Of course you have a purpose -- to find a purpose.

FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #5

A: The Halls of Montezuma and the Shores of Tripoli.

Q: Name two families whose kids won't join the Marines.

You tread upon my patience.

-- William Shakespeare, "Henry IV"

Do something unusual today. Pay a bill.

Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is

oblivion.

-- Mark Twain

The fashion wears out more apparel than the man.

-- William Shakespeare, "Much Ado About Nothing"

You mentioned your name as if I should recognize it, but beyond the

obvious facts that you are a bachelor, a solicitor, a freemason, and

an asthmatic, I know nothing whatever about you.

-- Sherlock Holmes, "The Norwood Builder"

Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything.

Some think it is the voice of God.

-- Mark Twain

The countdown had stalled at 'T' minus 69 seconds when Desiree, the first

female ape to go up in space, winked at me slyly and pouted her thick,

rubbery lips unmistakably -- the first of many such advances during what

would prove to be the longest, and most memorable, space voyage of my

career.

-- Winning sentence, 1985 Bulwer-Lytton bad fiction contest.

The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that

will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful.

-- Mark Twain

Q: How do you play religious roulette?

A: You stand around in a circle and blaspheme and see who gets

struck by lightning first.

All I know is what the words know, and dead things, and that

makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning and a middle and

an end, as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead.

-- Samuel Beckett

You're not my type. For that matter, you're not even my species!!!

You can do very well in speculation where land or anything to do with dirt

is concerned.

You fill a much-needed gap.

Q: Why do the police always travel in threes?

A: One to do the reading, one to do the writing, and the other keeps

an eye on the two intellectuals.

"I understand this is your first dead client," Sabian was saying. The

absurdity of the statement made me want to laugh but they don't call me

Deadpan Allie and lie.

-- Pat Cadigan, "Mindplayers"

Beware of a dark-haired man with a loud tie.

Your present plans will be successful.

I've touch'd the highest point of all my greatness;

And from that full meridian of my glory

I haste now to my setting. I shall fall,

Like a bright exhalation in the evening

And no man see me more.

-- Shakespeare