Wise Guy Quotes

Keep it up, wise guy. I'm always going to be taller than you once you're lying unconscious on the ground. ~ Jim Butcher

If you ever get married again, don't tell your husband anything. Do you hear me?'

'Why?' said Mary Jane.

'Because I say so, that's why,' said Eloise. 'They wanna think you spent your whole life vomiting every time a boy came near you. I'm not kidding, either. Oh, you can tell them stuff. But never honestly. I mean never honestly. If you tell 'em you once knew a handsome boy, you gotta say in the same breath he was too handsome. And if you tell 'em you knew a witty boy, you gotta tell 'em he was kind of a smart aleck, though, or a wise guy. If you don't, they hit you over the head with the poor boy every time they get a chance.' Eloise paused to drink from her glass and to think. 'Oh,' she said, 'they'll listen very maturely and all that. They'll even look intelligent as hell. But don't let it fool you. Believe me. You'll go through hell if you ever give 'em any credit for intelligence. Take my word. ~ J.D. Salinger

Clevinger was a troublemaker and a wise guy. Lieutenant Scheisskopf knew that Clevinger might cause even more trouble if he wasn't watched. Yesterday it was the cadet officers; tomorrow it might be the world. Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times. Such men were dangerous, and even the new cadet officers whom Clevinger had helped into office were eager to give damning testimony against him. The case against Clevinger was open and shut. The only thing missing was something to charge him with. ~ Joseph Heller

From the practice of wise men. - To become wise, one must wish to have certain experiences and run, as it were, into their gaping jaws. This, of course, is very dangerous; many a wise guy has been swallowed. 301 ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy. ~ Grenville Kleiser

Recently I heard a 'wise guy' story that I had a party at my home for twenty-five men. It's an interesting story, but I don't know twenty-five men I'd want to invite ta a party. ~ Joan Crawford

I know as a critic I'm required to have a well-armored heart. I must be a cynical wise guy to show my great sophistication. No pushover, me. ~ Roger Ebert

The difference between a 'wise guy' and a wise man is plenty! ~ Galen Starr Ross

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm goes off by going on. English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects ~ Richard Lederer

Do you mean disrespectful? Blasphemous?" he asks. " Like Jesus, Jesus, bo-beesus, banana fanana fo-feesus, mo meesus...blasphemous to Jesus?" I just stand there like an idiot, not sure what to say to this strange man. He seems more of a wise guy than a wise man. After all, he just Name-Gamed a Third of the Trinity. ~ Misty Provencher

In rich detail, Ken told us that on the second hole of the opening round, Hogan got stuck while standing over a putt. Hogan had the yips. "I can't take it back, Ken," Hogan said. "Nobody gives a shit, Ben," Ken said back. That bit of wise-guy humor was evidently all Hogan needed to hear: At age fifty-three and playing barely any tournament golf, he finished twelfth. Venturi finished three shots behind. Palmer was leading by seven with nine holes left and lost to Billy Casper in a playoff. Ken ~ Michael Bamberger

I could hardly get a boy to look at me. All right, they'd look, they'd even take me out, but no one asked for a second date. I was too nasty, a real wise guy, and all the boys could tell what my rotten disposition was. Deep down, I wanted a commitment with a capital C. To get anywhere with me, a boy would have to sign his undying loyalty with his own blood. ~ Alice Hoffman

I love reading Warren Buffett's letters, and I love contrasting his words with his actions. He's a very wise guy. ~ Daniel S. Loeb

We can learn much from wise words, little from wisecracks, and less from wise guys. ~ William Arthur Ward

I'm not the kind of guy that inspires madness in people. ~ Ryan Kwanten

Time cannot be saved, it can only be spent, and if not spent wisely and well, it is wasted. ~ Henrietta C. Mears

Inner turbulence leads to anger. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

And me, I've got to start all over. Not only build a new life, but construct a new person. I call my old self "that other guy," for I share nothing but his memories, and everything he ever liked I've had to discover all over again, one by one, so that I've held on to, for example, reading, motorcycling, and birdwatching, but I'm not yet sure about art or music (I can look at it or listen to it, but not with the same "engagement" I used to), and I have no interest in work, charity, world events, or anybody I don't know. In my present gypsy life, I encounter a lot of people every day, and some of them I instinctively like and respond to in a brief encounter at a gas station or small-town diner, but for the most part I look around at ugly and mean-spirited people and think, "Why are you alive? ~ Neil Peart

We never really are the adults we pretend to be. We wear the mask and perhaps the clothes and posture of grown-ups, but inside ourskin we are never as wise or as sure or as strong as we want to convince ourselves and others we are. We may fool all the rest of the people all of the time, but we never fool our parents. They can see behind the mask of adulthood. To her mommy and daddy, the empress never has on any clothes
and knows it. ~ Frank Pittman

One of the greatest of liberals, Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic Party, once remarked: A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government. ~ Ronald Reagan

We must be patient, the pandemic shall soon be a thing of the past. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Only very rarely are foreigners or first-generation immigrants allowed to be nice people in American films. Those with an accent are bad guys. ~ Max Von Sydow

Do you guys have any raw garlic? ~ Shailene Woodley

A wise man in China asked his gardener to plant a shrub. The gardener objected that it only flowered once in a hundred years. "In that case," said the wise man, "plant it immediately." [On the importance of fundamental research.] ~ John Charles Polanyi

I may be a step slower than I was before reaching 30, but I'm doing all the right things. I guess there are some guys who would take it easy in the latter part of their careers, but I'm stepping it up. ~ Pete Sampras

I try to be open-minded. And yet this food writer has less sense than God gave a goose about where food comes from. I'd worked on our relationship, moving through the stages of bafflement, denial, and asking this guy out loud, Where do you live, the moon? ~ Barbara Kingsolver

So this was Richard's brother. Every line of him spoke, palimpsest-wise, with two voices. The clothes, black and rich, were vaguely slovenly; the skin sun-glazed and cracked; the fine eyes slackly lidded; the mouth insolent and self-indulgent. He returned the scrutiny without rancour. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

I haven't spent my entire career playing the guy in the bad hat, although I have to say that the bad guy is frequently much more interesting than the good guy. ~ Christopher Lee

If a man approaches a fact in the world around him with a judgment arising from his previous experiences, he shuts himself off by this judgment from the quiet, complete effect which this fact can have on him. The learner must be able each moment to make himself a perfectly empty vessel into which the new world flows. Knowledge is received only in those moments in which every judgment, every criticism coming from ourselves, is silent. For example, when we meet a person, the question is not at all whether we are wiser than he. Even the most unreasoning child has something to reveal to the greatest sage. And if he approach the child with his prejudgment, be it ever so wise, he pushes his wisdom like a dulled glass in front of what the child ought to reveal to him. ~ Rudolf Steiner

Let not the wise disturb the mind of the unwise in their selfish work. Let him, working with devotion, show them the joy of good work. ~ Anonymous

Make them free, and they will quickly become wise and virtous, as men become more so; for the improvement must be mutual, or the injustice which one half of the human race are obliged to submit to, retorting on their oppressors, the virtue of men will be worm-eaten by the insect whom he keeps under his feet ~ Mary Wollstonecraft

Anytime something becomes a success in this way you always get imitators. I'm an imitator of the guys I love. I imitate people like Frank Miller, who is a huge inspiration to me. ~ Mark Millar

I'm a baseball player. I'm also a guy who mows his lawn and plays with his dog. ~ Scott Rolen

For the longest time, I never thought I was intimidating to guys, but I'm kind of finding out that maybe there is some tiny thread of intimidation. ~ Beverley Mitchell

I think I'm a little more mature than the average guy. ~ Amar'e Stoudemire

My glowing form was so heavy, its feet sank into the top of the tank.
"Sekhmet!" I yelled.
The lioness whirled and snarled, trying to locate my voice.
"Up here, kitty!" I called.
She spotted me and her ears went back. "Horus?"
'Unless you know another guy with a falcon head. ~ Rick Riordan

I'm definitely not an outsider artist. I'm very much an insider artist. I get written about in art magazines, and I'm not, like, in a mental institution. I'm a regular guy who went to art school. ~ David Shrigley

I was a crazy guy in Hollywood back in the day, and then when I switched into theater, I got into work mode. ~ Scott Haze

Cooking is like snow skiing: If you don't fall at least 10 times, then you're not skiing hard enough. ~ Guy Fieri

I'm crying for the little girl whose mother divorced her father, the girl who wanted to fall in love for the first time but wasn't ready for sex, the girl who dated a boy just because he wasn't the first one, the girl who fell hard for the guy with the easy smile and the green eyes, the girl who needed to prove she could hook up on a class trip, the girl who rand for student council just to impress a guy, the girl who lost her best friend, the girl whose father doesn't care anymore, the girl who doesn't have the money for college, the girl who just wants her grandma to fix everything, the girl who doesn't talk to anyone about anything, the girl who just can't fall in love again - even if a sweet guy folds a thousand paper cranes. Just for her. ~ Sydney Salter

A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

Time is my best friend. Procrastination is my worst enemy. Opportunity is my favorite acquaintance. Success is my beloved soulmate. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Do not have as friends harmful people, the wise person does not associate with the worst of people. Have as friends virtuous people, the wise person associates with the best of people. ~ Gautama Buddha

The quickest way to find honey is to follow bees. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

For years, maybe most of my life, I had languished in that typical young intellectual's delusion that gloom and despair are the romantic lot of the brilliant and the wise. But now I saw: it wasn't so. Why should it be? What sort of wisdom has no joy in it? What good is wisdom without joy? ... Everything useful that can be done in the world can be done in joy. ~ Andrew Klavan

Just as early industrial capitalism moved the focus of existence from being to having, post-industrial culture has moved that focus from having to appearing. ~ Guy Debord

God is the Creator of all dreams. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

We write to rekindle the inner spirit. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I nearly miss it, given Tate's need for speed, but as we zip by the guy in the alley, I catch a brief glimpse of his face.
It's Kiernan. How did he get out before we did when he was behind us?
A few seconds after we pass, Kiernan darts out of the alley, but he can't keep up. Usain Bolt couldn't keep up with Tate. ~ Rysa Walker

The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender lonely crowds. ~ Guy Debord

It is to our advantage to have securities do nothing price-wise for months, or perhaps years, while we are buying them. ~ Warren Buffett

Can you imagine a guy breaking into your car, and he steals your guitar case 'cause he thinks it's a guitar, and he gets it home and opens it up and there's a rake inside it, an electric toilet plunger and a dog skull? That actually happened. ~ Eugene Chadbourne

Youve got to take advantage of those guys outside. Its frustrating. ~ Lee Evans

One of the big things that if you've got a guy who is doing things that other people could view as evil or bad, then you've got to find the silver lining: you've got to find the thing that makes this guy a good guy. ~ Dylan Baker

Make friends. Be a leader. Kiss butts if you have to, but if the other guys despise you-you know what I mean? ~ Orson Scott Card