“that was like trying to teach a goldfish how to play basketball over the phone.”
Somebody posting as “TouchOGray” June 25 2008 (in an online thread about whether it’s OK to leave a bicycle in an unheated shed for the winter)
“It takes the nerve of a robber’s horse, as a Newfoundlander might say…”
Maclean’s Nov. 9, 1998 [I did not record the author’s name]
“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.”
W.C. Fields (I have encountered other variants but this one is the earliest I’ve seen)
“A successful diet is the triumph of mind over platter.”
“Gilbert!’s Top Dozen Very Bad Puns” in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 5 #8 (July/August 2002)
“Descartes once joked about common sense that it must be universal, because he had yet to meet anyone who didn’t claim to have it.”
Michael Potemra in National Review Jan. 27, 2003 (I believe he was referring to the opening line of Discours de la Méthode: “Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée: car chacun pense en être si bien pourvu que ceux même qui sont les plus difficiles à contenter en toute autre chose n’ont point coutume d’en désirer plus qu’ils en ont.”)
’Nothing succeeds like success” - Alexandre Dumas in Ange Pitou 1854
“Nothing succeeds like excess” - Oscar Wilde 1894
“Nothing recedes like success” - Bryan Forbes 1926
“Nothing succeeds like address” - Fran Lebowitz 1978
“those who attach too much importance to immediate victory will abandon any project at the first hint of failure. There is nothing that fails like success.” - G.K. Chesterton in Heretics 1905
All from Gilbert! magazine Vol. 6 #7 (June 2003)
“Stupidity assumes two forms, it speaks or is silent. Mute stupidity is bearable.”
Bruce Lee Striking Thoughts
“This [race] is as tight as the rusted lug nuts on a '55 Ford.”
“Rather’s Familiar Quotations” [Dan Rather] in The Atlantic Monthly March 2005