Ask Lemmy

"A Florida woman has been accused of entering the penguin enclosure to teach them to tap dance, using a live alligator as her partner."

"In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very unhappy and has been widely regarded as a bad move."

Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

"This too shall pass"

If something good happens, it's a cautionary warning to stay humble.

If something bad happens, it's a comforting reminder that things will get better.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

They don't think it be like it is, but it do.

"In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move".

The chinese poem "The Story of Mr. Shi Eating Lions"

Shíshì shī shì shǐ shì, shì shǐ, shī shì, shì shí shí shī. Shī sì shì shī. Shǐ shì shè sì, shì shī shì, shǐ shī shì shí shī shī, shì shí shí, shǐ shí shìshì. Shǐ shǐ shì shì shì shì, shì shī shì. Shì shì shì shì.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den

"I look both ways when I cross a one way street, because that's how much faith I have in humanity."

"That's one of the remarkable things about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse"

Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes

People don’t think it be like it is, but it do

"Do you think... God stays in heaven because he, too, lives in fear of what he's created, here on Earth? "

Dr Romero, Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams, written by Robert Rodriguez.

Tiān gāo, huángdì yuǎn
Heaven is high and the emperor is far away

Is one of my favorite.

Another is the a misattributed quote:

Les hommes ne seront jamais libres tant que le dernier roi ne sera pas étranglé avec les entrailles du dernier prêtre.

Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Though the apparent original is good too.

Je ne veux ni donner ni recevoir de lois.
Et ses mains ourdiraient les entrailles du prêtre,
Au défaut d'un cordon pour étrangler les rois.

I seek neither to rule nor to serve.
And its hands would weave the entrails of the priest,
For the lack of a cord with which to strangle kings.

The second line from the US declaration of indpenedce is a banger too:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

John Brown's:

I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day.

Is also really good.

"Black Friday Sale! This Thursday only!".

Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill.

Despite all our accomplishments, we all own our existence to a 6 inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.

I found it somewere on the Internet and can Not forget it.

Spoken, not written:-

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly

"It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times...stupid monkey!"

We apologize for the inconvenience.

This isn't the greatest sentence, this is just a tribute.

You have nothing to loose but your chains

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed."

"The man in black fled into the desert, and the gunslinger followed"

• opening line for the Dark Tower novels by Stephen King, which is an absolutely phenomenal series that blends western and sci-fi elements with just a tad of fantasy and horror for flavor.

The cost of living is dying, and everyone pays.

"He who fights monsters must see that he doesn't become a monster himself. For when you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.

• Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

Perhaps the best, most succinct explanation of historical materialism.

It's over 9000!

If you're gonna be stupid, be smart about it.

*Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?"

I think we are at that point again but with “AI”.

love that with such a broad sample pool, what we get here are some quips, in English, from the last few decades

"Money can't buy happiness, but it's better to cry in a taxi than on a bus." - Marcel Reich-Ranicki (German literary critic)

I changed the last word in the translation to bus for the US readers. It should be tram or streetcar but I assumed bus is more common and widely known.

In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god's blessing. But because, I am enlightened by my intelligence.

Be good...or be good at it.

Mrs. Higgins’ body was found in the pantry, bludgeoned with a potato ricer and lying atop a fifty-pound sack of Yukon golds, her favorite for making gnocchi, though some people consider them too moist for this purpose.

-Joel Phillips

https://www.bulwer-lytton.com/about