Smothers Quotes & Sayings

Faith smothers your fear of the unknown. Faith allows you to take risks. Faith is the stuff of "leap and the net will appear." Faith is your best buddy when you're scared shitless. — Jen Sincero

Habit, a particularly insidious thug who chokes passion and smothers love. Habit puts us on autopilot. — Diane Ackerman

The touch of reality is salvation for the man who smothers amid forms and shadows. A blind man would rejoice in sight though his eyes opened on the carnage of a battlefield. — Oscar W. Firkins

Warily, she dares to allow me a smile. "It's okay. It's just ... I'm not too good at talking to people." She looks away again as her shyness smothers her. "So, do you think it'd be all right if we don't talk? — Markus Zusak

Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables. — Lawrence Lessig

The education of the present race of females is not very favorable to domestic happiness. For my own part, I call education, not that which smothers a woman with accomplishments, but that which tends to consolidate a firm and regular system of character; that which tends to form a friend, a companion, and a wife. — Hannah More

My rules are simple and clear. We must dispense with insincere politeness- that vapid veneer of untruth that smothers London drawing rooms. Our well-mannered social deceit must not die a private death but a court-ordered hanging in the public square. The archaic animal that is left will be a dangerous and hot-blooded thing. Unruly and impossible to predict. But alive. — Priya Parmar

But life changes people. It smothers that kind of larger-than-life woman. Time quiets them down. That firecracker girl you knew in high school - where is she now? It didn't happen to men as much. Those boys often grew up to be masters of the universe. The super successful girls? They seemed to die of slow societal suffocation. So — Harlan Coben

I came down to Orange because I sold the Smothers Brothers a song called 'Chocolate,' and that gave me enough money to move down here. I was washing windows down in Orange County when they called me up and said they wanted me to do their TV show. — Pat Paulsen

Instead of Rock, Paper, Scissors, you could play Brick, Blanket, Action Fingers, in which brick cripples action fingers, blanket smothers brick and action fingers beats blanket. — Nicole McKay

Red meat is not really bad for a person. Now, blue-green meat - that's damaging of you! — Tommy Smothers

Professor Irwin Corey had some of the best timing in the world, and that is something you can't steal. He talked nonsense, not punch-lines, per se. It was a great performance thing he did and his timing was impeccable. Pat Paulsen was a master of comedy too. The Smothers Brothers' strength was not in the content, but how it was said. We had a couple of our albums, including the Purple Onion album, translated in script form. It didn't work at all. It is no wonder that writers had a hard time writing for the Smothers Brothers, because they wrote impressions, but there was something else. — Tommy Smothers

Folk music was out there. Clubs were springing up and they were hot with the college kids. — Dick Smothers

We weren't radical chic. Jane Fonda embarrassed me. We belonged to no political parties. Basically, we were vaudevillians. — Tom Smothers

So it - we have one enduring, uh, idea that will always live on with the Smothers Brothers, that 'Mom always liked you best.' We're the universal, uh, feeling that every child, every sibling has had somewhere along the line. Or, 'Who did she like best?' And that became kind of a little mantra. — Tom Smothers

Every day I think, 'Gosh, I wish I could be like George Carlin, Bill Maher: I want that edge.' But every time I start to get that edgy thing, I get kind of mean. — Tom Smothers

Real terror is a crippling experience. You sweat so much that your skin goes all wrinkly like when you've been in the bath all afternoon. And then the scent of your sweat changes. It smells like cat pee, no doubt from the adrenalin. However hard you wash, it won't come off. It smothers you, as your muscles become frozen with acid and your mind paralysed by despair. — Tahir Shah

It's hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war. There's nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action. — Tom Smothers

Once in a thousand years the sea/ smothers the moon at my window/ opens a gate in my heart: — Jo Graham

Silence comes in two varieties: One that nourishes and comforts; another that chokes, smothers, and isolates. Solitary confinement is the worst kind of imprisonment we can inflict on fellow humans, and if you are forced to keep silent about some dark secret, you live in solitary confinement. Without the bridge of communication connecting you to other human beings, you can't share your burdens, can't receive comfort, can't confirm that you still belong. Silence is the abyss that separates you from hope. — Martha Beck

Ridicule, the weapon of all others most feared by enthusiasts of every description, and which from its predominance over such minds, often checks what is absurd, and fully as often smothers that which is noble. — Walter Scott

We were against the war in Vietnam and for voter registration and social issues. Everybody has their choices, and the obligation of a comedian is first to entertain. And if you're so inclined, and you have some bigger thought, make sure you express it, because that's a gift. — Tom Smothers

A latent warmth flickers behind those golden, burning rings. The Cold struggles to squelch it, shrouding it with the frigid Night. It almost smothers it entirely.
Almost.
But I know it is still there. It is like the heat of an unassuming coal beneath a blanket of graying ash. It is hidden, but not extinguished.
I can feel it. I can feel its gentle breath against my skin, like distant sunlight during newborn spring.
I can hear it. I can hear it reaching to divide the curtains of shadow on his face, like the whispers of blossoms unfolding.
I can see it. I can see it behind his fiery eyes, flickering like a starlight-dappled pool, dancing in and out of view.
It is buried. Buried, but burning nonetheless. Buried but burning, like one last hope in my heart. One last Ember in the dark.
-The Penitent God — S.G. Night

find out if it is Marisa before she smothers. — Kristine Frost

Red meat is not bad for you. Now blue-green meat, that's bad for you! — Tommy Smothers

I once told Tommy Smothers, 'If I could just get the money and the women straightened out, the rest of my life would be easy.' — Pat Paulsen

...[T]he king is lying down, severely wounded; one of his faithful companions, Lucan the Butler, approaches, in tears, to say a final farewell. Arthur stands up to embrace him, "holding him so tightly against his chest that he smothers him, crushes his heart and kills him." This is a strange and dramatic event, unexpected, serving no plot purpose, but an event that recalls that Arthur was in origin a bear-king endowed with superhuman strength: like the animal he could kill his enemy in hand to hand combat simply by pressing him against his chest. The king is not aware of his animal strength, but even as he is dying, he retains the power to cause death by a mere embrace, a power that no human being possesses. (p.53-54) — Michel Pastoureau

Ultimately, too much dependency on a person can kill love. Relationships based on emotional insecurity and need, rather than on love, can become self-destructive. They don't work. Too much need drives people away and smothers love. It scares people away. — Melody Beattie

There's one word that exists in every language on the face of the Earth and in every society since man began to speak. And the word is truth. And in every language it means exactly the same thing. Truth is ... what you get other people to believe. — Tommy Smothers

Evolving and bettering yourself is wonderful, but not if the set of standards and values you adopt smothers you into oblivion in the process. — Bryant McGill

Our mother was so public - we always talked about her. But with her passing, all of a sudden we don't even want to talk about her. — Tom Smothers

I've often heard people say, "Your country is beautiful, a virtual paradise." When will the people of Indonesia be as beautiful as their land, with a civilization and culture that contributes to the greater beauty of humankind and no longer smothers and strangles the mind? — Pramoedya Ananta Toer

It is ignorance that smothers, and it is carelessness that makes it invisible. The hunger of craving pollutes the world, and the pain of suffering causes the greatest fear. — Gautama Buddha

The blackness that smothers me is total, and in the moment before everything falls away, I know what it feels like to be dead. — Michelle Zink

No comedian's wife thinks he's funny. The first few years of the marriage, maybe. I was funny as hell the first couple of years. — Tom Smothers

Hatred smothers all beauty. — Melina Marchetta

It works much like a marriage, an old marriage. You've got to work on it. — Dick Smothers

The receding perspective of my past smothers my present. Remembering is the malignancy that feasts on my now. — Rabih Alameddine

And do you want to hear something that was breaking my heart, day after day? I forgot the faces of my granddaughters in all that hatred. Hatred smothers all beauty. Beloved Isaboe has little resemblance to her older sisters, but your Phaedra - she made me remember those precious, precious girls, and I wasn't angry anymore. I just missed them, and it's the beauty in here," she said, pointing to her chest, "that made me remember them. Her beauty. — Melina Marchetta

Fern's never had very good luck with animals. She smothers them with affection and care and they thank her by croaking. Fern hasn't figured out how to play hard to get. — Amy Harmon

The only valid censorship of ideas is the right of people not to listen. — Tommy Smothers

He cries. 'Please! I don't want to die.'
I lean over. My hair smothers him.
'Then you should never have been born,' I say. — Christopher Pike

It is the simple, dreary day, with its commonplace duties and people that smothers the burning heart--unless we have learned the secret of abiding in Jesus. — Oswald Chambers

They ought to put an amendment to the First Amendment that says there shall also be freedom of hearing. — Tom Smothers

Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man. We are all born despots, from the most absolute monarch in Asia to the infant who smothers a bird with its hand for the pleasure of seeing that there exists in the world a being weaker than itself. — Joseph De Maistre

When you don't know what you're talking about, it's hard to know when you're finished. — Tommy Smothers

I wanted to be in show business, and I was funny. — Tom Smothers

Poverty smothers our dreams even before we have finished dreaming them. — Rafik Schami

David Steinberg was the reason the Smothers Brothers got cancelled. — Dave Foley

I call education, not that which smothers a woman with accomplishments, but that which tends to consolidate a firm and regular system of character; that which tends to form a friend, a companion, and a wife. I call education not that which is made up of the shreds and patches of useless arts, but that which inculcates principles, polishes taste, regulates temper, cultivates reason, subdues the passions, directs the feelings, habituates to reflection, trains to self-denial, and, more especially, that which refers all actions, feelings, sentiments, tastes, and passions, to the love and fear of God. — Hannah More

Tommy Smothers is my longest mentor, and Dave Eggers is my youngest. — Don Novello

Philosophy is antipoetic. Philosophize about mankind and you brush aside individual uniqueness, which a poet cannot do without self-damage. Unless, for a start, he has a strong personal rhythm to vary his metrics, he is nothing. Poets mistrust philosophy. They know that once the heads are counted, each owner of a head loses his personal identify and becomes a number in some government scheme: if not as a slave or serf, at least as a party to the device of majority voting, which smothers personal views. — Robert Graves

Covetousness, like a candle ill made, smothers the splendor of a happy fortune in its own grease. — Frances Osborne

When misguided public opinion honors what is despicable and despises what is honorable, punishes virtue and rewards vice, encourages what is harmful and discourages what is useful, applauds falsehood and smothers truth under indifference or insult, a nation turns it's back on progress and can be restored only by the terrible lessons of catastrophe. — Frederic Bastiat

Whoever said it got easier with time was wrong, death never got easier. The pain dulls around your heart, numbing the spot the deceased inhabited in your chest-- but it was never easier. Loss was still loss-- a physical pain, a hurt that reaches deep inside you and smothers your soul, forever indenting their memory. No, death was still death, loss was still loss, and pain was still pain. Time didn't change that. — Kelsie Leverich

Support cripples ability, pity smothers courage,
But criticism glistens rusted brilliancy. — Akshmala Sharma

I hope my tongue in prune juice smothers, If I belittle dogs and mothers. — Ogden Nash

There is a sort of mental treason
That smothers dreams outside of reason — Mike Corbett

Our shows today are better and funnier than they've ever been. — Dick Smothers

Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm. — Franz Kafka

We learned a verse of this and that and we were having fun with the songs. Tommy would make up stories to go along with them and I would yell at him, 'Hey, stupid, that's not right,' and he was like a silly kid trying to impress. — Dick Smothers

I always sleep well, dearest, except for when your hot body smothers me completely!"
Darcy grinned. "Forgive me. Even sub- consciously I must be near you. I have no control over the matter. Tea and a scone?"
"Yes, please." She sat, tucking her feet under her. "No need to apologize, William. I simply elbow you hard and you roll away, temporarily at least. Come winter you can re- pay the treatment when I slip my frozen feet between your thighs. — Sharon Lathan

I know that you're sad right now. Grieve, but don't hold onto it. Grief smothers out life. Let it go. Remember me and be happy. You have an incredible life ahead of you. Make the most of every minute. Starting right now. — Kim Holden

I heard there were two local guys in town doing songs and comedy so I thought I'd take a look ... they took my breath away ... with their music, comedy, and showmanship ... 'Dakaboom'.. is the genuine article! Two voices in perfect harmony, and with joyful abandon and humor, they take you on a magical, musical, modern day vaudeville tour!! Ben McLain and Paul Peglar are headed for stardom. They are unique, they are original, and they are known as 'Dakaboom.' Don't miss 'em 'cause you're in for a treat! — Tommy Smothers

If you're ahead of your time, who's going to listen? If you're behind the times, it's boring. — Tom Smothers

If a solution fails to appear ... and yet we feel success is just around the corner, try resting for a while ... Like the early morning frost, this intellectual refreshment withers the parasitic and nasty vegetation that smothers the good seed. Bursting forth at last is the flower of truth. — Santiago Ramon Y Cajal

Habit is a vain and treacherous goddess. She lets nothing disrupt her rule. She smothers one desire after another: the desire to travel, the desire for a better job or a new love. She stops us from living as we would like, because habit prevents us from asking ourselves whether we continue to enjoy doing what we do. — Nina George

The ultimate censorship is the flick of the dial. — Tommy Smothers

I'm an American, I don't have to see something to know it's stupid! — Tommy Smothers

Making music on TV used to be as common as commercials. In the '60s and '70s, prime time was stuffed with variety shows headlined by such major and treasured talents as Carol Burnett, Red Skelton, the Smothers Brothers and Richard Pryor, who had a very brief comedy-variety hour on NBC that was censored literally to death. — Tom Shales

Absence ... smothers into decay a rootless fancy but often nourishes the least seed of a true affection into full-flowering love. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Tommy Smothers is a hero of mine. — Penn Jillette

Gratitude quenches the fire of lust. A thankful spirit destroys the driving passion for sex because it creates contentment within the man's heart. It soothes the beast, smothers the flames, and medicates the itch. The message behind lust is, "I want! I want! I want!" The feeling lodged within the grateful heart is, "Look at all I have! Thank You Lord, for all that You have done for me and given me. I don't need anything else." A grateful heart is a full heart. — Steve Gallagher

You can say the dirty words now, but there is no content - political satire is limited to small podiums and little soap boxes. — Tommy Smothers

Your mother is holding your hand too tightly. You whimper and cling to her dress, because you know what will happen next. She stares at you, as if she's forgotten how to blink. There's one last glimpse of her face before she bundles you into the cupboard under the stairs. 'Don't make a sound,' she hisses, 'don't even breathe.' Darkness smothers you as the key twists in the lock. There's a chance that he won't find you, cowering on the floor, between the broom and floor mops, a stack of wellington boots. — Kate Rhodes

The money pigs of capitalist democracy: Money has made slaves of us. Money is the curse of mankind. It smothers the seed of everything great and good. Every penny is sticky with sweat and blood. — Joseph Goebbels

You can talk all you want about freedom of speech, but it's freedom of hearing that counts. — Tommy Smothers

I found out that I couldn't have a nervous breakdown. I tried a couple of times, but it just didn't work out. My mind, my body wouldn't let me. — Tom Smothers

Fear is a wet blanket that smothers the fiery passion God deposited in your heart when he formed you. Fear freezes us into inaction. Frozen ideas, frozen souls, frozen bodies can't move, can't dream, can't risk, can't love, and can't live. Fear chains us. — Stasi Eldredge