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P |
| Pandemonium did not reign; it poured.
John K. Bangs |
| Paradise will remain empty of lawyers until hell is full.
Italian
proverb |
| Parallel lines never meet unless you bend one or both of them. |
| Paranoia is simply an optimistic outlook on life. |
| Paranoia:
A healthy understanding of the nature of the universe. |
| Pardon one offense and you encourage the commission of many.
Publilius
Syrus |
| Pardon: To remit a penalty and restore to a life of crime. To add to
the lure of crime the temptation of ingratitude.
Ambrose Bierce |
| Pardoning the bad is injuring the good.
Thomas Fuller, M.D.[parody of Edgar A. Guest's poem] |
| Party: In contracts, the one of the first part who is always at odds
with the one of the second part, which leads to a parting of the ways,
known as breaking the contract. Edmund H. Volkart |
| Passion is the element in which we live, without it, we hardly
vegetate. Lord George Gordon Byron |
| Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.
Eric
Hoffer |
| Passions are less mischievous than boredom, for passions tend to
diminish, boredom to increase. Barbey D'Aurevilly |
| Patience comes to those who wait. |
| Patience is something that you admire greatly in the driver behind you
but not in the one ahead of you. |
| Patience is the best medicine for every trouble.
Titus Maccius Plautus |
| Patience is the virtue of asses.
French proverb |
| Patience:
A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.
Ambrose
Bierce |
| Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
Samuel Johnson |
Pauca sed matura.
(Few but excellent.)
Gauss |
| Peace, like charity, begins at home.
Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Pearls around the neck - stones upon the heart.
Yiddish proverb |
| Penitent: Undergoing or awaiting punishment.
Ambrose Bierce |
| People are always available for work in the past tense. |
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People are crying up the rich and variegated plumage of the peacock,
and he is himself blushing at the sight of his ugly feet.
Sa'di |
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People are either born hosts or born guests.
Max Beerbohm |
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People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. Somerset
Maugham |
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People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
Gilbert K.
Chesterton |
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People, like sheep, tend to follow a leader - occasionally in the right
direction. Alexander Chase |
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People only leave [Washington] by way of the box - ballot or
coffin. Claiborne Pell |
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People only notice squeaky wheels. |
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People should learn to lie as they learn anything else - from very
small beginnings. Samuel Butler |
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People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
Ken Kesey |
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People usually get what's coming to them...unless it's been mailed. |
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People who are late are often so much jollier than the people who have
to wait for them. Edward V. Lucas |
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People who are sensible about love are incapable of it.
Douglas Yates |
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People who deal with bits should expect to get bitten.
Jon Bentley |
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People who have no faults are terrible; there is no way of taking
advantage of them. |
| People who live in glass houses should pull down the blinds. Oliver
Herford |
| People who live in stone houses shouldn't throw glasses. |
| People who snore always fall asleep first. Bits and Pieces |
| People who take cat naps don't usually sleep in a cat's cradle. |
| People Who Do Things exceed my endurance; God, for a man that solicits
insurance! Dorothy Parker |
| People with narrow minds usually have broad tongues. |
| Perfect love sometimes does not come till the first grandchild. Welsh
proverb |
| Perfection has one grave defect: it is apt to be dull. W. Somerset
Maugham |
| Performance is easier to add than clarity. |
| Perfume: Any smell that is used to drown a worse one. Elbert Hubbard |
| Perfunctory: Mechanical or indifferent, taking its name from the way
functionaries perform their duties. Edmund H. Volkart |
| Perhaps the greatest consolation of the oppressed is to consider
themselves superior to their tyrants. Julien Green |
| PERIOD, PERIOD Our fathers claimed, by obvious madness
moved,
Man's innocent until his guilt be proved.
They would have known,
had they not been confused,
He's innocent until he is accused. Ogden
Nash |
| Perseverance: A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves an inglorious
success. Ambrose Bierce |
| Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as
optimism. Arnold Bennett |
| Pessimism: Where everything is bad, it must be good to know the
worst. Francis H. Bradley |
| Philosophy does not furnish motives, but it shows men that they are not
fools for doing what they already want to do. It opens to the forlorn
hopes on which we throw ourselves away, the vista of the farthest
stretch of human thought, the chords of a harmony
that breathes from the unknown. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes |
| Philosophy triumphs easily over past and future misfortunes, but
present misfortunes triumph over philosophy. Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld |
| Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems. Henry Adams |
| Physical strength can never permanently withstand the impact of
spiritual force. Franklin D. Roosevelt |
| Physicists do it with charm. |
| Pillory: A mechanical device for inflicting personal
distinction. Ambrose Bierce |
| Piracy: Commerce without its folly-swaddles, just as God made
it. Ambrose Bierce |
| Pity costs nothing, and ain't worth nothing. Josh Billings (Henry
Wheeler Shaw) |
| Pity is a thing often avowed, seldom felt; hatred is a thing often
felt, seldom avowed. Charles C. Colton |
| Plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery. |
| Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen from. Samuel Taylor
Coleridge |
| Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation. Benjamin
Disraeli |
| Plans get you into things but you got to work to get out. Will Rogers |
| Platonic love: A deep, but nonerotic, affection between a man and
a woman, said to be play for one and tonic for the other. Edmund H.
Volkart |
| Play so that you may be serious. Anacharsis |
| Please all, and you will please none. Aesop |
| Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure. Lord George Gordon
Byron |
| Plunder: To take the property of another without observing the decent
and customary reticences of theft. To effect a change of
ownership with the candid concomitance of a brass band. Ambrose Bierce |
| Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. |
| Poets are born, not paid. Addison Mizner |
| Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Percy Bysshe
Shelley |
Poets lose half the praise they should have got,
Could it be known what
they discreetly blot. Edmund Waller |
| Police: An armed force for protection and participation. Ambrose
Bierce |
| Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax. Arthur
Schopenhauer |
| Politeness looks well in every man, except an undertaker. Josh
Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) |
| Politeness: The most acceptable hypocrisy. Ambrose Bierce |
| Politics consists of deals and ideals. |
| Polygamy: A house of atonement, or expiatory chapel, fitted with
several stools of repentance, as distinguished from monogamy, which has
but one. Ambrose Bierce |
| Polygraph: A lie detector. Originally and intuitively perfected by
parents, spouses, and lovers, it has since been botched up by
scientists who invented a machine that cannot distinguish between
lying, crying, or trying. Edmund H. Volkart |
| Pontius Pilate was the first great censor, and Jesus Christ the first
great victim of censorship. Ben Lindsay |
| Poor little men! Poor little strutting peacocks! They spread out their
tails as conquerors almost as soon as the are able to walk. Jean
Anoulh |
| Poor men seek meat for their stomach, rich men stomach for their
meat. English proverb |
| Pornography is the undiluted essence of anti-female propaganda. Susan
Brownmiller |
| Positive anything is better than negative nothing. Elbert Hubbard |
| Positive: Mistaken at the top of one's voice. Ambrose Bierce |
| Postmen never die. They just lose their zip. |
| Pour not water on a drowning mouse. Thomas Fuller, M.D. |
| Poverty is not perversity. Spanish proverb |
| Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime. Aristotle |
| Poverty of course is no disgrace, but it is damned annoying. William
Pitt |
| Power can corrupt, but absolute power is absolutely
delightful. Anonymous |
| Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Eric Hoffer |
| Power does not corrupt fools, but fools corrupt power. |
| Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Lord
Acton (Sir John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton) |
| Powerlessness frustrates; absolute powerlessness frustrates absolutely.
Absolute frustration is a dangerous emotion to run a world
with. Russell Baker |
| Practice is nine-tenths. Ralph Waldo Emerson |
| Praise the lord and pass the ammunition. Attrib. to Howell Forgy (at
Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941) |
| Pray for what you want but work for what you need. |
| Pray to God but continue to row to shore. Russian proverb |
| Pray to God, but keep rowing to shore. Russian proverb |
| Pray: To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a
single petitioner confessedly unworthy. Ambrose Bierce |
| Prayer must never be answered; if it is, it ceases to be prayer and
becomes a correspondence. Oscar Wilde |
| Precedent: In law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in the
absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a judge
may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of doing as
he pleases. As there are precedents
for everything, he has only to ignore those that make against [missing text?] |
| Predestination was doomed from the start. |
| Prejudice is the child of ignorance. William Hazlitt |
| Prejudice: A vagrant opinion without visible means of
support. Ambrose Bierce |
| Presents, I often say, endear absents. Charles Lamb |
| Preserve the old, but know the new. |
| Presidency: The greased pig in the field of American
politics. Ambrose Bierce |
| Pretty much all the honest truthtelling there is in this world is done
by children. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
| Preudhomme's Law of Window Cleaning: It's on the other side. |
| Pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues men know and heed, a Babel of
despair. Dante Alighieri [Inferno] |
| Pride is the mask of one's own faults. Hebrew proverb |
| Pride, perceiving humility honourable, often borrows her cloak. Thomas
Fuller, M.D. |
| Pride that dines on vanity sups on contempt. Benjamin Franklin |
| Pride went out on horseback and came home afoot. Italian proverb |
| Prison of course is the school of crime par excellence. Until one has
gone through that school one is only an amateur. Henry Miller |
| Prison: A place of punishments and rewards. The poet assures use that
- 'Stone walls do not a prison make', but a combination of the stone
wall, the political parasite and the moral instructor is no garden of
eden. Ambrose Bierce |
| Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of
religion. William Blake |
| Pro is to con as progress is to Congress. |
Probable-Possible, my black hen,
She lays eggs in the Relative
When.
She doesn't lay eggs in the Positive Now
Because she's unable to
postulate how. Frederick Winsor |
Problems worthy of attack
Prove their worth by hitting back. Piet Hein |
| Procrastination is the thief of time. Edward Young |
| Procrastinators do it tomorrow. |
| Professional charity - the milk of human blindness. Tom Masson |
| Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of
the programmer who must maintain it. |
| Programmers do it bit by bit. |
| Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken. Jonathan Swift |
| Promptness is its own reward, if one lives by the clock instead of the
sword. |
| Proof: Evidence having a shade more of plausibility than of
unlikelihood. The testimony of two credible witnesses as opposed to
that of only one. Ambrose Bierce |
| Proper treatment can cure a cold in seven days - but left to itself
it'll hang on for a week. |
| Prophets were twice stoned: first in anger; then, after their death,
with a handsome slab in the graveyard. Christopher Morley |
| Pros are people who do jobs well even when they don't feel like it. |
| Prosecutors should not be scalp-hunters. Justice Lionel Murphy |
| Prosperity is when your conversation changes from car pools to swimming
pools. |
| Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them. Publilius Syrus |
| Protest long enough that you are right, and you will be wrong. Yiddish
proverb |
| Protestants: Any of various tribes of Christians who prefer to hide
their sins rather than confess them. Edmund H. Volkart |
| Providence itself could not be more absolutely improvident. Samuel
Butler |
| Proximity isn't everything, but it comes close. |
| Public money is like holy water; everyone helps himself to it. Italian
proverb |
| Public policy - it is a very unruly horse, and when once you get
astride it you never know where it will carry you. Justice Burrough |
| Punch: A liquor called by foreigners contradiction, from its being
composed of spirits to make it strong, water to make it weak, lemon
juice to make it sour, and sugar to make it sweet. Francis Grose |
| Punishment is only a pretence of cancelling one crime with
another. George Bernard Shaw |
| Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be
happy. H.L. Mencken |
Purity
Is obscurity. Ogden Nash |
| Push something hard enough and it will fall over. |
| Put a rogue in the limelight and he will act like an honest
man. Napoleon Bonaparte |
| Put all your eggs in one basket and then watch the basket. Mark Twain
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens) |
| Put cream and sugar on a fly, and it tastes very much like a black
raspberry. Edgar W. Howe |
| Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust. Oliver
Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
| Put your brain in gear before starting your mouth. |