Quotes

Maybe hours, or even days, after someone has told me something, I'll think of a response I should have given, possibly a clever one, possibly a funny one - never at the time.
When I was a college lecturer I was given a choice of being in charge of a small department well away from the new main college buildings or continuing in my capacity as simply "a lecturer". I chose the second since I wanted to go to the new place with the new facilities and where most of the staff were, not to the musty old place way out of town where there were just a few "old hands". A day later I thought of an answer I could have given when my boss asked what I would prefer to do; he added: "Would you like to be a big fish in a small pool or a small fish in a big pool?" Answer: "I can't say I'd like to be fish at all."
Which wouldn't of course have been the politest or, in view of promotion prospects, the most tactful thing to say.
So, in a way, it's best not to think up clever ripostes and say them instantly without thinking the consequences through.
One of the best of these sorts of sayings was made by Whistler, the painter, to Oscar Wilde who said, after Whistler had made some witty remark, "I wish I had said that"; Whistler rejoined "You will Oscar, you will."
Someone was quoting H.L.Mencken yesterday but it wasn't a quote I have seen before. I looked up my Dictionary of Quotations for other Mencken quotes but found none there I had ever seen before. My two favourites of his are: "If you are travelling anywhere in the US by train and you throw an egg out of the window, you'll be sure to hit an evangelist." My other favourite is one I'm not sure Mencken actually said: "There's no such thing as a free lunch."
Though I did have one once: with a crowd of rugby fans in a restaurant, we waited and waited for the bill to arrive until one bright spark said "Let's do a runner". Which we did. OK, it was wrong; but what if I'd stayed behind? I'd have had to pay for the lot!