OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there,
there isn’t any there there.
GERTRUDE STEIN
The trouble with Oakland is that when you get there,
it’s there.
HERB CAEN
OBSCENITY
Obscenity is what happens to shock some elderly and
ignorant magistrate.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Obscenity is whatever gives a judge an
erection.
ANONYMOUS
OK
I’m not OK, you’re not OK, and that’s OK.
WILLIAM SLOANE COFFIN
OLD
A man is as old as the woman he feels.
GROUCHO MARX
OPEN MIND
If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant
for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all
quarters.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
OPERA
Opera, n. A play representing life in another
world whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but
gestures, and no postures but attitudes.
AMBROSE BIERCE
How wonderful opera would be if there were no
singers.
GIOACCHINO ROSSINI
The opera . . . is to music what a bawdy house is to
a cathedral.
H. L. MENCKEN
Going to the opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that
carries its own punishment with it, and that a very severe
one.
HANNAH MOORE
If a thing isn’t worth saying, you sing it.
PIERRE BEAUMARCHAIS
No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing
when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. AUDEN
Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and
instead of bleeding, he sings.
ED GARDNER
One goes to see a tragedy to be moved; to the opera
one goes either for want of any other interest or to facilitate
digestion.
VOLTAIRE
An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical
world required that the German text of French operas sung by
Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer
understanding of English-speaking audiences.
EDITH WHARTON
I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so
long as it is a language I don’t understand.
SIR EDWARD APPLETON
People are wrong when they say that the opera isn’t
what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That’s what’s wrong
with it.
NOEL COWARD
OPERA STAR
When an opera star sings her head off, she usually
improves her appearance.
VICTOR BORGE
OPTIMISM
Optimism is the madness of maintaining that
everything is right when it is wrong.
VOLTAIRE
Optimism: the noble temptation to see too much in
everything.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Optimism, n. The doctrine or belief that
everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
AMBROSE BIERCE
Optimism is the content of small men in high
places.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
The place where optimism flourishes most is the
lunatic asylum.
HAVELOCK ELLIS
The basis of optimism is sheer terror.
OSCAR WILDE
Optimist, n. A proponent of the doctrine that
black is white.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The optimist thinks that this is the best of all
possible worlds, and the pessimist knows it.
J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER
An optimist is a man who has never had much
experience.
DON MARQUIS
I find nothing more depressing than optimism.
PAUL FUSSELL
ORCHESTRA
Orchestras only need to be sworn at, and a German is
consequently at an advantage with them, as English profanity,
except in America, has not gone beyond a limited technology of
perdition.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
OTHER PEOPLE
Most people are other people. Their thoughts are
someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a
quotation.
OSCAR WILDE
OXFORD
Oxford: a sanctuary in which exploded systems and
obsolete prejudices find shelter and protection after they have
been hunted out of every corner of the world.
ADAM SMITH
I was a modest, good-humored boy; it is Oxford that
has made me insufferable.
MAX BEERBOHM
OYSTERS
Oyster, n. A slimy, gobby shellfish which
civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its
entrails! The shells are sometimes given to the poor.
AMBROSE BIERCE
I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not
sick, not wounded, dead.
WOODY ALLEN