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  fortune index  all fortunes 
  
 |  |  | #1401 |  | There was a college student trying to earn some pocket money by going from house to house offering to do odd jobs.  He explained this to
 a man who answered one door.
 "How much will you charge to paint my porch?" asked the man.
 "Forty dollars."
 "Fine" said the man, and gave the student the paint and brushes.
 Three hours later the paint-splattered lad knocked on the door again.
 "All done!", he says, and collects his money.  "By the way," the student says,
 "That's not a Porsche, it's a Ferrari."
 
 |  |  |  | #1402 |  | There's no such thing as a free lunch. -- Milton Friendman
 
 |  |  |  | #1403 |  | There's nothing worse for your business than extra Santa Clauses smoking in the men's room.
 -- W. Bossert
 
 |  |  |  | #1404 |  | They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man.  These things offer
 pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which
 demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and
 sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.
 They are fools that think otherwise.  No great effort was ever bought.
 No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was
 ever raised into being for payment of any kind.  No parthenon, no Thermopylae
 was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground
 beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone.  The payment for doing these
 things was itself the doing of them.
 To wield onself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and
 so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the
 greatest pleasure known to man!  To one who has felt the chisel in his hand
 and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt
 sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body
 of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food
 spread only for demons or for gods."
 -- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"
 
 |  |  |  | #1405 |  | Things worth having are worth cheating for. 
 |  |  |  | #1406 |  | Think lucky. If you fall in a pond, check your pockets for fish. -- Darrell Royal
 
 |  |  |  | #1407 |  | This is a good time to punt work. 
 |  |  |  | #1408 |  | This is an especially good time for you vacationers who plan to fly, because the Reagan administration, as part of the same policy under which it
 recently sold Yellowstone National Park to Wayne Newton, has "deregulated"
 the airline industry.  What this means for you, the consumer, is that the
 airlines are no longer required to follow any rules whatsoever.  They can
 show snuff movies.  They can charge for oxygen.  They can hire pilots right
 out of Vending Machine Refill Person School.  They can conserve fuel by
 ejecting husky passengers over water.  They can ram competing planes in
 mid-air.  These innovations have resulted in tremendous cost savings which
 have been passed along to you, the consumer, in the form of flights with
 amazingly low fares, such as $29.  Of course, certain restrictions do apply,
 the main one being that all these flights take you to Newark, and you must
 pay thousands of dollars if you want to fly back out.
 -- Dave Barry, "Iowa -- Land of Secure Vacations"
 
 |  |  |  | #1409 |  | This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this:  most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time.  Many
 solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were
 largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper,
 which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of
 paper that were unhappy.
 -- Douglas Adams
 
 |  |  |  | #1410 |  | This week only, all our fiber-fill jackets are marked down! 
 |  |  |  |  |  |   ...            ...   | 
 
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