Don’t you just love it when people say smart things?

Not anyone I know, of course. No one I know says anything particularly smart.

But other people do.

People who are too smart to have anything to do with me.

If I ever get too big for my boots, I find some of the smart things these smart people have said.

I usually do a Google search under categories such as “weird quotes” or “bizarre quotes” or “quotes by weird people after a bizarre thing happened to them on the way to the shop”.

Give it a try sometime – it’s hours of fun for the whole family.

Seriously, people have said some pretty clever things over the years.

Oh sure, there’s the ones we’ve all heard before.

“Some mornings, it’s just not worth chewing through the leather straps.”

Clever – yes. But I reckon that when a quote makes it onto the front of T-shirts it’s really not that funny any more.

No, the quotes I like are the whacky ones. The ones that make me stop and say: “I wish I’d said that.”

“I am not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.”

Now that’s a quote.

Or how about this? “My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I am right.”

I’d love to drop clever ad-lib quotes like that into a conversation but I don’t have the time to prepare one in advance.

Actually, that was almost a clever quote, wasn’t it?

I must remember it next time the conversation at the pub turns to clever quotes.

It rarely does ... but it might.

Just about everyone has heard the famous quote from Winston Churchill after some bird suggested he was drunk.

“I may be drunk, Miss,” he said, “but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”

Good stuff coming from a fat, bald Pom.

But have you ever heard the quote attributed to 19th-century British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli who, when informed by another MP, "I predict, Sir, that you will die either by hanging or of some vile disease", replied: "That all depends, Sir, upon whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."

They just don’t make ’em like that any more, do they?

Of course there are the serious quotes worth mentioning.

How about this one: “Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”

Too deep for me, I’m afraid.

Must have come from one of those smart people.

But there’s nothing wrong with a good laugh old belly-laugh.

“The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad,” said Salvador Dali.

Now that’s funny.

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”

An absolute crack-up from Hunter S. Thompson, the American journalist and author.

Or, as Charlie Brown said once in the popular Peanuts cartoon: “Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night’."

You might be wondering why I would be lying awake at night pondering quotable quotes.

Well, it’s because of an interview with Lynne Spears, mother of pop star Britney and little sister Jamie, which I read the other day.

Don’t laugh. I enjoy a bit of trailer trash literature every now and then.

Apparently Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston have split up.

Who knew?

Anyway, you have to remember, Britney Spears has had all sorts of very public problems with her life and young sister Jamie fell pregnant at just 15.

But in her memoir, the majestically titled Through the Storm: A Real Story of Fame and Family, Lynne Spears writes: “I think you have to let them follow their dreams.”

And folks, not even Charlie Brown can top that one.