Hobbes Quotes

Reality continues to ruin my life.

You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don't help.

It's not denial. I'm just selective about the reality I accept.

Sometimes when I'm talking, my words can't keep up with my thoughts. I wonder why we think faster than we speak. Probably so we can think twice.

I'm killing time while I wait for life to shower me with meaning and happiness.

People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.

Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems?

Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there any more.

I wish I had more friends, but people are such jerks. If you can just get most people to leave you alone, you're doing good. If you can find even one person you really like, you're lucky. And if that person can also stand you, you're really lucky.

You know, sometimes kids get bad grades in school because the class moves too slow for them. Einstein got D's in school. Well guess what, I get F's!!!

As far as I'm concerned, if something is so complicated that you can't explain it in 10 seconds, then it's probably not worth knowing anyway.

I'm a misunderstood genius." "What's misunderstood?" "Nobody thinks I'm a genius.

That's the difference between me and the rest of the world! Happiness isn't good enough for me! I demand euphoria!

Hobbes: Do you think there's a God? Calvin: Well, somebody's out to get me!

When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool you end up looking like a moron instead.

When life gives you lemons, chunk it right back.

I've been thinking Hobbes" "On a weekend?" "Well, it wasn't on purpose

Life is like topography, Hobbes. There are summits of happiness and success, flat stretches of boring routine and valleys of frustration and failure.

CALVIN: This whole Santa Claus thing just doesn't make sense. Why all the secrecy? Why all the mystery? If the guy exists why doesn't he ever show himself and prove it? And if he doesn't exist what's the meaning of all this? HOBBES: I dunno. Isn't this a religious holiday? CALVIN: Yeah, but actually, I've got the same questions about God.

I go to school, but I never learn what I want to know.

Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.

CALVIN: Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor? When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny. Don't you think it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us? HOBBES: I suppose if we couldn't laugh at the things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.

Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.

I think hiccup cures were really invented for the amusement of the patient's friends.

You know, sometimes the world seems like a pretty mean place.' 'That's why animals are so soft and huggy.

Curiosity is the lust of the mind.

Wow, it really snowed last night! Isn't it wonderful? Everything familiar has disappeared! The world looks brand new! A new year ... a fresh, clean start! It's like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on! A day full of possibilities! It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy ... let's go exploring!

I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.

I think we dream so we don't have to be apart so long. If we're in each other's dreams, we can play together all night.

Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him?

You can drag my body to school but my spirit refuses to go.

Calvin: I used to hate writing assignments, but now I enjoy them. I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog! Want to see my book report? Hobbes: (Reading Calvin's paper) "The Dynamics of Interbeing and Monological Imperatives in Dick and Jane: A Study in Psychic Transrelational Gender modes." Calvin: Academia, here I come!

Calvin : There's no problem so awful, that you can't add some guilt to it and make it even worse.

I hate to think that all my current experiences will someday become stories with no point.

Calvin: Life's a lot more fun when you aren't responsible for your actions.

I think nighttime is dark so you can imagine your fears with less distraction.

The world isn't fair, Calvin." "I know Dad, but why isn't it ever unfair in my favor?

A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction to a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day.

I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal.

Now what state do you live in?' 'Denial.

I like my smock. You can tell the quality of the artist by the quality of his smock. Actually, I just like to say smock. Smock smock smock smock smock smock.

They say the secret of success is being at the right place at the right time, but since you never know when the right time is going to be, I figure the trick is to find the right place and just hang around.

Hello Dad! It is now three in the morning. Do you know where I am?

From now on, I'm not doing anything I don't want to do! The world owes me happiness, fulfillment and success.... I'm just here to cash in.

Calvin: Know what I pray for? Hobbes: What? Calvin: The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can't, and the incapacity to tell the difference.

I'd hate to have a kid like me.

Calvin: Why are you crying mom? Mom: I'm cutting up an onion. Calvin: It must be hard to cook if you anthrpomorphisize your vegetables.

Hell is truth seen too late.

The man who must brag for himself knows that no one else will

The secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that's even worse

Ms. Wormwood: Calvin, can you tell us what Lewis and Clark did? Calvin: No, but I can recite the secret superhero origin of each member of Captain Napalm's Thermonuclear League of Liberty. Ms. Wormwood: See me after class, Calvin. Calvin: [retrospectively] I'm not dumb. I just have a command of thoroughly useless information.

Very little worth knowing is taught by fear.

A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.

If you can't control your peanut butter, you can't expect to control your life.

Calvin: Look, a dead bird! Hobbes: It must've hit a window. Calvin: Isn't it beautiful? It's so delicate. Sighhh... once it's too late, you appreciate what a miracle life is. You realize that nature is ruthless and our existence is very fragile, temporary, and precious. But to go on with your daily affairs, you can't really think about that...which is probably why everyone takes the world for granted and why we act so thoughtlessly. It's very confusing. I suppose it will all make sense when we grow up. Hobbes: No doubt.

Stop longing. You poison today’s ease, reaching always for tomorrow.

HOBBES: All this modern technology just makes people try to do everything at once.

I wonder if you can refuse to inherit the world.

The fight isn't over until you win.

Why waste time learning when ignorance is instantaneous. ---Hobbes

Girls are like slugs—they probably serve some purpose, but it's hard to imagine what.

Every time I've built character, I've regretted it.

HOBBES: If you don't get a goodnight kiss you get Kafka dreams.

Nothing takes the heart out of a man more than the expectation of failure.

Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that. And no less.

Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the lottery.

Scientia potentia est. Knowledge is power.

I won't eat any cereal that doesn't turn the milk purple.

Not being able to think of a reply is not the same thing as accepting another's words.

Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer.... Who'd have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?

Look! A trickle of water running through some dirt! I'd say our afternoon just got booked solid!

Thinking is not always...comforting. It is always good, but not always comforting.

I healed. Not completely. A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.

I'm not a vegetarian! I'm a dessertarian!

People pay more attention when they think you’re up to something.

Death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice.

Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die. True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.

A woman of many talents. And intelligent, too. He'd probably have to kill her soon.

Leave the pain behind and let your life be your own again. There is a place where all time is now, and the choices are simple and always your own. Wolves have no kings

Hobbes: Jump! Jump! Jump! I win! Calvin: You win? Aaugghh! You won last time! I hate it when you win! Aarrggh! Mff! Gnnk! I hate this game! I hate the whole world! Aghhh! What a stupid game! You must have cheated! You must have used some sneaky, underhanded mindmeld to make me lose! I hate you! I didn't want to play this idiotic game in the first place! I knew you'd cheat! I knew you'd win! Oh! Oh! Aarg! [Calvin runs in circles around Hobbes screaming "Aaaaaaaaaaaa", then falls over.] Hobbes: Look, it's just a game. Calvin: I know! You should see me when I lose in real life!

Hold it. You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see the three bears eat the three little pigs, and then the bears join up with the big bad wolf and eat Goldilocks and Little Red Riding Hood! Tell me a story like that, OK?

In the short term, it would make me happy to go play outside. In the long term, it would make me happier to do well at school and become successful. But in the VERY long term, I know which will make better memories.

I say, if your knees aren’t green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life.

When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.

If good things lasted forever, would we appreciate how precious they are?

[Calvin and Hobbes are playing Scrabble.] Calvin: Ha! I've got a great word and it's on a "Double word score" box! Hobbes: "ZQFMGB" isn't a word! It doesn't even have a vowel! Calvin: It is so a word! It's a worm found in New Guinea! Everyone knows that! Hobbes: I'm looking it up. Calvin: You do, and I'll look up that 12-letter word you played with all the Xs and Js! Hobbes: What's your score for ZQFMGB? Calvin: 957.

It's too late to apologize for I have already forgiven you." -FitzChivalry Farseer

It seems like once people grow up, they have no idea what’s cool.

Too late to apologize, I've already forgiven you.

I have all these great genes, but they're recessive. That's the problem here.

Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?

Time is an unkind teacher, delivering lessons that we learn far too late for them to be useful. Years after I could have benefited from them, the insights come to me.

Stop thinking of what you intend to do. Stop thinking of what you have just done. Then, stop thinking that you have stopped thinking of those things. Then you will find the Now, the time that stretches eternal, and is really the only time there is.

In that last dance of chances I shall partner you no more. I shall watch another turn you As you move across the floor. In that last dance of chances When I bid your life goodbye I will hope she treats you kindly. I will hope you learn to fly. In that last dance of chances When I know you'll not be mine I will let you go with longing And the hope that you'll be fine. In that last dance of chances We shall know each other's minds. We shall part with our regrets When the tie no longer binds.

For such is the nature of man, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other mens at a distance.

Mom’s not feeling well. So I’m making her a get well card.” “That’s thoughtful of you.” "See, on the front it says, ‘Get Well Soon’ … and on the inside it says,’Because my bed isn’t made, my clothes need to be put away and I’m hungry. Love Calvin.’ Want to sign it?” “Sure, I’m hungry too

The second thing you have to do to be a writer is to keep on writing. Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don't have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them. I meet far too many people who are going to be writers 'someday.' When they are out of high school, when they've finished college, after the wedding, when the kids are older, after I retire . . . That is such a trap You will never have any more free time than you do right now. So, whether you are 12 or 70, you should sit down today and start being a writer if that is what you want to do. You might have to write on a notebook while your kids are playing on the swings or write in your car on your coffee break. That's okay. I think we've all 'been there, done that.' It all starts with the writing.

Reading list (1972 edition)[edit] 1. Homer – Iliad, Odyssey 2. The Old Testament 3. Aeschylus – Tragedies 4. Sophocles – Tragedies 5. Herodotus – Histories 6. Euripides – Tragedies 7. Thucydides – History of the Peloponnesian War 8. Hippocrates – Medical Writings 9. Aristophanes – Comedies 10. Plato – Dialogues 11. Aristotle – Works 12. Epicurus – Letter to Herodotus; Letter to Menoecus 13. Euclid – Elements 14. Archimedes – Works 15. Apollonius of Perga – Conic Sections 16. Cicero – Works 17. Lucretius – On the Nature of Things 18. Virgil – Works 19. Horace – Works 20. Livy – History of Rome 21. Ovid – Works 22. Plutarch – Parallel Lives; Moralia 23. Tacitus – Histories; Annals; Agricola Germania 24. Nicomachus of Gerasa – Introduction to Arithmetic 25. Epictetus – Discourses; Encheiridion 26. Ptolemy – Almagest 27. Lucian – Works 28. Marcus Aurelius – Meditations 29. Galen – On the Natural Faculties 30. The New Testament 31. Plotinus – The Enneads 32. St. Augustine – On the Teacher; Confessions; City of God; On Christian Doctrine 33. The Song of Roland 34. The Nibelungenlied 35. The Saga of Burnt Njál 36. St. Thomas Aquinas – Summa Theologica 37. Dante Alighieri – The Divine Comedy;The New Life; On Monarchy 38. Geoffrey Chaucer – Troilus and Criseyde; The Canterbury Tales 39. Leonardo da Vinci – Notebooks 40. Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince; Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy 41. Desiderius Erasmus – The Praise of Folly 42. Nicolaus Copernicus – On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres 43. Thomas More – Utopia 44. Martin Luther – Table Talk; Three Treatises 45. François Rabelais – Gargantua and Pantagruel 46. John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion 47. Michel de Montaigne – Essays 48. William Gilbert – On the Loadstone and Magnetic Bodies 49. Miguel de Cervantes – Don Quixote 50. Edmund Spenser – Prothalamion; The Faerie Queene 51. Francis Bacon – Essays; Advancement of Learning; Novum Organum, New Atlantis 52. William Shakespeare – Poetry and Plays 53. Galileo Galilei – Starry Messenger; Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences 54. Johannes Kepler – Epitome of Copernican Astronomy; Concerning the Harmonies of the World 55. William Harvey – On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals; On the Circulation of the Blood; On the Generation of Animals 56. Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan 57. René Descartes – Rules for the Direction of the Mind; Discourse on the Method; Geometry; Meditations on First Philosophy 58. John Milton – Works 59. Molière – Comedies 60. Blaise Pascal – The Provincial Letters; Pensees; Scientific Treatises 61. Christiaan Huygens – Treatise on Light 62. Benedict de Spinoza – Ethics 63. John Locke – Letter Concerning Toleration; Of Civil Government; Essay Concerning Human Understanding;Thoughts Concerning Education 64. Jean Baptiste Racine – Tragedies 65. Isaac Newton – Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy; Optics 66. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Discourse on Metaphysics; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding;Monadology 67. Daniel Defoe – Robinson Crusoe 68. Jonathan Swift – A Tale of a Tub; Journal to Stella; Gulliver's Travels; A Modest Proposal 69. William Congreve – The Way of the World 70. George Berkeley – Principles of Human Knowledge 71. Alexander Pope – Essay on Criticism; Rape of the Lock; Essay on Man 72. Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu – Persian Letters; Spirit of Laws 73. Voltaire – Letters on the English; Candide; Philosophical Dictionary 74. Henry Fielding – Joseph Andrews; Tom Jones 75. Samuel Johnson – The Vanity of Human Wishes; Dictionary; Rasselas; The Lives of the Poets

I think life should be more like TV. I think all of life's problems ought to be solved in 30 minutes with simple homilies, don't you? I think weight and oral hygiene ought to be our biggest concerns. I think we should all have powerful, high-paying jobs, and everyone should drive fancy sports cars. All our desires should be instantly gratified. Women should always wear tight clothing, and men should carry powerful handguns. Life overall should be more glamorous, thrill-packed, and filled with applause, don't you think?... Then again, if real life was like that, what would we watch on television?

He shook his head pityingly. “This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draft.” “Not all men are destined for greatness,” I reminded him. “Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?” “This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.” “No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart's beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?