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

 

PART 3

Chapter 11-15

Chapter 11 On culture and religion

Chapter 12 On eating and drinking

Chapter 13 On politics and politicians

Chapter 14 On women

Chapter 15 On love and sexuality

 

Chapter 11 On culture and religion(upd. 170105)

 

The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust.

-Samuel Butler


The window to the world can be covered by a newspaper.

-Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

 

The labour newspaper named May the first, published in Stavanger in the 30's, in a period was called May the second because of all its delays.

-From Roy Jacobsen's biography on Trygve Bratteli

 

Flies and humans have one thing common. They can both be killed by newpapers.

-Dieter Hildebrandt

 

The radio can never be a substitude for newspapers. In the long run it will be too expensive to kill flies with radios. 

-Fredrik Stabel, Norway

 

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.

-James A. Froude+

 

An actor is a sincere liar.

-Albert Camus

 

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

-John Morley

 

Pay no attention to what the critics say; there has never been set up a statue in honor of a critic.

-Jean Sibelius

 

I really think that it is better than the original.

-A mayor of Horten, Norway, commented on a bust of Einar Gerhardsen which had just been unveiled 

 

Can't a critic be allowed to give his opinion about an omelette without being asked to create an egg?

-Clayton Rawson

 

I never read a book before previewing it; it prejudices a man so.

-Sydney Smith

 

I have never liked journalists.  Therefore I have always given them a horrible death in all my books.

-Agatha Christie


Books are our best friends, even when they turn their back to us.

-Georg Brandes, Denmark

 

Of all that is written, I love only what a person has written with his own blood.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

 

The least one could expect of a playright is that he is dead.

-Johanne Dybwad to a dramatist who criticized her free presentation of his text

 

Without music life would be a misunderstanding.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Translators are the draught horses of culture.

-Aleksandr Pushkin

 

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

-Robert Frost

 

Poetry is the art of putting the ocean into a glass.

-Italo Calvino

 

It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

-Voltaire


Music gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.

-Plato

 

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

-Victor Hugo

 

About Wagner: A composer whose music is better than it sounds.

-Mark Twain

 

This music is so beautiful that I can't believe that I wrote it myself.

-Moved George Gershwin during the rehearsals of Porgy and Bess

 

My head is still of the most wonderful melodies just waiting to come out.

-George Gershwin a few months before he died of brain stroke  

 

A painter paints picture on cancas, but musicians paint their pictures on silence.

-Leopold Stokowski

 

It makes one sober to think of that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for many years.

-Tom Lehrer

 

A string quartet is by definition Cuba's national symphony orchestra after an European tour.

-Unknown

 

A Man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd.

-James Cook

 

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding, sings.

-Ed Gardner

 

I do not have a single white note on my piano; my elephant smoked too much.

-Victor Borge

 

Why do pianos have three pedals? I've never seen a pianist with more than two legs.

-Unknown

 

Kjell Bækkelund grew up under such poor living conditions, that he hardly could find space for his grand piano in the hall.

-Hugin og Munin, Norwegian newspaper humour

 

I know only two tunes: one of them is Yankee Doodle and the other isn't.

-Ulysses S. Grant

 

A country lady had just undergone a blood pump transplant by a surgeon in Frisco. Back home she sent her most heartly greetings to the doc

via a radio station in town. And the record she requested was: I Left My Heart in San Francisco.

-Kristian Rakvåg

 

Fifty ways to love your liver.

-Ivar Dyrhaug, Norway

 

My biggest handicap as an accordion player is that I only have ten fingers. How many fingers Art Van Damme has I don't know, it's

impossible to count them.

-Compliments from jazz colleague

 

I don't know anything about music In my line you don't have to.

-Elvis Presley

 

Before Elvis there was nothing.

-John Lennon

 

We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.

-Decca Recordind Co. 's comment on rejecting the Beatles, 1962

 

I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else.

-Lily Tomlin

 

It was about the silliest thing I could have done, still I didn't do it.

-Danish crime writer

 

About Ernest Hemmingway: A literary style of wearing false hair on the chest.

-Max Eastman

 

I'm writing in order to endure life.

-Dag Solstad, Norwegian writer

 

Even though a novel does'nt have a happy ending, it 's still good that it ends.

-Robert Storm-Petersen

 

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero, but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

-G.K. Chesterton

 

In the Victorian age in England books written by male and female authors were put into separate shelves - just in case.

-Unknown

 

Most writers have the same knowledge on literature as birds on ornithology.

-Marcel Reinch-Ranicki

 

My brother read books willingly.

-Kjell Aukust, Norwegian humorist

 

Readers are imaginary people who exist in the fantasies of writers.

-Achille Campanile

 

He is a little weakly man, but he can think.

-Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson on Henrik Ibsen

 

Word are like sunrays, the more they are concentrated, the deeper they burn.

-James Joyce

 


A great memory does not make a mind, any more than a dictionary is a piece of literature.

-John Henry Newman

 

The pen is the tongue of the mind.

-Miguel de Cervantes

 

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

-Ray Bradbury

 

Ludvig Holberg met two enemies on his way.

I do not step aside for a jerke, one of them said.

I willingly step aside for two, Holberg answered.

 

My performances will become rarer from now on, one must remember that one are not 80 anymore.

-Per Aabel, Norwegian actor, on his 90 years anniversary

 

I no longer participate in public discussions, but I still do a lot of evil in private.

-Arnulf Øverland, Norwegian poet

 

Taped books are practical, one can listen while doing something else, such as reading a book.

-Freddy Kjensmo, Norwegian standup-comedian

 

Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes. (Translation: If you can read this you're overeducated).

-John Engelbrecht

 

Art is a hammer to beat the world, not a mirror to reflect it.

-Vladimir Majakovskij

 


Art is the lie that makes us realize the truth.

-Pablo Picasso

 

Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.

-Pablo Picasso

 

Art is an investment of capital, culture an alibi.

-Ennio Flaiano

 

I prefere the art of tomorrow.

-Niels Onstad, Norway

 

The history of art is not my forte, but I have learned that Alf R. Bjercke is Norway's greatest painter, and that it was Claude Monet who

invented imperialism.

-Kristian Rakvåg

 

There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can't stand out Picasso, those who can't stand out Rafael, and those who have heard

of neither.

-John White

 

I close my eyes in order to see.

-Paul Gaugin

 

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

- Michelangelo

 

What I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea.

-Mahatma Gandhi

 

In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

-George Bernard Shaw

 

When we come to heaven, St. Peter is standing there dividing us in two groups - smokers to the left and no-smokers to the right.

-Anne Kath. Hærland, Norway

 

Talent is a God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift to God.

-Unknown

 

God promises a safe landing, but not a calm passage.

-Unknown

 

I must place limits on knowledge in order to make room for belief.

-Immanuel Kant

 

What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world.

-Albert Einstein

 

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

-Voltaire

 

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him, but all nature shouts to us that He exists+.

-Voltaire

 

In the beginning there was nothing. God said, Let there be light; and there was still nothing, but everybody could see it.

-Unknown

 

The total absence of humour from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

-Alfred North Whitehead

 

It's understandable that Ascension Day is held on a Thursday - Jesus probably prefers to get away before the weekend rush.

-Just a joke

 

God was not a Christian until Jesus was born.

-Erik Bye, Norway

 

The Swede also mentioned the Lord. A very talented guy, he maintained.

-Kjell Aukrust, Norwegian funny writer

 

The Bible is a window in this prison of hope, through which we look into eternity.

-John Sullivan Dwight

 

It seems such a pity that Noah and his party did not miss the boat.

-Mark Twain

 

Every man is as God made him, and often worse.

-Miguel de Cervantes

 

Many years ago when an adored dog died, a good friend who was a bishop, said to me:

Remember that as far as the Bible is concerned, God only threw the humans out of paradise.

-Bruce Foyle, Pets and Their People

 

My stay at Betania hospital was okay, more or less, but the patients who weren't believers didn't get creamcake with the coffee.

-From sketch by Arve Opsahl, Norwegian actor

 

I don't know whether God exists, but if he doesn't he makes a better impression.

-Stefano Benni

 

So the last will be the first, and the first last - but what about the rest of us?

-Benny Andersen, Denmark

 

Humanistic ethicists say yes to life, regarding death they have nothing to say.

-Aftenposten, Norwegian newspaper

 

The man who denies God's existence, turns off the sun and walks on in the darkness with a lamp.

-Unknown

 

Nicely dressed up Mormons sometimes knock on my door in order to talk about religion.

Do you think God can talk to you through your mind or through your heart? one of them asked.

Perhaps through my mind but never through my heart, I had to answer.

Why not?

Because I have a pace maker.

-Kristian Rakvåg

 

Everyone has a God given right to be an atheist.

-Michael Patton

 

My philosophy of life has never brought me anything, but it has spared me a lot.

-Knut Hamsun

 

The silence sounds so quiet to my ear.

-Knut Hamsun

 

Sigrid Undset and Herman Wildenvey both made their début in 1907, but not with each other.

-Kristian Rakvåg

 

Author: A person who provides entertainment to people who are incapable of entertaining themselves.

 -George Bernard Shaw

 

Comment to writing poetry? The spirits don't visualize even if you make up a fire.

-Alfred Polgar

 

I love being a writer. It's all the paperwork I can't stand.    

-Peter de Vries

Kaleidoscopic fun, a bonfire, a firework show of nonsensical gags, dazzling subtleties, exultant platitudes, magnificent vulgarisms, wildly silly 

jokes, mercilessly intelligent satire, slapsticks and brilliance.

Arne Hestenes in the newspaper Dagbladet, sadly not about this book, but about the latest Monty Pythons film.

-Back cover text from Jon Michelet's book Jerv (jervere,jervest)

 

As we all know, the Lord is foresighted and omniscient above all reason. Therefore, he had allowed a forest fire to burn down 25 or 30 acres of the 

state-owned forest in a flat, sandy area close to the small town of Joensoo in the Finnish part of Karelia. The humans had, as is their habit, tried to 

prevent him from effecting his purpose, but he had worked unyieldingly with his forest fire until he felt that the result had become what he wanted 

for his future plans. The first person to discover how  foresighted the Almighty had been, was a colonel. He was chief of staff of an army corps, 

and he found the burnt-down area to be perfectly well suited as a training area.

  -Intro from  Unknown soldier by Väinø Linna

 

A bishop of a South-African apartheid church was appalled by seeing a black boy in the cathedral. 

What are you doing in the white people's church? he asked him severely. 

I'm washing the floor, sir. 

Very well, get on with your work. But don't let me catch you praying here!

-Dave Allen

 

The sentence 'Give us today our daily bread' should be taken away from the Lord's Prayer, because it contains too many carbohydrates.

-Knut Nærum, Norwegian humorist

 

Christianity has done a great deal for love by making a sin og it.

-Anatole France

 

I read the book of Job last night - I don't think God comes well out of it.

-Virginia Wolf

 

Practically all books published today come with dust jackets, except for the smutty literature.

-Kristian Rakvåg

 

The most well-known cartoon in Sudan is the Khartoum Character.

 -Kristian Rakvåg

 

It has been claimed that the Rolling Stones were formed in 1962. To me, they still seem to be in bad shape.

-Kristian Rakvåg

 

Reading about the ravages of  Napoleon during the campaign in Russia, Peter Tchaikovsky was inspired to compose the 1812-overture, in which 

he hurled musical abuse at Napoleon.

-Kristian Rakvåg


Are you a presbytarian, a home mission man or what?  the Danish priest Kaj Munk was once asked.

I come directly under Our Lord.

 

Chapter 12 On eating and drinking(241205)

 

It is amazing how well bad food tastes when you just get insufficient amounts of it.

-Francis Bull, Norway on the food in nazi consentration camps

 

Paintings which adorn the walls of restaurants are of a quality simular to the food you get in museums.

-Peter de Vries

 

Strictly speaking, there is only one type of book which has helped to increase human joy on earth, cookbooks.

-Joseph Conrad

 

I am not a good cook. I use the smoke detector for a timer.

-Carol Siskind

 

When the pot boils, the dregs rise to the top.

-Finnish proverb

 

Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily 

bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.

-Woodrow Wilson

 

Watching a person you don't like eat, is hard to bear.

-Friedrich Hebbel

 

Conferences are like an onion. You remove one layer after the other, and what you have left in the end is a crying shame.+

-Jean Rigaux

 

Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.

-Richard Whately

 

My doctor told me to stop having intimate dinners for four. Unless there are three other people.

-Orson Wells

 

Spaghetti can be eaten most successfully if you inhale it like a vacuum cleaner.

-Sophia Loren

 

Everything you can see I owe to spaghetti.

-Sophia Loren

 

Oats - A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

-Samuel Johnson

 

We feed oats to our horses, said the guest from England.

And that is why England has the best horses in the world and Scotland the bravest men.

-A Scot's answer to an English traveller who did not like oatmeal porridge

 

When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.

-Kenneth Kaunda

 

Lady Nancy Astor, Viscountness: If you were my husband, Winston, I should flavour your coffee with poison.

Winston Churchill: If I WERE your husband, madam, I shoud drink it.

 

I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm the President of the United States and

I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.

-George Bush

 

The first one who was eating an oyster was a brave man.

-Jonathan Swift

 

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?

-Stanislav Jerzy Lec

 

Most suicides are committed with a knife and fork.

-Walter Seiz

 

I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.

-A. Whitney Brown

 

What does a vegetarian think when he sees a car nivorous plant?

-Beat Rink

 

Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred.

Salomo's Proverbs

 

All good things are either sinful or fattening.

-Danish proverb

 

No clever arrangement of bad eggs ever made a good omelet.

-C.S. Lewis

 

You can say what you want about Napoleon, but pastries he sure could make.

-Darwin P.Erlandsen, Norwegian newspaper humorist

 

How can you expect to govern a country that has 246 kinds of cheese?

-Charles de Gaulle

 

There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.

-Sir Winston Churchill

 

My illness is due to my doctor's insistence that I drink milk, a whitish fluid they force down helpless babies.

-W.C.Fields

 

I was raised almost entirely on turnips and potatoes, but I think that the turnips had more to do with the effect than the potatoes.

-Marlene Dietrich

 

I never eat on an empty stomac.

-Tallulah Bankhead

 

Don't eat with your food in your mouth.

-Kristian Rakvåg

 

The priest even ment that we ought to feast, as if poor people in Dublin were not sufficiently starved already.

-Frank McCourt  

                                                           

Sometimes too much to drink is not enough.

-Mark Twain                                                              

 

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

-Abraham Lincoln

 

Coffee should be as black as the ace of spades, strong as death and sweet like love.

-Proverb from Turkey

 

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee and just as hard to sleep after.

-Anne Morrow Lindbergh

 

A human being consists of 94 % water, and even so, the teetotallers are not satisfied.

-Odd Børretzen, Norwegian humorist

 

Wine is a light bound by a fluid.

-Galileo Galilei

 

Wine is a grave danger to the mental health of someone who does not drink it.

-Unknown

 

He never touched alcohol - he just poured it down.

-Robert Storm-Petersen

 

The trouble with you, Shaw, is that you look as though there were a famine in the land, a stout gentleman exclaimed at the sight

of George Bernard Shaw's lean frame.

And the trouble with you, Northcliffe, is that you look as though you were its cause, Shaw replied.

 

So, you are going in to eat your patients.-

-Christain B. Apenes, Norway, to some veterinary surgeons on their way to a Christmas dinner.

 

Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks?

-Steven Wright

 

Take your joys to the glass, but not your sorrows to the bottle.

-G.K.Chesterton

 

I once shook hands with Pat Boone and my whole right side sobered up.

-Dean Martin

 

There is nothing wrong with sobriety, just as long as one does not overdo it.

-John Ciardi

 

The reason I drink is because when I'm sober I think I'm Eddie Fisher. 

-Dean Martin

 

An English newspaper wrote that Aretha Franklin had alcohol problems. She is nod demanding 60 million dollars in damages. 

That should keep her in booze for the next few Saturdays.

-Jon Almaas in NRK entertainment

 

I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

-Sir Winston Churchill

 

He: Can I buy you a drink?

She: Actually I'd rather have the money.

-Johanna's HP, Iceland

 

For many days we had to survive on just food and water.

-Ernest Hemingway

 

I never drink water, just think of the way it makes pipes rust.

-W.C.Fields

 

I distrust camels and anyone else who can go a week without a drink. 

-Joe E.Lewis

 

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading. 

-Henny Youngman

 

I drink to make other people more interesting.

-George Jean Nathan

 

A clever workingman who enjoyed to take a drink, was going to be employed in a trustworthy position on a railway station in the north area.

One of the questions that had to be answered was: How are the candidate's relations with alcohole?

The candidate's relations with alcohole is good, his superior wrote.

-From the memoires of Kåre Kristiansen, Norwegian politician

 

You have to come right away, doc. Dad's got the corkscrew stuck in his throat!

On his way out of the door, the doc received an updated situation report:

Just take it easy, doc, we found a new corkscrew in the kitchen.

-Joke from Fredrikstad, Norway

 

Alcohol preserves everything except secrets.

-Unknown


When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sinn.

When we commit no sinn, we go to heaven. Sooooo, let's all get drunk , and go to heaven.

-Unknown

 

Courvasier is one of the nobler French wines, enjoyed by the French people by their representatives.

-Ahti Karjalainen

 

I had taken the opportunity to refill my beer glass with lemonade. The host returned and filled his up with brandy. After finishing his third glass, 

he remained standing there with the glass in his hand, sweat trickling down his forehead, looking down at me in wonder about how unaffected I 

was by the rather large amount of alcohol that he believed me to have drunk. I don't know what he thought, but Oslo cinema leader Arnljot Engh, 

who visited Gori one year later, could tell me that they were still talking admiringly about the Norwegian Prime Minister who had nearly drunk the 

robust chairman of their collective farm under the table.

-Einar Gerhardsen

 

Chapter 13 On politics and politicians(110808)

 

Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.

-Nikita Khrustsjov

 

The revolution eats its children.

-French proverb

 

When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. So we were often angry with each other.

-Charles de Gaulle

 

In order to become the master the politician poses as the servant.

-Charles de Gaulle

 

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.

-Charles de Gaulle

 

I took over my father's wine yard the first year of the peace, and have been running it until this day, said an old fellow soldier

from World War I to President Charles de Gaulle on the 50th anniversary og the armistice. He went on:

What has become of you in this life, Charles? I have not heard one word about you since you were carried off to the infirmary

with a wounded leg in 1917.

-Reader's Diggest

 

I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.

-Voltaire

 

Too bad all the people who knows how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair.

-George Burns

 

Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that they cannot

separately plunder a third.

-Ambrose Bierce

 

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

-Voltaire

 

Never are lies told so often as before an election, during a war and after a hunting outing.

-Otto von Bismarck

 

..probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.
 
-John F. Kennedy describing a dinner for  Nobel Prize winners 1962

 

George Ball, Under-secretary of state for foreign affairs under President Kennedy, once said despondently to a journalist:

Close your eyes, rotate this globe and put your finger on the place where it stops. Rest assured that you will hit a hotspot that sooner or later will 

cause us a problem. Sometimes I would like to throw that globe right out my window.

A short time later he received a letter from some pupils: We read in the newspaper that you are thinking of throwing your globe out your window. 

Won't you give it to us instead, we don't have one at our school.

 

 A former prime minister of Canada, one who was renown for a liberal attitude on use of alcohol in his priate life, was addressing the Parliament. 

Suffering from a horrible hangover, his address ended when he vomitted on the lectern. After which he choked out the words: 

The opposition party makes me sick!

 

A conference is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.

-Fred Allen

 

Not change horses while crossing a stream.

-Abraham Lincoln comment to his renomination during Civil War, June 1864

 

A committee is a blind alley into which one misleads ideas to let them suffocate in silence.

-Abraham Lincoln

 

There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still...

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

Americans, indeed all free men, remember that in the final choice, a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's

chains.

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

-John F. Kennedy

 

When written in Chinese, the word "crisis" is composed of two characters - one represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

-John F. Kennedy

 

We don't want to be like the leaders during the Fr.rev. who said: there goes my people. I must find out where they are going, so that I can lead them.

-John F.Kennedy

 

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: President can't swim.

-Lyndon B. Johnson

 

Being President is like being a jackass in a hailstorm: You just have to stand there and take it.

-Lyndon B. Johnson

 

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

-Ronald Reagan

 

The public debt is big enough to take care of itself.

-Ronald Reagan

 

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.

-John Kenneth Galbraith

 

Economists always think the worst. They have predicted eight of the last three recessions.

-Barry Goldwater

 

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.

-Peter Laurence

 

Planned economy means replacing chance circumstances with calculated errors.

-Grafitti

 

I can't understand why people have such antipathy towards politician. They hav'nt done anything.

-Bob Hope

 

There is no road to freedom, freedom is the road.

-Mahatma Gandhi

 

It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.

-Vladimir Lenin

 

Freedom and life are synonysous.

-Nordahl Grieg, Norwegian writer and communist, disagree with Lenin

 

Blessed are the young, for they will inherit the national debt.

-Herbert Hoover

 

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It's someone who

understands Marx and Lenin.

-Ronald Reagan

 

I have opinions of my own - strong opinions - but I don't always agree with them.

-George Bush

 

Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining?

-George Wallace

 

If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune; and if anybody pulled him out, that I suppose would be a calamity.

-Benjamin Disraeli

 

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.

-Mahatma Gandhi

 

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

-Sir Winston Churchill

 

Mr.Clement Atlee is a very modest man, but then he has many reasons to be modest.

-Sir Winston Churchill

 

I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the government: i have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

-Sir Winston Churchill

 

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

-Sir Winston Churchill

 

I can assure him that I have my moments of soberness.

-Churchill on Hitler's opinion of his drinking habits

 

 
From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

-Sir Winston Churchill, speach of March 1946

 

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.

-Margaret Thatcher

 

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.

-Josh Billings


Yes, we are three times richer than our grandparents. But are we three times happier?

-Tony Blair

 

Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without hell.

-Frank Borman

 

Men and nations behave wisely once when they have exhaustly all the other alternatives.

-Abba Eban

 

There will be no peace in the Middle East before the Arab leaders have learned to love their own children more than they hate ours.

-Golda Meir in a movie

 

I don't know exactly what democracy is. But we need more of it.

-Chinese student

 

The great masses of people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.

-Adolf Hitler

 

A conservative is a man who does not think that anything should be done for the first time.

-Frank Vanderlip

 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

 

Good morning, I am Ahti Karjalainen. Who are you?

President Nixon visiting Finland had a rough encounter with the prime minister who had a slip of tongue.

 

A French minister visiting Finland said he would like to lay a wreath on the grave of the Unknown soldier.

Prime minister Ahti Karjalainen didn't know of any better solution than bringing him to the Sibelius-monument.

But isn't that name known in music context? the French man objected , and got this answer:

That's correct - Jean Sibelius is our nation's most famous classical composer, but as a soldier he was totaly unknown.

 

Norway is the last Soviet state - unbelieveble nationalistic, absolutely everything is politics.

-Bjørn Rosengren, Swedish Minister in the last 90's

 

Gunnar og Greta Garbo had basically only one thing in common: their last name.

-Kristian Rakvåg

 

A camel is a horse designed by committee.

-Sir Alec Issigonis

 

A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run.

-Elbert Hubbard

 

We are going to hell, but at least we travel at first class.

-Anker Jørgensen during the law cunjuctures in the 70 's

 

Politicians who are worried about the indifference of the electorate and poor participation at the elections should propose giving the franchise

to children down to 4 and the handing out of free liquor in the election rooms. Because it's from the mouths of children and drunkards that

honest words are spoken.

-Comment from NRK, the last sentence is also a Norwegian proverb

 

Some politicians are so good at changing their minds along with public opinion, that they meet themselves both coming and going and fail to recognize who it is.

-Unknown

 

In democracy the people are subjected to their own will, and that is a hard slavery.

-Anatole France

 

When I became a diplomat the first I had to learn, to shut my mouth in many languages.

-Golda Meir

 

The PLO has just opened their new office in Oslo. It has a great location - just a stone's throw from Israel's Embassy.

-Vårt Land, Norwegian newspaper

 

A leader is made only when there already is a crowd of followers.

-Ludwig Marcuse

 

The ideology's relationship to philosophy is like gluttony to gastronomy.

-W. McGuren

 

In politics the truth must wait until someone has use for it.

-Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

 

When I entered the job as Prime Minister of Sweden the opposition press wrote that I was a nothing. That's not a bad starting 

point.

-Tage Erlander

 

May be we should bring in a podium, so we also can hear Bratteli's opinion.

-Tage Erlander on Trygve Bratteli's reserved manners in private conversations

 

One should not kick people who is already lying still, but I make an exeption for the neo nazists.

-Frode Kjensmo, Norwegian stand up comedian

 

You can be quite certain the natives of USA were against immigration.

-Oddbjørn Jonstad, Norwegian right populist politician

 

I can sit here and listen whilw you impress each other with your many words and brilliant arguments, but I refuse to participate in the debate. I 

declime because my thought process is too limited. The best I can possibly do in the matter is to remember the words of Jørgen Kruse in Fortuna

after sitting and listening to his wife's prolonged explanations: Where in the hell is she getting all those words from?

-Johan Nygaardsvold, Norwegian Prime Minister 1935-1945, when he refused to take part in the Labour Party's group discussions on party 

guidelines and principles

   

I never heard Nygaardsvold talked about socialistic theories.

-Halvdan Koht, Norwegian Foreign Minister  

 

We want a new Norway: free from rags and uniforms.

-Martin Tranmæl, Labour agitator, 1934

 

Løvlien is a communist from 9 to 4.

-Martin Tranmæl on Emil Løvlien's aparatsjik-tendency

 

Not a chief elevated over the people, not the people's master, but the people's servant. And even though he was the chief.

-Einar Gerhardsen on Martin Tranmæl

 

When I don't feel satisfied with the rhetorics in a paragraph of my election speeches when I'm looking over them the night

before, I always make this comment in the margin: weak argument - raise voice!

-Used by Olav Oksvik, Norwegian Labour politician, but the original is English

 

This business must never occur again, said John Lyng.

I promise to never ever to it again, said Einar Gerhardsen as he laughingly ended his replay.

I am not sure we can rely on that, mumbled Lyng, as Gerhardsen returned to his chair in the Storting assembly.

-Extracts from the debate on EG's surprising first resignation in 1951

  

During a selection campagne I met a boy with a beautiful little kitten. Who is going to get his vote? I asked.

The Conservatives, replied the lad.

The day after we met again, and I repeated my question.

The Labour Party, came the answer.

Why did he change his mind so abruptly?

Because now he has opened his eyes.

-Einar Gerhardsen, former Norwegian Prime Minister

 

In 1965 the Labour Party was perplexed as to how to word the monarch's speech to the nation. Their perplaxity arose from the 

fact that a coalition government would take office in just a few days; thereby ending 30 years of Labour Party administrations in 

Norway. A suggestion was made by minister O.C.Gundersen to keep the speech short:

The election results have brought a coalition government to power. God save the king and our fatherland.

 

The new rules for sick-leave are based upon three major principles which are basic to the Norwegian Labour Party plattform:

Fraternity, eqality and inactivity.

-From an Einar Gerhardsen parody 1979

 

School books in Norway were very outdated in the 1980's. Social studies books maintained that Einar Gerhardsen was still prime minister. In the 

debate in the Storting regarding funding of new books it was suggested:

The cheapest way to solve the problem is to re-instate Einar Gerhardsen as PM. 

 

Having spent all his time running from meeting to meeting and stirring up trouble, Trygve Bratteli has never done a full day's work in 

his life. He must have felt like a new man yesterday after spending a full day in the court of appeals.

-Tønsberg Blad, Norwegian newspaper, during a labour dispute in 1933

 

I have always known that if I ever got a job in the Ministry of Finance, it would be either as caretaker or cabinet minister.

-Trygve Bratteli, autodidact

 

The suggestions seem to be in line with what the majority of the Storting's Representatives appear to believe. If people are absolutely determined to 

do something they like, then they in no way should be allowed enjoy themselves while doing it.

-A comment by Trygve Bratteli upon being applauded by The Christian Democrats for increasing taxes on spirits  

 

Trygve Bratteli had presents for the Harlem children, two boys and an active but mature ten years old daughter. She was in 

constant movement and had no other playmates than the grown-ups. Bowing awkwardly, Bratteli presented her with a doll wearing a diaper. 

What was your name again? Bratteli asked.

Gro, of course. Thanks a lot. This is the finest doll I have ever seen.

Ther is very little from this first meeting between two up and coming prime ministers, however, to indicate that the first one was so 

deeply impressed that he would recommand the second one 31 years later.

-From Trygve Bratteli, a Story, written by Roy Jacobsen

 

We most certainly cannot have that old stick as prime minister.

-Werna Gerhardsen, Einar Gerhardsen's wife, about Trygve Bratteli

 

You ask which politician I find to have been the must outstanding in Norway. There I will put Trygve Bratteli on the top, and then I will cumulate him.

-Professor of history Magne Skodvin

 

The books on the Agrarian Party  Governments in the early 30's are a wonderful alternative to crime literature.

-Trygve Bratteli



What impression did you get of Kosygin?

Trygve Bratteli: He was just as he looks.



He fulfilled probably the most important function that a political leader has;  he showed personal qualities that made it natural to look up to him.

-Lars Roar Langslet on Trygve Bratteli


I have never heard anyone being removed by his own with so many regrets.

-Trygve Bratteli when Per Borten had to leave Prime Minister office

 

I will batten down all hatches if that man ever gets a leading role in The Labour Party.

-Trygve Bratteli about Thorbjørn Jagland, when the latter attempted a coup to get the mother party to ratify The Youth Organization's plan 

of action for 1978

 

Trygve was never able to kick a ball in mid-air. He always stopped it dead in its tracks, observed it for a long time before passing it on.

-Haakon Lie on TB

 

There was never any doubt on what Trygve meant about a matter, especially when he kept his mouth shut.

-Haakon Lie on TB

 

My respect for you is almost as great as my disagreement with you.

-Norwegian Labour politician Bjartmar Gjerde to his oppositional colleague Kjell Bondevik

 

A politician is a person with such a thick skin that he can be standing upright spineless.

-Finn Gustavsen, Norwegian socialist

 

One of the best assets about our new prime minister is his wife.

-Ranik Halle on Magnhild Borten

 

During his period as Prime Minister, Per Borten had the smallest majority possible in the Norwegian Parliament (Storting). When Odelstingspresident Olaf Kortner, a 

leading politician from the Liberal Party, was injured in a traffic accident, the parliament sent the following message to him: 

76 members wish you a speedy recovery, 74 members don't.

-Actor Willy Hoel in NRK Radio

 

I am tired of Per Borten running this government as if it were a country store.

-John Lyng, Foreign Minister, just before resigning 1970

 

We have not tried to accuse the Labour Party of being responsible for our failing to meet our home building goals. The reason why 

we are behind schedule in the housing program is because of the long hard winter we have had this year. We have not accused the 

Labour Party of being responsible for that.

-Bent Røiseland in Stortinget 1967

 

 Bent Røiseland is the best Prime Minister Norway never had.

-Herbjørn Sørebø, NRK in a obituary

 

Kåre Willoch was the unappreachable champion on a throne. Bent Røiseland was an amusing chap filled with rural wisdom.

-Haakon Lie  

 

Have you checked the podium?

-Berte Rognerud, Conserative Norwegian politician, inquiring about the whereabouts of assembly colleague known for being verbose.

 

Svenn Stray lead the parliament group in accordance with the law of vagrants; Kåre Willoch practised the military code, while Jo Benkow

abided with the law on social wellfare.

-Conservative Norwegian politician Otto Lyng in his memoirs

 

Kåre Willoch seen as one of the best-behaved boys in class, but on a committee excursion in a foreign country he loosened up a little and put

some laxative in Kåre Kristiansen's soup. Kristiansen never fully recovered from this.

-Norwegian entertainer Kenneth Sivertsen when imitating Einar Førde

 

When I see and hear that man at the podium of Stortinget (Norwegian Parliament), I ask myself the same question as when admires a sailing

vessel built into a bottle: How in God's name did he come in here?

-Labour politician Guttorm Hansen on Anders Lange - populistic clown

 

Mr. Platou is apt to misunderstand things. As soon as we have pulled him out of the ditch on the left hand, he stambles directly over to the

right hand side of the road and falls in again. Until he improves his way of thinking, we will just leave him there.

-Odvar Nordli in the Norwegian parliament - Stortinget

 

Thorbjørn Berntsen has written more books than he has read.

-Einar Førde on his Norwegian Labour Party colleague

 

This is between you and me, Mr. President.

-Asbjørn Jordahl from the speaker's platform in Stortinget, they being the only members present

 

Even though I didn't know a single thing about politics, I said yes when Laif Arne Heløe asked me if I wanted to be undersecretary 

in the Department of Health. When a man is so crazy as he is, I presume he needed a psychiatrist pretty bad.

-Astrid Nøkleby Heiberg

 

They are spending money like drunken sailors.

-English banking expert commenting Norwegian banking policies 1991

 

When a socialist says that we are all in the same boat, you must be careful, because he expects you to row.

-Jan P. Syse, former Conservative Prime Minister of Norway used it, but its originally English

 

He is a bag full of shit.

-English translation of the Norwegian Minister Thorbjørn Berntsen's comment on his British colleague

 

The Labour Party have stolen our cloths while we were bathing.

-Jan Peder Syse

 

I don't wish to be a quoting machine.

-Gro Harlem Brundtland

 

The Stoltenberg administration's DNA-profile became weaker and weaker.

-Kristian Rakvåg

(The Labour Party is shortened DNA in Norwegian)

 

During these days I have felt I must have several thoughts in my head at the same time.

-Kjell Magne Bondevik on the top summit in Oslo 1998

 

It's important to have all the thoughts in your head simultaneous.

-Kristin Halvorsen, Norwegian socialist leader

 

Sponheim (Agricultural Minister) has caused greater damage to Norwegian agriculture than all these damn deer.

-A farmer from Vartdal on TV as he stood watching his field of vegetables destroyed by a herd of deer

 

Børge Brende, the Minister of Environment in Norway, was once a guest in a NRK-TV show. A picture of a caravan and numerous camels flashes on the screen.

Børge Brende: We politicians often find ourselves in situations where we have to gulp down camels.(Matthew chapter 23, verse 23).

Jon Almaas: Does this picture make you hungry?

-Norwegian TV-Entertainment

 

If the husband is a reactionary and the wife is radical, they can always meet each other halfway.

-Alf Nordhus, Norway

 

You know that inflation is getting to be a serious problem when the money in your old piggy bank is just enough to buy a new one.

-Ralf Bülow

 

A nil is nothing, but when you get too many of them in politics, things can become dangerous.

-Polish proverb

 

Even with today's advanced technology, it is still impossible to nail a pudding to the wall.

-Helmuth Schmidt's explanation as to why Ludwig Erhard's picture was not hanging in the gallery of chancellors

 

The newspapers have been reporting this meeting as a catastrophe, but I have said ut before and I say it once again: It is you who are the real catastrophe.

-Boris Yeltsin to journalists during a common press conferance with President Clinton in the USA

 

When the Soviet Union was still a power to be reckoned with, political dissidents were confined in mental asylums. Brezhnev never understood 

the meaning of political asylum.

-Kristian Rakvåg

 

In the union debate he put forward a motion so radical and so daring that it could have lead to war with Sweden in a short time. Berg saw the 

consequences of his proposal, and was extremely excited during the voting. The Norwegian Parliament gave it thumbs down. Berge exhaled with 

great relief and said: Thank God...

-Johs. Seland on the impulsive Abraham Berge+++

 

Luckily, he had enormous success with his book «Fange i natt og tåke» (Prisoner in Night and Fog), down-to-earth and strong like himself - but it 

seemed like reliving this terrible chapter of his life, which he had consciously repressed from his mind, made him even older. The human dignity 

and quiet warmth was, however, more evident now.

-Lars Roar Langslet on Trygve Bratteli

(The Night and  Fog Decree from 1941 was an order to let certain «dangers to German Security», mostly resistance fighters from Western 

Europe, vanish without a trace after capture (into the worst concentration camps to be worked to death in secret) rather than immediately 

execute them. The uncertainty was considered to have a greater deterring effect than executions.)

 

Her spirits are greater than her humour is, and she is more proficient at fighting for the accepted than at thinking revolutionary new thoughts.

-Lars Roar Langslet on Gro Harlem Brundtland 

 

I cannot remember that Gro Harlem Bruntland ever spoke in the Students' Association. She was competent, intelligent, pretty and successful, but 

at that time she seemed rather modest in crowds.

-Lars Roar Langslet

 

I told Kåre Willoch about Gro's moved goodbye in The Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs before she became Prime Minister, and he did in no 

way hide his discomfort at this kind of sentimental display of emotions. A few months later, Willoch were to become Prime Minister, and gave a 

short speech of goodbye from group leadership. The introduction was impeccable. This has been a circle of friends, he continued. Then his 

voice suddenly became strangely rusty and odd, and the speech came to a stop. With shiny eyes, he looked around for help and found it in the 

form of the chairman gavel, which he hit against the table and said: I think this will do!

-Lars Roar Langslet

 

They resembled each other in urban background, rationality, belief in the power of arguments to convince - but that did not inspire any detectable 

mutual sympathy; quite the opposite, if anything. He developed a sharp sense of what aggravated her the most, and often he succeeded.

-Lars Roar Langslet on Gro Harlem Brundtland and Kåre Willoch

 

Early on, I noticed a slight student who chose his words aptly, who still had hair on his head and an aura of respect surrounding him - 

Kåre Willoch.

-Lars Roar Langslet

 

When senior public servants attended government conferences, we were told that they had never experienced such a professional Prime Minister. 

He had studied all the documents, grasped every  point - he even grasped a few points that no one else had seen

-Lars Roar Langslet on Kåre Willoch.

 

Politicians are like nails. Those that have a head, can be pulled out and used for something else.

-Kåre Willoch

 

During Mona Røkke's period as Minister of Justice and the Police, big headlines were triggered by the fact that a police car had taken her home 

from a New Year's Eve party with friends. During the budget conference shortly thereafter, she worked hard to increase funds for police vehicles. 

She said: It is important to remember that these cars have to deal with a pretty dubious clientèle, and that they are often dirtied.

There was loud laughter around the table.

 

I do wish that you would accept the post, as this would make a change of government after the election inevitable, and I have heard only 

sympathetic utterances about you, even though both your voice and your appearance is so-so.

-Anders Lange in a letter to the Norwegian Liberal leader Bent Røiseland in 1965

   

The male mayor who was supposed to give an introductory speech to the debate of the current political situation at the annual general meeting of 

the Agrarian Party Women's Association, entertained the audience with a one hour long lecture on the thinning out of wild oats. Confronted with 

that fact by the dismayed delegates, he explained:

One has a certain measure of  savoir-faire,  darn it, and a true gentleman never discusses politics when ladies are present.

-Kristian Rakvåg

 

Venstre (the Norwegian Liberal Party) will never swallow that! The sons objected to a strongly worded draft. 

Precisely, he answered with a mischievous smile. That is the whole point. I put it in to take it out again when they object. When this paragraph 

is removed, there will not be any objections made to the rest - as there might otherwise very well be.

-On Carl Joachim Hambro and his sons by one of them - Johan Hambro

 

When an important note in response (to the Soviet attempt to have the Spitsbergen Treaty dissolved during the war) was written (by C.J.Hambro 

 

and Arnold Ræstad)  under instructions of  Trygve Lie (Minister of Foreign Affairs) during a countryside weekend (in England) which he hosted, he 

 

expressed his regret that he had not been able to contribute very much. Ræstad answered courteously, with a hint of sarcasm: I wouldn't say that. 

 

You did contribute some excellent pheasants.

           

 

 

There was a meeting of the legal committee of the Council of Europe.

 

On the agenda: 1) Protection of migratory birds, which were being shot in large numbers in Southern Europe during the winter. 2) Death penalty in 

 

European countries during the winter.

 

Our man: Jakob Aano, KrF (Christian Democratic Party).

 

He was tired from travelling, and dozed off for a minute - he thought. But quite a few minutes past before he woke up, and discussion had 

 

progressed to the death penalty. Feeling that Norway ought  to say something about our beloved migratory birds, he requested permission to 

 

speak: It is of course sad that so many of them are shot every year. But we should not forget that there are many millions left, so I don't  really 

 

think this is a major problem.

 

 

 

He must have bitten himself in the tail.

 

-Comment by C.J.Hambro when receiving a quarrelsome member's apology for absence from the central board of Høyre (The Conservative Party), 

 

due to blood poisoning

 

 

 

Economists are infected with a plague of the soul.

 

-C.J.Hambro

 

 

 

The committees of the UN is obviously composed by the same principles as American juries. There, as we all know, the jurors must take an oath 

 

that they know nothing whatsoever about the case in question, and have absolutely no interests attached to its conclusion!

 

-C.J.Hambro 1953

 

 

 

And Trygve Lie, who had naturally had too much of what little was to be had at Koht's, was unlucky enough to be stopped in a police control, but 

 

was immediately released when they saw who the culprit was.

 

-C.J.Hambro visiting Halvdan Koht, and got a lift back to Oslo by Minister of Justice Trygve Lie

 

 

 

The debate on the King's opening speech of the parliamentary session is a fashion show where the house of Gerhardsen shows its spring 

 

collection.

 

-Per Lønning (Conservative) in his first speech in  Stortinget 1957

 

 

 

But it was hard on Einar Gerhardsen to fall on an issue like that, after spending his life securing better 

 

circumstances for Norwegian workers. I felt sorry for him as he shuffled from the rostrum after his last speech before the government fell. Never 

 

before had I seen the autoritative and charismatic Prime Minister seem so perplexed and helpless.

 

-Gunnar Garbo, Liberal Norwegian politician 1963

 

 

 

The two gentlemen belong to quite different political ideologies. This must be one of the few occations where Mr. Lyng has had the adventage of 

 

seeing a state of affairs through the glasses of Mr. Langhelle.

 

-Julius Nyerere visiting Norway, and Prime Minister John Lyng had forgotten his glasses and had to borrow Langhelle's

 

 

 

What has always made the State a hell on earth has been precisely mankind's attempt to turn it into a paradise.

 

-Hølderlin Friedrich

 

 

 

Chapter 14 On women(Upd.170105)

 

God made man before woman, to give him time to think of an answer for her first question.

-Unknown

 

God created Adam before Eve - for once the man had to get the oportunity to speak out.

-Unknown

 

Sure, God created man before woman. But you should always have a rough draft before the final masterpiece.

-Unknown

 

The first time Adam had a chance, he laid the blame on woman. 

-Nancy Astor

 

Woman was created from the rib of a man not from his head to be above him, not from his feet to be walked upon, but from his side to be equal, 

near his arm to be protected, and close to his heart to be loved.

-Dale S. Hadley

 

I'm not denyin' that women are foolish; God Almighty made 'em to match men.

-George Eliot

 

Male and female are two locked boxes, and the one contains the key to the other.

-Karen Blixen

 

All women know what they want, but they don't always know when they want it.

-Hans Søhnker

 

Women knit, because they need something to think about during conversation.

-Soya

 

When it comes to women, there are two possibillities: they either are angels or they are still alive.

-Charles Baudelaire

 

Women are more irritable than men, possibly because men are more irritating than women.

-Unknown

 

Women often is getting the last word, because men can't think up anything more to say.

-Hanne Wieder

 

A woman can pull a man up of the gutter and down from the Himalayas.

-Gustav Adeling

 

A female hair has greater drawing power than an ox.

-Japanese proverb

 

Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior.

-Socrates

 

No woman is unsuited to becoming a man's better half.

-Zsa Zsa Gabor

 

I never hated a man enough to give him his diamonds back.

-Zsa Zsa Gabor

 

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.

-Oscar Wilde

 

Women are a decorative sex.They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly.

-Oscar Wilde

 

No woman should be accurate about her age . It looks so calculating.

-Oscar Wilde

 

As a rule, the happiest period in a woman's lifeis the years she is twenty-nine.

-Unknown

 

A woman can readily be cured for any ailment she imagines she has. Just tell her it is a sign of ageing.

-Arthur Schnitzler

 

Brigands demand your money or your life; women require both.

-Samuel Butler

 

When a woman reaches those critical years, she becomes uncritical.

-Marcel Achard

 

I felt like a woodpecker on a dried out evergreen.

-A small Norwegian man dancing with a tall, lanky elderly woman

 

Dancing with her was like trying to move a piano.

-Ring Lardner

 

Men admire clever women, just as long as they are not in the same line og business.

-Sickan Carlsson

 

Women are like ships of war, but they camouflage themselves as ships of mercy.+

-Esther Vilar

 

Women have almost a genius for anti-climaxes.

-Esther Forbes

 

Men are like matches, they are quickly inflamed and lose their heads.

-Gina Lollobrigida

 

I prefer women from the north. They are cold on the surface, but warm inside.

-Alfred Hitchcock

 

If a man tells a woman she is beautiful, she will overlook all his other lies.

-Unknown   

 

When it comes to reading a woman's eye, most men are illiterates.

-Heidelinde Weis

 

You'd be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.

-Dolly Parton

 

I have been around for such a long time that I knew Doris Day before she became a virgin.

-Groucho Marx

 

If all the girls attending the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

-Dorothy Parket

 

There is only one thing a man can do that women cannot; piss in a bonfire.

-Roseann Barr

 

The faster you run after a woman, the slower you reach your target.

-Marcus M. Ronner

 

The easiest way to make a woman be silent, is to let her speaches her peace.

-Marcus M. Ronner

 

I have not talked to my wife for three days - don't want to interrupt her.

-Unknown

 

A wise man never interrupts his wife, he waits until she does it all by herself.

-Humphrey Bogart

 

Women like silent men. They think they're listening.

-Marcel Archard

 

When a woman is quiet it is because she has something to say.

-Elinor Glyn

 

There are two types of women, whose who always are talking and those who never shut up.

-Oscar Wilde

 

Don't laugh before sunset, mother-in-law may be coming with the evening train.

-Unknown

 

The average woman would rather have beauty than brains, because the average man can see better than he can think.

-Unknown

 

I asked a Burmese why women, after centuries of following their men, now walk ahead. He said there were many unexploded land mines

since the war.

-Robert Mueller

 

If your wife wants to learn to drive, don't stand in her way.

-Stan Levenson

 

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.

-Gloria Steinem

 

A beautiful woman without good sense is like a gold ring in a pig's snout.

-Salomo's Preverbs 11.22

 

Better to live on a corner of the roof than share a house with a quarrelsome wife.

-Salomo's Proverbs

 

The secret to stay young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.

-Lucille Ball

 

Beauty is power; a smile is its sword.

-Charles Reade

 

A pretty girl will always meet difficulties.

-Agatha Christie

 

Her body has gone to her head.

-Barbare Stanwyck, about Marilyn Monroe

 

She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.

-Groucho Marx

 

Women and soup cannot be kept waiting: otherwise they get cold.

-Otto Serander

 

Men often discover things that women have known for a long time.

-George Bernard Shaw

 

A man is never weaker than when a woman tells him how strong he is.

-Steve Hannagan

 

The man loves with his head, the woman thinks with her heart.

-Danish proverb

 

There are no hard women, only soft men.

-Raquel Welch

 

Where is Silicon Valley? Probably between the breasts of some Hollywood actress.

-Unknown

 

It is forbidden to wear two-pieced swimming-suites here in Spain, an angry policeman said to Brigitte Bardot once in the 60's.

Which part do you want me to take off? she replied.

 

According ill-natured gossit Wenche Foss bleaches her hair. It is more adjecent to conclude that her hair was blond when she bought it.

-Freddy Kjensmo, Norwegian stand-up, commenting our old primadonna

 

Vibeke Løkkeberg's films are like the lady herself: long, dark and mysterious, and with an acute need of a clipping.

-Are Kalvø, Norwegian humorist

 

The man is the head, but the woman turns it.

-Chinese proverb

 

Men think they know, but women know better.

-Chinese proverb

 

The man runs the world, the woman runs the man.

-Proverb

 

All men are masters of their homes - until the guests have gone.

-Belgian proverb

 

Women are smarter than men, but let's keep our voices down, otherwise we might spoil a good thing.

-Anita Loos

 

She always believed in the old adage, 'leave them while you're looking good.'

-Anita Loos

 

Should three women agree on an issue, then stars would shine at midday.

-Proverb from India

 

From a discussion in the 1930's,  when the differences in lifestyle between the sexes was much greater than now:

Men need money for cigarettes, booze and wining and dining the opposite sex. But women do not need their own income. After all, they do not smoke or drink - and 

they already are women.

-Jørg Raknes, Midsund, Norway 

 

 The male is a domestic animal which, if treated with firmness and kindness, can be trained to do most things.

-Jill Cooper

 

The weaker sex is strong just because of its weakness, and it is this weakness which makes the stronger sex weak.

-Greta Garbo



Are you aware that the annual outlay of French women on jewellery and clothes is double that of our entire military budget?asked marshal Alphonse Juin. 

It is possible,  but are you aware, marshal, that French women make at least twice as many conquests as the French army? replied Josephine Baker.

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.

-Charlotte Whitton

 

Chapter 15 On love and sexuality(upd.110808)

 

An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have, the older she gets the more interested he is in her.

-Agatha Christie

 

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

-Blaise Pascal

 

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

-Fyodor Dostoyevsky

 

A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies.

-Salomo's Proverbs 31.10.

 

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

-Aristotle

 

Love is like a butterfly, if you chase it, it will fly away, but if you wait patiently, it will land on your shoulder when you least expect it.

-Anon

 

Love is like a butterfly, if you hold it too close - you will kill it, if you don't hold it close enough - it will fly away.

-Unknown

 

It is easier to die for the woman you love than to live together with her.

-George Gordon Noel Byron

 

Love rules his kingdom without a sword and unites without chains.

-Proverb

 

Love is to still be walking close together under the umbrella a long time after it has stopped raining.

-Linda Mac Farlane

 

Love is eternal while it lasts.

-Regnier de Henri

 

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other , but looking outward together in the same direction.

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 

Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love.

-Albert Einstein

 

Happiness is watching the TV at your girlfriend's house during a power failure.

-Bob Hope

 

When a man makes a woman his wife, it's the highest compliment he can pay her, and it's usually the last.

-Helen Rowland

 

We had a lot in common. I loved him and he loved him.

-Shelley Winters

 

I cannot live with someone who can't live without me.

-Nadine Gordimer


A kiss is a pleasant reminder that two heads are better than one.

-Unknown

 

The kiss is an ingenious expedient that prevents lovers from talking too much nonsens.

-Alessandro Morandotti

 

Marriage is like a phone call in the night. First the ring, and then you wake up.

-Evelyn Hendrickson

 

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

-Michel de Montaigne

 

Here's to woman! Would that we could fall into her arms with out falling into her hands.

-Ambrose Bierce

 

Love can fall as swiftly on a turt as on a lilly.

-Unknown

 

Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.

-Mary Roberts Rhinehart

 

All ready on the wedding day my wife showed her truth face, when she refuced to have me in the wedding picture.

-Unknown

 

Ah, Mozart! He was happily married - but his wife wasn't.

-Victor Borge

 

Marriage is a lottery that doensn't permit you to tear up the ticket if you don't win.

-Laurence Peter

 

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

-Samuel Johnson

 
 
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.

-Socrates

 

Love is a game that two can play and win.

-Eva Gabor

 

If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.

-Anton Chekhov

 

When do you think the pope will permit us to marry? said the nun to the monk.

Certainly not in our time, but perhaps in our children's or grandchildren's.

-Dave Allen

 

Curve: the most gra