Selected rules quotes

1. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

2. People who don't know anything tend to make up fake rules, the real rules being considerably more difficult to learn.

3. Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this field that is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything to himself, except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him. What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order? The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.

4. There were rules in the monastery, but the Master always warned against the tyranny of the law. 'Obedience keeps the rules,' he would say. 'Love knows when to break them.'

5. In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong.

6. Should I abide by the rules until they're changed, or help speed the change by breaking them?

7. Life is the only game in which the object of the game is to learn the rules.

8. To be sure of winning, invent your own game, and never tell any other player the rules.

9. Drugs are very much a part of professional sports today, but when you think about it, golf is the only sport where the players aren't penalized for being on grass.

10. The old chess is too limited. Imagine playing cards, black jack for example, and every time the dealer has the same starting hand you have the same starting hand. What's the point?

11. Traffic signals in New York are just rough guidelines.

12. There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

13. There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.

14. It should not be an act of social disobedience to light a cigarette. Unless you're actually a doctor working at an incubator.

15. It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.

16. No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.

17. Humanity, morality, decency, might be forgotten, but codfish must still be had for the use of the faithful in Lent and on fast days.

18. One more thing: don't spend too much time merely reading. The best part of this work is the play, so play and enjoy!

19. The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules.

20. The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

21. I think it's the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.

22. So the next thing I assume I'll be hearing from Republicans, they want to change rules some way, as they do on the House when you get a problem with ethics, they just change the rules.

23. In vain we call old notions fudge, And bend our conscience to our dealing; The Ten Commandments will not budge, And stealing will continue stealing.

24. For loves lawe is out of reule.

25. Everyone seems to be playing well within the boundaries of his usual rule set. I have yet to hear anyone say something that seemed likely to mitigate the idiocy of this age.

26. TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.

27. I have gotten so many tickets. I hope I don't get my license revoked.

28. I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.

29. If the religious leaders have influence, they will not permit girls and boys to wrestle together, as recently happened in Shiraz.

30. I never threw an illegal pitch. The trouble is, once in a while I toss one that ain't never been seen by this generation.

31. Yesterday I parked my car in a tow-away zone...when I came back the entire area was missing.

32. It is a myth that style can't be learnt. It's all about dressing for your body shape, following the rules and wearing colours that suit your skin tone.

33. It is now almost my sole rule of life to clear myself of cants and formulas, as of poisonous Nessus shirts.

34. There is no must in art because art is free.

35. The law is not a series of calculating machines where answers come tumbling out when the right levers are pushed.

36. Burn all the statutes and their shelves: They stir us up against our kind; And worse, against ourselves.

37. When I was younger I made it a rule never to take strong drink before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast.

38. The absurd does not liberate; it binds. It does not authorize all actions. 'Everything is permitted' does not mean that nothing is forbidden.

39. They drink with impunity, or anybody who invites them.

40. Each for himself is still the rule We learn it when we go to school- The devil take the hindmost, O!

41. Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest.

42. Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.

43. No we won't -- no we won't break the law Sharon.

44. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs.

45. I do things differently, because I don't go by a rule book, because I lead from the heart, not the head, and albeit that's got me into trouble in my work, I understand that.

46. All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.

47. Every law that was ever written opened up a new way to graft.

48. My wife Ticky is an anarchist-individualist... When she was in the Navy during the early 'forties she showed up one morning in proper uniform but with her red hair held down by a simple navy-blue band - a hair ribbon. It was neat (Ticky is always neat) and it suited the rest of her outfit esthetically, but it was undeniably a hair ribbon and her division officer had fits. 'If you can show me,' Ticky answered with simple diginity, 'where it says one word in the Navy Uniform Regulations on the subject of hair ribbons, I'll take it off. Otherwise not.' See what I mean? She doesn't have the right attitude.

49. A motion to adjourn is always in order.

50. Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.

51. You should not take a fellow eight years old And make him swear to never kiss the girls.

52. M-O-O-N, that spells ILLEGAL!

53. It was in the rule book. They gave you three warnings. The fourth time you fell below four miles an hour you were...well, you were out of the Walk. But if you had three warnings and could manage to walk for three hours, you were back in the sun again.

54. Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

55. Governmental regulations all carry coercion to some degree, and even where they don't, they habituate man to expect teaching, guidance and help outside himself, instead of formulating his own.

56. That original intelligence, say the MAGIANS, who is the first principle of all things, discovers himself immediately to the mind and understanding alone; but has placed the sun as his image in the visible universe; and when that bright luminary diffuses its beams over the earth and the firmament, it is a faint copy of the glory which resides in the higher heavens. If you would escape the displeasure of this divine being, you must be careful never to set your bare foot upon the ground, nor spit into a fire, nor throw any water upon it, even though it were consuming a whole city. Who can express the perfections of the Almighty? say the Mahometans. Even the noblest of his works, if compared to him, are but dust and rubbish. How much more must human conception fall short of his infinite perfections? His smile and favour renders men for ever happy; and to obtain it for your children, the best method is to cut off from them, while infants, a little bit of skin, about half the breadth of a farthing. Take two bits of cloth, say the Roman catholics, about an inch or an inch and a half square, join them by the corners with two strings or pieces of tape about sixteen inches long, throw this over your head, and make one of the bits of cloth lie upon your breast, and the other upon your back, keeping them next your skin: There is not a better secret for recommending yourself to that infinite Being, who exists from eternity to eternity.

57. There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception

58. They said that he was sick 'cause he didn't play by the rules,he just showed the wise men of his day to be nothing more than fools