Aphorisms, Quotations, & Wisecracks--The E's

EDUCATION AND EDUCATORS (See also: "Great Teachers")

Education is a wonderful thing. If you couldn't sign your name you'd have to pay cash.--Rita Mae Brown (1944--), U.S. novelist
For every person wishing to teach there are thirty not wanting to be taught.--W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatman, 1066 And All That
For the past eleven years, American students have scored lower on standardized tests than European students, Japanese students and certain species of elk.--Dave Barry, Bad Habits, 1982
Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.--Terry Pratchett, Hogfather, A Novel of Discworld, 1996
He is either dead or teaching school.--Zenobius (117--138), Greek sophist
Hard students are commonly troubled by gowts, catarrhes, rheums, cachexia, bradypepsia, bad eyes, stone, and collick, crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such diseases as come by over much sitting; they are for the most part lean, dry, ill-colored; spend their fortunes, lose their wits, and many times their lives; and all through immoderate pains and extraordinary studies.--Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621
If you think education is expensive--try ignorance.--Derek Bok, president of Harvard University
In the first place, God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards.--Mark Twain (1835-1910), Following the Equator, 1897
It is tiresome to hear education discussed, tiresome to educate, and tiresome to be educated.--William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne (1779--1848), English Prime Minister
It is when the gods hate a man with uncommon abhorrence that they drive him into the profession of a schoolmaster.-Seneca ,"Epistolae ad Lucilium," 64 AD
"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?" --Terry Pratchett (1948--), Mort
Much knowledge is a curse.--Chuang-Tzu (369--286 B.C.) Chinese Taoist philosopher
It's easier to graduate than to learn.--Robert Half
Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.---Ecclesiastes 12:12 (ca. 200 B.C.)
Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school.--William Shakespeare , King Henry VI, pt. 2, act 4, sc. 7
Try not to have a good time...this is supposed to be educational.--Charles Schulz, "Peanuts" comic strip
You know how to tell if the teacher is hung over?? Movie Day.--Jay Mohr (1970--), U.S. comedian/actor

ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH
A Singapore Airways flight from Singapore to London carrying 178 passengers made an emergency landing in New Delhi, India, after a package containing a toothbrush sparked a bomb scare. You see why the crew was frightened, they’re British, they’ve never seen a toothbrush before.--Jay Leno, U.S. talk show host, 2002
An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.--George Bernard Shaw (1856--1950), Irish playwright
Curse the blasted jelly-boned swines, the slimy belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the snivelling, dribbling, dithering, palsied pulseless lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins and their spunk is that watery it's a marvel they can breed.... D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930), in a letter to Ed. Garnett, 3 July 1912, on the English
"English cooking? You just put things into boiling water and then take them out again after a long while!" --an anonymous French chef
Even today, well-brought up English girls are taught to boil all vegetables for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests comes without his teeth! --Calvin Trillin, (1935--), U.S. verse columnist
I know why the sun never sets on the British Empire: God wouldn't trust an Englishman in the dark.--Duncan Spaeth, Princeton professor
If the British can survive their meals, they can survive anything.--George Bernard Shaw (1856--1950), Irish dramatist
In all the four corners of the earth one of these three names is given to him who steals from his neighbor: brigand, robber or Englishman--Les Triades de l'Anglais, 1572
In dealing with Englishmen, you can be sure of one thing only, that the logical solution will not be adopted.--William R. Inge (1860--1954), Dean of St. Paul's
It is cowardly to commit suicide. The English often kill themselves--it is a malady caused by the humid climate.--Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
It takes some skill to spoil a breakfast--even the English can't do it!--J K Galbraith, (1908--), U.S. economist
London is full of fogs--and serious people. Whether the fogs produce the serious people or whether the serious people produce the fogs, I don't know, but the whole thing rather gets on my nerves.--Oscar Wilde (1856--1900)
The English have an extraordinary ability for flying into a great calm.--Alexander Woolcott (1887--1943)
The English have no exalted sentiments. They can all be bought.--Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.--James Agate (1877- )
The Englishman has all the qualities of a poker except its occasional warmth.--attributed to Daniel O'Connell (1775--1847)
The typical Englishman is a strong being who takes a cold bath in the morning and talks about it for the rest of the day.--Ellen Cicely Wilkinson (1891-1947)
There are in England sixty different religious sects and only one sauce.--Caracciolo (died 1641)
Though I love my country, I do not love my countrymen.--George Gordon Bryan (1788-1824), English poet
When it's three o'clock in New York, it's still 1938 in London.--Bette Midler, The Times, 1978
You must look out in Britain that you are not cheated by the charioteers.--Marcus Tullius Cicero (160-43 B.C.), Roman orator and philosopher

ENVIRONMENT
Earth--God's golf ball.--Captain Beefheart, U.S. singer/artist
Extinct is forever.--Kurt Benirschke, U.S. scientist
It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.--Dan Quayle, (1947--), U.S. vice-president
Man is a complex being; he makes deserts bloom--and lakes die.--Gil Stern
Remember, this planet is also disposable.--Paul Palmer
The environment is everything that isn't me.--Albert Einstein,(1879-1955), scientist
There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.--Marshall McLuhan, (1911--1980), U.S. communications theorist
We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?--Lee Iacocca, (1924--), U.S. businessman
What's the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?--Henry David Thoreau (1817--1862)

ETHNIC COMPARISONS
American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only hope to find in their butlers.--W. Somerset Maugham, (1874-1965), British novelist
An Englishman thinks seated; a Frenchman, standing; an American, pacing; an Irishman, afterward.--Austin O'Malley, (1858 - 1932) , physician/humorist
Continental people have a sex life; the English have hot-water bottles.--George Mikes, (1912--1987), Hungarian humorist
English physicians kill you, the French let you die.--Lord Melbourne, William Lamb (1779--1848)
Frustrate a Frenchman, he will drink himself to death; an Irishman, he will die of angry hypertension; a Dane, he will shoot himself; an American, he will get drunk, shoot you, then establish a million dollar aid program for your relatives. Then he will die of an ulcer.--Dr. Stanley Rudin, New York Times (Aug. 22, 1963)
Germans are flummoxed by humor, the Swiss have no concept of fun, the Spanish think there is nothing at all ridiculous about eating dinner at midnight, and the Italians should never, ever have been let in on the invention of the motor car.--Bill Bryson, (1951--), U.S. travel writer
If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.--Albert Einstein, address at the Sorbonne
In America only the successful writer is important; in France all writers are important; in England no writer is important, and in Australia you have to explain what a writer is.--Geoffrey Cottrell, New York Journal-American, Sept. 22, 1961.
In England I would rather be a man, a horse, a dog or a woman, in that order. In American I would think the order would be reversed.--Bruce Gould
On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners. --George Mikes, (1912--1987), Hungarian writer and humorist
That seems to point up a significant difference between Europeans and Americans. A European says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with me?" An American says: "I can't understand this, what's wrong with him?"--Terry Pratchett (1948--), British SF/fantasy author
The Americans, like the English, probably make love worse than any other race.--Walt Whitman (1819-1892), U.S. poet
The English are proud; the French are vain.--Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.--Francis Bacon, Essays, "Of Seeing Wise."

EXERCISE (see also: HEALTH)
A man's health can be judged by which he takes two at a time--pills or stairs.--Joan Welsh
I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running up and down a street.--U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong on jogging, in an interview with Walter Cronkite
I get my exercise acting as a pallbearer to my friends who exercise.--Chauncey Depew, (1834--1928), U.S. politician
I don't jog, if I die I want to be sick.--Abe Lemons, U.S. basketball coach
I'm not into working out. My philosophy: No pain, no pain.--Carol Leifer, (1956--), U.S. comedienne
The only reason I would take up jogging is so I could hear heavy breathing again.--Erma Bombeck, (1927--1996), U.S. humorist
Muscles come and go; flab lasts.--Bill Vaughan (1915-1977)
The trouble with jogging is that by the time you realize you're not in shape for it, it's too far to walk back.--Franklin Jones, (1853-1935)
What do you call a cyclist who doesn't wear a helmet? An organ donor.-~David Perry

EXPERIENCE
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you recognize a mistake when you make it again.--Franklin P. Jones
Experience is what allows us to repeat our mistakes, only with more finesse!--Derwood Fincher
If you can learn from hard knocks, you can also learn from soft touches.--Carolyn Kenmore, Mannequin: My Life as a Model
There's no fool like an old fool--you can't beat experience.--Jacob Braude
There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.--Josh Billings, Josh Billings, His Works Complete

SUBJECTS should match the verb.

EDUCATION AND EDUCATORS (See also: "Great Teachers")

ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH

ENVIRONMENT

ETHNIC COMPARISONS

EXERCISE (see also: HEALTH)

EXPERIENCE