He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

“What’s the good of Mercator’s North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?”
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
“They are merely conventional signs!

“Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we’ve got our brave Captain to thank:
(So the crew would protest) “that he’s bought us the best—
A perfect and absolute blank!”

— Charles Lutwidge Dodgson,
writing as Lewis Carroll

A heuristic is an algorithm in a clown suit. It’s less predictable, it’s more fun, and it comes without a 30-day, money-back guarantee.

— Steve McConnell, in “Code Complete”

Roger Corman: Stanley, you can’t polish a turd.
Stanley Kubrick: Sure you can. You just have to freeze it first.

— Apocryphal conversation in an editing studio

The Vermin only teaze and pinch
Their Foes fuperior by an Inch.
So, Nat’ralifts obferve, a Flea
Hath fmaller Fleas that on him prey,
And thefe have fmaller yet to bite ’em.
And fo proceed ad infinitum

— “On Poetry: a Rapsody” by Jonathan Swift, writing as NULL

In section 6.2.1 of his ‘Sorting and Searching,’ Knuth points out while the first binary search was published in 1946, the first published binary search without bugs did not appear until 1962.

— Jon Bentley, misquoting Donald Knuth

Sally can work.

See Sally work.

Work, work, work.

— Three sentences from Zerna Sharp’s “Dick and Jane” series.

It had been no part of his plans to come whizzing down off the rail into this singularly soup-like water which tasted in equal parts of oil and dead rats; but, now that he was here he was prepared to make the best of the situation.

This dialogue has been set down as though it had been as brisk and snappy as any cross-talk between vaudeville comedians, but in reality Uncle Donald’s peculiar methods of conversation had stretched it over a period of nearly three minutes: for after each reply and before each question he had puffed and sighed and inhaled his moustache with such painful deliberation that his companion’s nerves were finding it difficult to bear up under the strain.

One of the suits of armour which had been familiar to him in his boyhood loomed up in front of him, and with the sight came the recollection of how, when a mere child on his first visit to Windles, playing hide and seek with his cousin Eustace, he had concealed himself inside this very suit, and had not only baffled Eustace through a long summer evening but had wound up by almost scaring him into a decline by booing at him through the vizor of the helmet.

— Three sentences from P. G. Wodehouse novels