don't own my dog. It owns me. I think that rufus likes me. He has taught me to toss a stick for him to fetch.
-Sir Wilson Churchill
Money can buy a good dog, but not its pedigree.
-Josh Billings
The Labrador retriever and its master should change roles from time to time. Then maybe a human being could try to find where the dog is
buried.
-Kristian Rakvåg
What is the result of a cross between a golden retriever and a cocker spaniel? - Twelve golden cocks.
-Stutum, Norwegian comedian
The dog behaved strangely after being run over, but its owner admits that the dog never has been really normal.
-From accident report
The dog that works hardest bites just as willingly.
-Ludvig Holberg, Norway
Hungry wolf hunts best.
-Norwegian proverb
If there is to be friendship between us, you must get rid of those angry dogs, the wolf told the sheep.
-Proverb
My pig becomes so depressed every time he sees a hen. I think he starts to think about egg and bacon.
-Norwegian farmer
What is jumping from tree to tree yelping oink-oink? A pig with behavioural disorders.
-Trond Tornes, Norway
The cow quickly forgets that she once was a calf herself.
-Norwegian proverb
The one who rides a tiger is afraid of jumping off.
-Chinese proverb
No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
The more I know about men the more I like dogs.
-Gloria Allred
If chase two rabbits, both will escape.
-Unknown
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know.
-Groucho Marx
Don't take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to.
-Josh Billings
The calf in the pasture has never heard of veal fricasse.
-Alf Prøysen, Norway
The lion and the calf shall lie down together, but the calf won't get much sleep.
-Woody Allen
Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother.
-Arabian proverb
Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.
-Salomo's Proverbs 6:6-8
Would you like to ride on your own ass?
- Advertisement for donkey rides in Thailand
Have you seen a white man with a black ass?
-On the same theme as last quote
You cannot teach a crab to walk straight.
-Aristophanes
A blue whale with hydrophobia can't possibly have a good life.
-Kjetil Rommetveit, Norway
A small fish in an aquarium swam around all the day, because his mother had told him that swimming is healthy.
-Idea from Norwegian children song
It got very quiet in my house after my gold fish died.
-Unknown
If the fish did bite? Far from it, it was very nice and friendly.
-Øystein Sunde, Norwegian artist
Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. It's their way of falling.
-Andre Gide
Too much water will not harm the fish.
-Finnish proverb
Unfortunately I didn't have my scales with me when I could the big salmon, but I did take a snapshot, and when the film was
developed, that big boy weighted over 14 kilos.
-Norwegian joke
Ducks lay their eggs in silence while hens cackle like madwomen. The result? Everybody eats hens' eggs.
-Henry Ford
Turtles lays thousands of eggs without anybody knows about it, but when a hen lays a single one the whole town must be informed.
-Proverb from Malaysia
Most snakes are quite short, unless you count the tail.
-John Thompson
Put an eagle in a cage, and it will bite the netting even if it's made of gold or iron.
-Henrik Ibsen
Birds always fly in flocks, provided there are enough of them.
-Benny Andersen, Denmark
The gulls in Stettin have never been afraid of becoming overweight.
-Guenther Grass
It is after a rain the birds are singing.
-Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Don't count your chickens before they're hatched.
-Proverb
A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to philosophers to obviously be progress, though whether the amoeba would agree with
this opinion is not known.
-Bertrand Russel
Crows are to be combed and eaten in the direction of the feathers.
-Jan P. Syse, Norwegian Prime Minister 1989-1990
Only the very toughest of moose dare use the narrow crossings presently available.
-CEO of Roads,Akershus, Norway
Mind your big toe, Evy, it is what the night bats will pounce on first. They bite a small hole without you noticing. And then, pop! Your blood
pressure will fall faster than the Normandy tide.
From Terra roxa by Jon Michelet, Norway
Like owner, like dog.
-Norwegian proverb
Plainly speaking, this Janke was a swine (if saying that is not an insult to the animal).
-Sverre Løberg, Norway
A man had found a spider in the newspaper, and wanted to know the meaning. The Editor - Mark Twain - answered:
Regarding the spider in your newspaper I can say the following; it was crawling around in the paper in order to discover which establishment did
not advertise in this excellent newspaper, so that it could quietly spin its web over the door of the said establishment without having its work
destroyed.
The male nature was strongly in evidence once when I was to take the pig to the støl* ; I discovered that I had to tie him by the hind leg and pull
him backwards to make him go forward! He is bloody-minded, that one, so you have to do things backwards.
-A.O. Vinje, Norwegian writer
(*Many lowland smallholdings in Norway have a summer farm with pastures in the mountains. These summer farms are called støl or seter.)
Chapter 18 On science, discoveries and statistics(250106)
Reseaching is to see what everybody else have seen, and think what nobody else have thought.
-Unknown
The most common cause for cancer among rats is science.
-Unknown
Scientists are the peeping Toms at the keyhole of eternity.
-Arthur Koestler
Research into illness has progressed so much that it is almost impossible to find someone who is completely healthy.
-A.Huxley
Aristotle could have avoided the mistake in believing that women have fewer teeth than men by simply asking Mrs. Aristotle to open her mouth.
-Bertrand Russel
If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.
-Isaac Newton
I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst
the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
-Isaac Newton
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forget their use.
-Galileo Galilei
When the world exhibition in Paris closes its doors, also the elecrtic light will be put out. We will never hear about it anymore.
-Professor Erasmus Wilson in Oxford 1878
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
-President of Royal Society, Lord Kelvin, 1895
We will never reach the moon. the distance is too long, and it needs more energy than we can produce. In space there is also too cold for machines
to work.
-Nikola Tesla 1928
Computers in the future may weight no more than 1.5 tons.
-Popular Mechanics with optimistic view, 1949
But what eh…is it good for?
Leading IBM engineer on the microchip, 1968
This "telephone" has too many shortcommings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently
of no value to us.
-Western Union commenting A.G. Bell's invention 1876
The telephone will perhaps be useful to the Americans, but not to us - we have lots of carriers.
-Sir William Preece, Technical Director of the British postal service, 1876
Nuclear vacuum cleaners will be a reality within ten years.
-Alex Lewyt, Director General of Lewyt Vaccum Cleaner Co., in 1955
Before man can fly to the moon, it will take just a few hours to deliver letters from New York to Australia by remote controlled missils.
-Arthur Summerfield, Director General of the American postal service, 1959
The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow on the
moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church.
-Ferdinand Magellan
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
-Oscar Wilde
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
-Andre Gide
Science is an excellent piece of furniture to have at the first floor, if there is some reason at the floor above.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
Statistics can never replace the human judgement.
-Voltaire
Statistics are like lampposts: they are good to lean on, but they don't shed much light.
-Andrew Lang
Statistics is a big lie consisting of many small truths.
-Scotty Bowman
Statistics is a sophisticated way of lying.
-From Norwegian TV debate in the 70's
-Aaron Levenstein
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
-Benjamin Disraeli
The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself.
-Sir Winston Churchill
According to statistics, one of my employees is normally at the lavatory throughout the working day. I will find out who this man is and make
sure that he is fired.
-Masterful manager
A statistician can have his head in an oven and his feet in ice, and he will say that on the average he feels fine.
-Unknown
Statistics can prove everything - even the oppsite.
-James Callaghan
I can prove everything by using statistics - except the truth.
-George Canning
A statistician is a person who draws a mathematically precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion.
-Unknown
Wouldn't it be naughty if I could quote reliabe statistics that proved more people were driven to insanity by religion than alcohol?
-W.C.Fields
A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistics.
-Josef Stalin
Smoking is one of the leading causes for statistics.
-Fletcher Knebel
The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?
-David Sarnoff's companions answer to his urgings for investment in the radio approx. 1925
Genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration.
-Thomas Alva Edison
Any man whose errors it takes ten years to correct is quite a man.
-Robert Oppenheimer on Albert Einstein
An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less, until eventually he knows everything about nothing.
-Anon
An expert is a man who never make small mistakes.
-Tom Phibbs
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.
-Niels Bohr
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.
-Niels Bohr
The famous physicist Niels Bohr had a horse shoe over the door of his summer house. But a famous scientist surely does not believe in such things?
No, Ì don`t, but I have heard tell that it brings
luck even if one does not believe in it.
Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That is
relativity.
-Albert Einstein
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former.
-Albert Einstein
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
-Albert Einstein
Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.
-Albert Einstein
Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater.
-Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
-Albert Einstein
I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
-Albert Einstein
Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. It has no mother.
-Germeine Greer
If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
-Peter Ustinov
The genius of Einstein led to Hiroshima.
-Pablo Picasso
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-Pablo Picasso
The question is the beginning of all knowledge.
-Thaitetos
OK, so what's the speed of darkness?
-Steven Wright
It is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.
-Woody Allen
If it weren't for electricity we'd all be watching television by candlelight.
-George Gobel
Black holes were created when God divided by zero.
-Unknown
That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
-Neil Armstrong
Sometimes I think we are alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we are not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.
-Arthur C.Clarke
The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.
-Arthur C.Clarke
So, you are planning to make a ship sail against the wind and current by lighting a fire below deck. I have no time for this nonsense.
-Napoleon to Robert Fulton
I watched his countenance closely, to see if he was not deranged.
-Senator Smith from Indiana on his observation of Samuel Morse's telegraph demonstration 1842
Chapter19 On past and future(020705)
Nostalgia is not longer what it once was.
-Simone Signoret
The future is not longer what it once was.
-Bernard Levin
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.
-George Bernard Shaw
Modern history is like a deaf man answering questions which no one has asked him.
-Leo Tolstoy
History teach us who had the power to write it.
-Arnljot Eggen, Norway
To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven
with those of earlier times?
-Marcus Tullius Cicero
We do not want to be like some of the leaders of the French revolution who said:
There go my countrymen. I must find out where they are going so that I can lead them.
-John F.Kennedy
Think of it, soldiers; from the summit of these pyramids, forty centuries look down upon you.
-Napoleon Bonaparte
History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided.
-Konrad Adenauer
God cannot alter the past, though historians can.
-Samuel Butler
The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely
different.
-Aldous Huxley
Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.
-George Bernard Shaw
A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
-Robert Heinlein in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-George Santayana
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
-Sir Winston Churchill
The main thing is to make history, not to write it.
-Otto von Bismarck
These peace conditions mean the destruction of the German nation, declared the country`s delegates during the Versailles negotiations.
That does not concern me, it must be seen as a German internal affair. answered Georges Clemenceau.
If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future.
-Sir Winston Churchill
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystory, today is a gift, that's why it's called the present.
-Unknown
In order to survive we must learn from our pasts, simply deal with the present, and hope for the future.
-Justin Rhodes Wilkins
Already the old Greeks lived in the present.
-Unknown
Even in the old days there was somebody who survived.
-From a Norwegian radio causerie
It's up to us to make the history books of the future pleasant reading.
-Jan Ø. Nielsen, Norway
Never in the field of human conflicts was so much owed by so many to so few.
-Sir Winston Churchill
Then progress came and destroyed everything, even more than the war, because if the war destroyed our property, progress destroyed our very
way of life.
-Bruno Ugolotti
It was his fate, as it is for all men, to live through hard times.
-Jorge Luis Borges
Gray hair is a crown of splendor; it is attained by a righteous life.
-Salomo's Proverbs 16:31
For those who believe that Iceland's last archbishop was named Kyrie Eleison, they are wrong.
-Kristian Rakvåg
The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
-Muhammed Ali
I must admit that I have problems separating all the new numbers of years that have come out reasantly.
-Edvard Horn, Norway
Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards.
-Søren Kierkegaard
It would have been nice to attend the senior citizens meeting, if it weren't for all the old people there.
-From Midøy, Norway
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.
-Oscar Wilde
First you forget names, then you forget faces, then you forget to pull your zipper up, and then you forget to pull your zipper down.
-Leo Rosenburg
Modern history is like a deaf man answering questions which no one has asked him.
-Leo Tolstoy
After you have heard two eyewitness accounts of an auto accident it makes you wonder about history.
-Unknown
No person in the early 19th century needed a PR-man to tell him what he neededto do.
-John Kenneth Galbraith
Historic is better than antiquated.
-Unknown
World War 2 spoiled very much for nazism.
-Otto Jespersen, Norwegian TV-humorist
Johan Nygaardsvold has written his name in golden letters in the history of Norway
-King Haakon 7th
We didn't have electricity when I was a lad, so that if I wanted to see the children's hour, I had to get up early in the morning
and start to fire under the TV, so that the set would be warmed up by 6 PM.
-Ingvar Moe, Norwegian writer
Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.
-Henry David Thoreau
We all get heavier as we get older because there's a lot more information in our heads.
-Vlade Divac
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-Hector Berlioz
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.
-Abraham Lincoln
Blood alone moves the wheels of history.
-Benito Mussolini
It's hard to make predictions - especially about the future.
-Robert Storm Petersen
The future is no place to waste your better days.
-Dave Matthews
Look to the future, because that is where you'll spend the rest of your life.
-George Burns
War does not determine who is right -only who is left.
-Bertrand Russel
A human being is old from the day of when it starts taking after-dinner naps.
-Knut Hamsun
Middle Age is when your age starts to show around your middle.
-Bob Hope
When your friends start flattering you about your looks, that is a sure sign that you are getting old.
-Mark Twain
If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age.
-George Burns
Age is like climbing a mountain. One runs out of breath, but one also gains a much better view.
-Ingrid Bergmann
Fashions are the only thing that run out of fashion.
-Oscar Wilde
One ages too early, and wisdom comes too late.
-Kåre Rodahl
Make a great man out of him, but do it slowly.
-Fredrik the 3of Denmark`s advice to his son regarding Griffenfeld
But mr. Afanassievskij, which country do you represent nowadays? I really don`t
know. But I am sure that it is a large one!
-From a conversation between a Sovjet reprs and the Italian foreignminister,
19.12.91,when the Sovjet union was on the verge of collapse.
People think that the world is making progress because it in motion. But so is the pendulum.
-George Bernard Shaw
An old-age pensioner is a man who is frustrated because he could not keep the position that he has been dissatisfied with his whole life.
-Hans Kristian Steincke
You know are old when you bend over to tie your shoelaces, and when you have done that, you pause for a moment and think:
Is there anything else I should do once I am down here?
-Karsten Isachsen, Norway
Now, you must not make me so well that I lose my retirement pension.
-Old Norwegian woman to her doctor
All these days that came and went – little did I know that they were life.
-Stig Johansson
A bird comes once every hundred years to sharpen his beak on a rock. By the time the rock is worn down to nothing, one second of eternity will have passed
-Chinese proverb
-Bill Clinton
At about 50, we start to tire of the world. At about 60, the world starts to tire of us.
-Johan Oxenstierna
After 80, a screw comes lose every year.
-Alice Jeppesen
Harald Hardraade wanted all of England, but only got seven feet of its soil.
-Harold Godwinson
The Munich Agreement bears witness to peace in our time.
-Neville Chamberlain
Peace in our time - the time it takes a great nation to digest a small one.
-Carl J. Hambro
Instead of praising Chamberlain, people should ask themselves who is next. As an illustration he used a Czech fairytale of the master chef who
was famous for his ragouts, and called a meeting of hares and rabbits from all over to ask them what kind of gravy they wanted to be served with.
That is the most that the small states can expect to be asked.
-Carl
Joachim Hambro
I am the man with the umbrella, and when I talk seriously, nations are listening.
-Neville Chamberlain
The
Flood is upon us, but we have no Ark - only an umbrella.
-David
Lloyd George
The Norwegian Labour Party does not want to be taken to represent the Nazi influences in the conservative side or those in the conservative
press
who have worked against Hambro's candidacy because of his statements about the
global situation this fall.
When he returned from Geneva in October, CJH had done what he set out to do. In three months, he had turned a powerful public opinion
around.
It was a convincing victory for him, for his view of the Munich Agreement - and
for his erect and unafraid attitude.
-Johan
Hambro
If there is anyone here who still wonders why this war is being fought, let him look to Norway; if there is anyone who has any delusions that this
war could have been averted, let him look to Norway; and if there is anyone who doubts the democratic will to win, again I say, let him look to
Norway.
-Franklin D. Roosevelt
Men have become the tools of their tools.
-Henry David Thoreau
Hambro must be considered to be the greatest enemy of Germany, and he is quite possibly the most influential person in Scandinavia today. He
controls practically all Scandinavian politics.
-Nazi-ideologist
Alfred Rosenberg to gross admiral Raeder
Nobody
knew that only a few years later, Marxism would break out in paroxysms of
academic rabies in Western universities.
-Lars Roar Langslet on the 70's
I am being placed in a cooler environment, like a bottle of champagne being stored for a later occation.
-Bismarck when he was apointed an embassadore in St. Petersburg
From big congrigations comes no wise desitions.
-Fredrik the Great
In the past, to subjugate the people, the powerful used force, laws and religion; now, they also have football and television.
-Carl William Brown
Chapter 20 - On death(upd.050504)
I have looked death in the eyes so many times that when my time comes, it will be like meeting an old friend.
-Jan Baalsrud, Norwegian hero from World War 2 and the film Nine lives
I turned and stared death straight in the eye - and death blinked.
-Text on war heroism from the Middle East
Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.
-John Milton
There is no death. Only a change of worlds.
-Chief Seattle
Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?
-Paul, Corinthians 1.15.
Life is but a journey; death is returning home.
-Chinese proverb
As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.
-Leonardo da Vinci
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
-Matthew Arnold
Every man ought to be inquisitive through every hour of his great adventure down to the day when he shall no longer cast a shadow in the
sun. For if he dies without a question in his heart, what excuse is there for his continuance?
-Frank Moore Colby
I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.
-Clarence Darrow
Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.
-Katherine Hepburn
Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.
-Abraham Lincoln
If your time ain't come not even a doctor can kill you.
-American proverb
Every man goes down to his death bearing in his hands only that which he has given away.
-Persian proverb
See Napoli and die.
-Italian proverb, known from approx. 1500
He has gone over to the majority.
-Petronius
And you too, my son Brute?
-Julius Caesar's last word
Am I dying or is this my birthday?
-Last words of Lady Astor (waking up to find all her family at her bedside)
Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.
-John Barrymore - last words
I am about to - or I am going to - die; either expression is used.
-Dominique Bouhours, French grammarian's last words
I will ask Him why there is turbulence.
-Werner Heisenburg's last words
God will forgive me. It's his job.
-Last words of Heinrich Heine
The earth is suffocating . . . Swear to make them cut me open, so that I won't be buried alive.
-Frederic Chopin - last words
Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.
-Karl Marx
I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring.
-Last words of Richard P. Feynman
I am ready to die for my Lord, that in my blood the Church may obtain liberty and peace.
-Last words of Thomas Becket
It is very beautiful over there.
-Last words of Thomas Edison
I do not have to forgive my enemies, I have had them all shot.
-Last words of Ramon Maria Narvaez (Spainish General when asked by a priest if he forgave his enemies)
Oh Lord, forgive the misprints!
-Last words of Andrew Bradford, American book-publisher
Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
-P.J.O'Rourke
Why do you weep? Did you think I was immortal?
-Louis 14th on his deathbed
I had imagined it was more difficult to die.
-Louis 14th
Die, my dear doctor! That's the last thing I shall do.
-Lord Palmerston
Let us live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
-Mark Twain
The report of my death are greatly exaggerated.
-Mark Twain
Friends applaud, the comedy is over.
-Beethoven's last words
We should weep for men at their birth, not at their death.
-Charles de Montesquieu
When you were born you cried and the world rejoiced; live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
-Cherokee Indian proverb
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
-William Somerset Maugham
His time had come; He ran his race; We hope he's in a better place.
-Jonathan Swift
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
-Sir Winston Churchill
I am not afaid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
-Woody Allen
The more complete life is, and the more one's creative powers are satisfied, the less one fear death. Human beings
do not fear death itself, but they fear not getting fulfil their lives.
-Lizl M. Goodman
People should know the risks they run trying to commit suicide.
-Ron C. Carman
The graveyards are full of indispensable men.
-Charles De Gaulle
Said by the chairwoman of the committee lobbying for a bridge to a small island in Nordland, Norway:
The man from the Department of Transportation wanted to know what all the nine inhabitants on the island did.
The last question was about an old man who recently had died, but I could not miss him. So I just answered:
He spends most of his time sleeping.
-From a TV program in the early 70's
Cattle die and kinsmen die,/ thyself too soon must die,
but one thing never, I ween, will die,/ fair fame of one who has earned.
-From Håvamål, 1000 years old Icelandic poem
Condemned
people right before their execution is a moving sight. The fear of death is
conquered. There is no fear to be traced any more.
-Olav
Brunvand, Norway, in his World War 2 memories
I have seen fellow prisoners wave to those who were left behind - and jump from the trapdoor smiling, noose around their neck, without fear or
any hint of begging for mercy. I have seen companies of them walking into the death transportation column, singing: «We are walking side by
side, and the new time is walking with us...!», their hands clenched in defiance. I have seen them be picked out to be used as lab animals for Nazi
'science', to be infected with typhoid, tuberculosis or other germs - I have seen them be tortured to death, with burning hate glowing in their
eyes
- while we who saw it were filled
by a no less burning strengthening emotion...
-Sverre Løberg, Norway, on his experiance from Nazi consentration camps
There are no weddings where nobody cries, og no funerals where nobody laughes.
-Italian proverb
In times of peace the young bury their parents, in times of war the fathers bury their sons.
-Herodot
Goodbye. Andreas puts an apple into my hand as we get up.
You should eat the fruit yourself, you need it.
I have enough fruit for the rest of my life.
He was right. Twenty years, medical student. Shot
-Olav Brunvand, Norway. Nazi-prisoner at Akershus Castle meet Andreas when leaving the church
I have lived my life. I believe i have done some good. I am a happy man.
-Trygve Bratteli's last words to his wife Randi 1984