“You can't trust water: Even a straight stick turns crooked in it.”
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W.C. Fields 47
actor 1880–1946Related quotes
“He can't even shoot straight.”
On his son Yakov’s suicide attempt, as quoted in Encyclopedia of Useless Information (2007) by William Harston
Contemporary witnesses
On Jews, to H. R. Haldeman, as quoted in "Nixon: I Am Not an Anti-Semite" by Timothy Noah, in Slate (7 October 1999) http://www.slate.com/id/1003783/
1990s
Variant: But, Bob, generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right?
Source: Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbänden
“Straight down the Crooked Lane,
And all round the Square.”
A Plain Direction http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15652/15652-h/15652-h.htm#poem_135, st. 1.
1820s
“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.”
Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Proposition 6.
Variant translations: Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built.
From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.
Never a straight thing was made from the crooked timber of man.
Source: Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose
“Crooked cards and straight whiskey,
Slow horses and fast women.”
“God draweth straight lines but we call them crooked.”
The Common School Journal, Vol. V, No. 18 (15 September 1843)
“For experience teacheth me that straight trees have crooked roots.”
P. 311 http://books.google.com/books?id=3xRbAAAAMAAJ&q="for+experience+teacheth+me+that+straight+trees+have+crooked+roots"&pg=PA311#v=onepage
Euphues and his England