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Quotes
“There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words.”
Source: The Hound of the Baskervilles
“I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.”
“It's better to have a gay life of it than to commit suicide.”
“Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.”
Variant: It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
Source: Men at Arms: The Play
“What's even worse than a flute? - Two flutes!”
“Fashions have done more harm than revolutions.”
“Books were a lot less messy than orgasms.”
Source: Succubus Blues
“One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.”
General sources
Source: "Birches" (1920)
Context: I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
“Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.”
Variant: Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian.
Source: Moby-Dick or, The Whale
“Is there worse evil than that which goes in the mask of good?”
Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968), Chapter 11 (p. 142)
“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”
“For a friend with an understanding heart is worth no less than a brother.”
VIII. 585–586 (tr. G. H. Palmer).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)
Source: The Odyssey
“It’s just that I’d rather die of drink than of thirst.”
Source: Thunderball
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar.”
1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be changed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation. It will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
“It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.”
Variant: Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.
Source: This is My Story