|
O |
| O liberty! O liberty! what crimes are committed in your name. Madame
Roland |
| O Lord, if there is a Lord, save my soul, if I have a soul. Ernest
Renan |
| O physics! Preserve me from metaphysics! Isaac Newton |
O tempora! O mores!
(What a time! What a civilization!) Marcus
Tullius Cicero |
| O'Toole's dictum: "Murphy was an optimist." |
| Oath: In law, a solemn appeal to the Deity, made binding upon the
conscience by a penalty for perjury. Ambrose Bierce |
| Observation, not old age, brings wisdom. |
| Observatory: A place where astronomers conjecture away the guesses of
their predecessors. Ambrose Bierce |
| Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off your goal. |
| Occupation is the scythe of time. Napoleon Bonaparte |
| Ocean: A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made
for man - who has no gills. |
| Of all forms of caution, caution in love is the most fatal. |
| Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable. Samuel Johnson |
| Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity. Remy
de Gourmont |
| Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, though the
cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most
tormenting. Laurence Sterne |
Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe,
Sadder than owl-songs or the
midnight blast,
Is that portentous phrase, "I told you so,"
Uttered by
friends, those prophets of the past. Lord George Gordon Byron |
| Of puns it has been said that they who most dislike them are least able
to utter them. Edgar Allen Poe |
| Of two evils, choose to be the least. Ambrose Bierce |
| Of what efficacy are empty laws, without morals to enforce
them? Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) |
Oh better than the minting
of a gold-crowned king
Is the safe-kept
memory
Of a lovely thing. Sara Teasdale |
| Oh liberty, what crimes are committed in your name! Attrib. to Madame
Roland
(Last words before her execution, 1793) |
| Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at
rest. Bible, Psalms 55:6 |
Oh, threats of Heaven and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is
certain - This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is
Lies;
The Flower that once has blown forever dies. LXIII, Rubaiyat of
Omar Khayyam (5th Ed.) |
|
Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to
conceive. Don Herold |
|
Oh what a tangled web we weave when we practice to relieve. Sir
Hermann Black |
Oh, what tangled webs we weave
When we first practice to deceive. Sir
Walter Scott |
|
Oh! how many torments lie in the small circle of a wedding-ring! Colley Cibber |
|
Old age and treachery always win over youth and honesty. |
|
Old age is the most unexpected of things that can happen to a
man. Leon Trotsky |
|
Old doughnut makers never die, they just get tired of the hole
business. |
|
Old frogs never die...but they do croak. |
|
Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement. |
|
Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for
their inability to give bad examples. Francois, Duc de La
Rochefoucauld |
|
Old musicians never die, they just decompose. |
|
Old people shouldn't eat health foods, they need all the preservatives
they can get. Robert Orben |
|
Old soldiers never die. Young ones do. |
Omnia amor vincit.
(Love conquers all.) Virgil (Publius Vergilius
Maro) |
| Omniscience: Talking only about things you know about. |
| On a fool's beard the barber learns to shave. Italian proverb |
| On One Who Made Long Epitaphs Friend! for your Epitaphs I'm griev'd,
Where still so much is said,
One half will never be believ'd,
The
other never read. Alexander Pope |
On y soit, qui mal y pense.
(You are what you think.) |
| ON THE ANTIQUITY OF MICROBES Adam
Had
'em. Anonymous |
| Once, adv.: Enough. |
| Once begun, a task is easy; half the work is done. Horace (Quintus
Horatius Flaccus) |
| Once during Prohibition I was forced to live for days on nothing but
food and water. W.C. Fields |
| Once made equal to man, woman becomes his superior. Socrates |
| Once the word is out of your mouth, you can't swallow it back. Russian
proverb |
| Once we had wooden chalices and golden priests; now we have golden
chalices and wooden priests. Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| One arrow does not bring down two birds. Turkish proverb |
One bliss for which
There is no match
Is when you itch
To turn up and
scratch. Odgen Nash |
| One can be bored until boredom becomes a mystical experience. Logan P.
Smith |
| One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down
anything except a good reputation. Oscar Wilde |
| One deceit needs many others, and so the whole house is built in the
air and must soon come to the ground. Baltasar Gracian |
| One difference between a man and a machine is that a machine is quiet
when well oiled. |
| One eye-witness is better than ten hearsays. Thomas Fuller, M.D. |
| One family builds a wall, two families enjoy it. |
| One friend in a lifetime is much; two are many; three are hardly
possible. Henry Adams |
| One good turn deserves another. Petronius Arbiter |
| One-half of the world don't know how th' other half dodges
taxes. Frank M. ("Kin") Hubbard |
| One has to dismount from an idea, and get into the saddle again, at
every parenthesis. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
| One is better off seated than standing, lying than seated, asleep than
awake, and dead than alive. Arabian proverb |
| One learns in life to keep silent and draw one's own
confusions. Cornelia Otis Skinner |
| One learns patience in a prison. Feodor Dostoevski |
| One learns peoples through the heart, not the eyes or the
intellect. Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) |
| One learns to itch where one can scratch. Ernest Bramah |
| One lie calls for many. Thomas Fuller, M.D. |
| One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives. Euripides |
| One man tells a falsehood, a hundred repeat it as true. |
| One man's fish is another man's poisson. Carolyn Wells |
| One man's folly is another man's wife. Helen Rowland |
| One man's justice is another injustice. Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| One man's Mead is another man's Persian. George S. Kaufman |
| One man's poetry is another man's poison. Oscar Wilde |
| One man's pointlessness is another's barbed satire. Franklin P. Adams |
| One may have good eyes and see nothing. Italian proverb |
| One meets her destiny often on the road she takes to avoid it. |
One Moment in Annihilation's Waste,
One Moment, of the Well of Life to
taste -
The Stars are setting and the Caravan
Starts for the Dawn of
Nothing - Oh, make haste! XXXVIII, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1st Ed.) |
| One more such victory, and we are lost. Pyrrus |
| One nice thing about egotists: they don't talk about other people. |
| One of the commonest ailments of the present is premature formation of
opinion. Frank M. ("Kin") Hubbard |
| One of the pleasures of reading old letters is the knowledge that they
need no answer. Lord George Gordon Byron |
| One of the very best of all earthly possessions is self-possession. George D. Prentice |
| One of the worst of all judicial failings is a desire to be humorous in
court. Justice Comyn |
| One of these days is none of these days. English proverb |
| One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one
soon loses control of the head too. Freidrich W. Neitzsche |
| One place is everywhere, everywhere is nowhere. Persian proverb |
| One puts a chicken in the pot, never a peacock. Italian proverb |
| One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are
hanged. Heinrich Heine |
| One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to battle for
freedom and truth. Henrik Ibsen |
One shouldn't be too inquisitive in life
Either about God's secrets or
one's wife. Geoffrey Chaucer |
| One size fits all: Doesn't fit anyone. |
| One thing leads to another, and usually does. |
| One thought fills immensity. William Blake |
| One way to stop a runaway horse is to bet on him. |
| One wife is too much for most husbands to hear But two at a time
there's no mortal can bear. John Gay |
| One woman's poise is another woman's poison. Katharine Brush |
| One would not be alone even in Paradise. Italian proverb |
| Only a ballplayer's errors are published every day. |
| Only a fool asks "What do you want with my wife?" Italian proverb |
| Only a fool will make a doctor his heir. Russian proverb |
| Only a mediocre writer is always at his best. W. Sumerset Maugham |
| Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps. |
| Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. Oscar Wilde |
| Only fools say it can't be done. |
| Only the educated are free. Epictetus |
| Only the person who has faith in himself can be faithful to
others. Erich Fromm |
| Only the sinner has a right to preach. Christopher Morley |
| Only the suppressed word is dangerous. Ludwig Brne |
| Only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches. English proverb |
| Only the young die good. Oliver Herford |
| Only those who attempt the absurd achieve the impossible. |
| Onomatopeia: (Greek) If you have to look up the meaning of this word,
it is clearly not what you are looking for. Edmund H. Volkart |
| Open confession is good for the soul. Scottish proverb (and James
Kelly) |
| Opinion is of more power than law. Sydney Smith |
| Opportunity knocks but once. |
| Opportunity makes the thief. English proverb |
| Opportunity: A favorable occasion for grasping a
disappointment. Ambrose Bierce |
| Optimism: The Noble temptation to see too much in everything. Gilbert
K. Chesterton |
| Optimism: The world is the best of all possible worlds, and everything
in it is a necessary evil. Francis H. Bradley |
| Optimization hinders evolution. |
Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano.
(We should pray for a
sane mind in a sound body.) Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) |
| Organization is the enemy of improvisation. |
| Originality is undetected plagiarism. William R. Inge |
| Orthodoxy is my doxy; heterodoxy is another man's doxy. Bishop William
Warburton |
| Orthodoxy: That peculiar condition where the patient can
neither eliminate an old idea nor absorb a new one. Elbert Hubbard |
| Our bodies are our gardens, to which our wills are gardeners. William
Shakespeare |
| Our costliest expenditure is time. Theophrastus |
| Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong,
to be put right. Carl Shurz |
| Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always
be in the right; but our country, right or wrong. Stephen Decatur |
| Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by
fearing to attempt. William Shakespeare |
| Our foreign dealings are an open book - generally a checkbook. Will
Rogers |
| Our houseplants have a good sense of humous. |
| Our last garment is made without pockets. Italian proverb |
| Our occasional madness is less wonderful than our occasional
sanity. George Santayana |
| Our wisdom, whether expressed in public or private, belongs to the
world, but our follies belong to those we love. Gilbert K. Chesterton |
| Out of sight is out of mind. |
| Out of the mouths of babes does often come cereal. |
Out upon it, I have loved
Three whole days together;
And I am like to
love three more,
If it prove fair weather. Sir John Suckling |
| Ovation: Laying an egg in public. John Bailey, Helen Furnas, & J.C.
Furnas |
| Over the hill: When your back goes out more than you do. |