Douglas Adams

« Eh bien, voilà, constata Arthur. Nous allons mourir.
— Oui, admit Ford, sauf que... non ! Attends une minute ! » Et soudain, le voilà qui se précipite à travers le sas en direction de quelque chose situé en dehors du champ de vision d'Arthur. « Qu'est-ce que c'est que cet interrupteur ?
— Quoi ? Où ça ? s'écria Arthur en se retournant.
— Mais non, je plaisantais ! dit Ford. Nous allons effectivement mourir. » Et se radossant contre le mur, il reprit sa chansonnette là où il l'avait laissée.

Recette du Gargle Blaster pan-galactique (cocktail!)
Prendre le contenu d'une bouteille d'Esprit-d'Nos-Aïeux.
Y verser une mesure d'eau des océans Santraginus.
Faire fondre dans cette mixture 3 cubes de mégagin arcturien (il doit être bien frappé, faute de quoi tout le benzène s'évapore).
Faire barboter dans le tout 4 litres de gaz des marais éphésiens, en souvenir de tous ces joyeux randonneurs morts de plaisir en sillonnant les marais d'Ephèse.
Poser sur le dos d'un cuiller d'argent une mesure d'extrait d'hypermenthe bleue chargée de tous les parfums entêtants de ces sombres Zones bleues aux mystiques et douces fragrances.
Jetez dans le tout une dent de tigre du soleil algolien: admirez comme elle se dissout en baignant le breuvage dans les feux des soleils algoliens.
Saupoudrez de zemfir.
Ajoutez une olive.
Consommer… mais...très prudemment...

quelque part dans le cosmos, affirmait-il, et parallèlement aux planètes habitées par des humanoïdes, reptiloïdes, cachaloïdes, arbres-à-pattoïdes, ours-polaroïdes et autres ombres-vagues-super-intelligentes-et-de-couleur-bleue, existait également une planète entièrement dévolue aux formes de vie crayons-bicoïdes. Et c’était vers cette planète que se dirigeaient tous les vieux Bics errants, en se faufilant tranquillement par les trous de ver de l’espace pour gagner un monde où ils savaient qu’ils pourraient enfin vivre une existence entièrement bicoïde, correspondant à des stimuli nettement bicorientés, bref, mener l’équivalent pour un Bic de la bonne vie.
[Chapitre 21]

La science a certes quelques magnifiques réussites à son actif mais à tout prendre, je préfère de loin être heureux plutôt qu’avoir raison.
— Et l’êtes-vous ?
— Non. C’est là bien sûr tout le problème.

Même les fantômes ont dû avoir le temps de se ranger et de fonder une famille, à cette heure.
[Chapitre 17]

For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.

'The answer to the Great Question...'
'Yes...!'
'Of Life, the Universe and Everything...' said Deep Thought.
'Yes...!'
'Is...' said Deep Thought, and paused.
'Yes...!'
'Is...!'
'Yes...!!!...?'
'Forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.

'My circuits are now irrevocably committed to calculating the answer to the Ultimate Questio of Life, the Universe, and Everything [...] but the programme will take me a little while to run.'
Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.
'How long?' he said.
'Seven and a half million years,' said Deep Thought.
Lunkwill and Fook bliked at each other.
'Seven and a half million years...!' they cried in chorus.
'Yes,' declaimed Deep Thought, 'I said I'd have to think about it, didn't I?'

Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor - at least no one worth speaking of.

One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationedship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their gard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted somenone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid.

'You know,' said Arthur, 'it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in depp space that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young.'
'Why, what did she tell you?'
'I don't know, I didn't listen.'

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? I could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

One of the things Ford Perfect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious, as in It's a nice day, or You're very tall or Oh dear you seem to have fallen down a thirty-foot well, are you alright? At firt Ford had formed a theory to account for this strange behaviour. If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, he thought, their mouths probably seize up. After a few months' consideration and observation he abandonned this theory in favour of a new one. if they don't keep on exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working. After a while he abandonned this ont as well as being obstructively cynical and decided he quite liked human beings after all, but he always remained desperately worried about the terrible number of things they didn't know about.

Only six people in the Galaxy knew that the job of the Galactic President was not to wield power but to attract attention away from it.

"People of Earth, your attention please," a voice said, and it was wonderful. Wonderful perfect quadrophonic sound with distortion levels so low as to make a brave man weep.
"This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council," the voice continued. "As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you."

This planet had - or rather had - a problem, which was this : most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained ; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Poésie Vogon:
"O blas bougriot glabouilleux.....
Tes micturations me touchent
Comme des flatouillis slictueux
Sur une botte mouche....
Grubeux, je t'implore,
Car mes fontins s'empalindroment
Et surrénalement me sporent
De croinçantes épiquarômes.
Ou sinon... nous t'échierons dans les gobinapes
Du fond de notre patafion
Tu verras si j'en suis pas cap.

Même le plus endurci des bourlingueurs spatiaux ne peut s’empêcher de frissonner devant le prodigieux spectacle d’un lever de soleil vu de l’espace ; mais un lever de soleils binaires… c’est l’une des merveilles de la Galaxie.

Je refuse de prouver que j'existe, dit Dieu, car prouver c'est renier la foi et sans foi, je ne suis plus rien.

L’Encyclopædia galactica définit le robot comme un dispositif mécanique conçu dans le but d’effectuer le travail d’un homme. Le service commercial de la Compagnie cybernétique de Sirius le définit pour sa part comme « le véritable compagnon en plastique de vos meilleurs instants ».
Le Guide du routard galactique définit le service commercial de la Compagnie cybernétique de Sirius comme « un ramassis de pauvre mecs stupides qui finiront par se retrouver les premiers contre le mur le jour de la révolution », avec une note indiquant que la rédaction du Guide était intéressée par toute candidature pour reprendre le poste de spécialiste en robotique.