“the words itched more than they tickled.”
Larry Hill in Maclean’s August 27, 2001
"The past is hopeless. There’s too much of it."
Detective Nero Wolfe in Home to Roost, quoted in “Gilbert’s Top Dozen Pearls of Detective Wisdom” in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 5 # 3 (December 2001)
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."
Source unclear but not Albert Einstein (a false quotation magnet on a par with Abraham Lincoln). Various diligent efforts have been made to determine its origin online (for instance here) but regardless of where it came from it has caught on because we humans make such diligent efforts to demonstrate its validity in real life.
"Include me out."
Sam Goldwyn, quoted in Gilbert! Magazine Vol. 4 #3 (December 2000)
"All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why."
James Thurber "American author (1894-1961)” quoted as "Thought du jour" in Globe and Mail May 30, 2013
"Clear? Huh! Why a four-year-old child could understand this report! Run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can't make head or tail of it."
Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx) in Duck Soup (this line is widely quoted including online but usually inaccurately, including the child being 5)
"The habit of contemplation, the ability to sit down in front of something and care enough to let it speak for itself, cannot be acquired soon enough."
Robert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the Lamb p. xiii.