Piss Quotes (3 quotes)
[Alchemists] finde out men so covetous of so much happiness, whom they easily perswade that they shall finde greater Riches in Hydargyrie [mercury], than Nature affords in Gold. Such, whom although they have twice or thrice already been deluded, yet they have still a new Device wherewith to deceive um again; there being no greater Madness…. So that the smells of Coles, Sulphur, Dung, Poyson, and Piss, are to them a greater pleasure than the taste of Honey; till their Farms, Goods, and Patrimonies being wasted, and converted into Ashes and Smoak, when they expect the rewards of their Labours, births of Gold, Youth, and Immortality, after all their Time and Expences; at length, old, ragged, famisht, with the continual use of Quicksilver [mercury] paralytick, onely rich in misery, … a laughing-stock to the people: … compell’d to live in the lowest degree of poverty, and … at length compell’d thereto by Penury, they fall to Ill Courses, as Counterfeiting of Money.
In The Vanity of the Arts and Sciences (1530), translation (1676), 313.
All things help, quoth the Wren, when he piss’d in the Sea.
No. 563 in Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs, Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings (1732), 21. [Note: this earthy wisdom is misinformed; in general, birds do not have a urinary bladder and excrete kidney waste as uric acid along with faeces as a semisolid waste. —Webmaster]
If you’ve got one foot in the past and one foot in the future, you’re pissing on the present.
Aphorism seen used by various writers, for example, in Buffalo Lockjaw (2009), 276-277. Variants also seen attributed to Michael J. Fox in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future (2010), 96; P.J. Parrish in The Killing Song (2011), 126; and Malachy McCourt. Webmaster has as yet not found a distinct primary source, and believes it may be an aphorism of unknown origin.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
