Quotes by Humorists - Page 10

Sometimes the sins you haven't committed are all you have left to hold onto.
David Sedaris
I'm not absolutely certain of the facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare who says that it's always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping.
P.G. Wodehouse
One disadvantage of being a hog is that at any moment some blundering fool may try to make a silk purse out of your wife's ear.
J.B. Morton
If you are any kind of an artist, then validation … can be a result, but you’re going to do the work anyway. Because you’re just wired that way. It’s so engrained, it’s such a part of your personality that you don’t just stop doing it.
David Sedaris
A hypocritical businessman, whose fortune had been the misfortune of many others, told Mark Twain piously, “Before I die I intend to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I want to climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud.” “I have a better idea,” suggested Twain. “Why don’t you stay right at home in Boston and keep them?
Mark Twain
Never lend your car to someone you've given birth to.
Erma Bombeck
Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it's not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.
Will Rogers
I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at second hand.
Mark Twain
Hugh consoled me, saying, "Don't let it get to you. There are plenty of things you're good at."When asked for some examples, he listed vacuuming and naming stuffed animals. He says he can probably come up with a few more, but he'll need some time to think.
David Sedaris
A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.
Mark Twain
As a rule from what I've observed the American Captain of Industry doesn't do anything out of business hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night he just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start being a Captain of Industry again.
P.G. Wodehouse
If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever.
David Sedaris
I believe that the ability to laugh at oneself is fundamental to the resiliency of the human spirit.
Jill Conner Browne
The fellow that owns his own home is always just coming out of a hardware store.
Kin Hubbard
Folks that blurt out just what they think wouldn't be so bad if they thought.
Kin Hubbard
When I am alone in the forest at night-time and jump from one tree to another, I often think that life is so strange.
George Mikes
Success is simple. Do what's right the right way at the right time.
Arnold Glasow
There are several good protections against temptation but the surest is cowardice.
Mark Twain
The darling mispronunciations of childhood! - dear me, there's no music that can touch it; and how one grieves when it wastes away and dissolves into correctness, knowing it will never visit his bereaved ear again.
Mark Twain
Bargain: something you can't use at a price you can't resist.
Franklin P. Jones
She gave me another of those long keen looks, and I could see that she was again asking herself if her favourite nephew wasn't steeped to the tonsils in the juice of the grape.
P.G. Wodehouse
Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired.
Mark Twain
Don't throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery.
Philander Johnson
When I stand before God at the end of my life I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say "I used everything you gave me."
Erma Bombeck
I never saw a Purple Cow I never hope to see one: But I can tell you anyhow I'd rather see than be one.
Gelett Burgess
I must have a prodigious amount of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!
Mark Twain
When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.
Mark Twain
If you're like most members of the Baby Boom generation, you decided somewhere along the line, probably after about four margaritas, to have children. This was inevitable. Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, has instilled within each of us a powerful biological instinct to reproduce; this is her way of assuring that the human race, come what may, will never have any disposable income.
Dave Barry
I have admired W.C. Fields since the day he advanced upon Baby LeRoy with an ice pick. Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.
Leo Rosten
Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.
Mark Twain
When I was younger I could remember anything whether it had happened or not.
Mark Twain
He has a passport," my classmates would whisper. "Quick, let's run before he judges us!
David Sedaris
The best baby-sitters, of course, are the baby’s grandparents. You feel completely comfortable entrusting your baby to them for long periods, which is why most grandparents flee to Florida.
Dave Barry
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
Mark Twain
I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.
David Sedaris
Like it! Yes—the way I'd like a hot stove if I was to set on it long enough. No, Tom, I won't be rich, and I won't live in them cussed smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and I'll stick to 'em, too.
Mark Twain
How bad is it?”“The story is only just now being reported, but let's put it this way,” HARV said. “The bag is now clearly catless, and there’s a very foul odor coming from the fan.
John Zakour
Everyone is a moon and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
Mark Twain
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.
Mark Twain
I believe it was Shakespeare, or possibly Howard Cosell, who first observed that marriage is very much like a birthday candle, in that 'the flames of passion burn brightest when the wick of intimacy is first ignited by the disposable butane lighter of physical attraction, but sooner or later the heat of familiarity causes the wax of boredom to drip all over the vanilla frosting of novelty and the shredded coconut of romance.' I could not have phrased it better myself.
Dave Barry
Do the best you can, and don't take life too serious.
Will Rogers
We are chameleons and our partialities and prejudices change places with an easy and blessed facility.
Mark Twain
Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.
Mark Twain
But death was sweet, death was gentle, death was kind; death healed the bruised spirit and the broken heart, and gave them rest and forgetfulness; death was man’s best friend; when man could endure life no longer, death came and set him free.
Mark Twain
A loyal friend laughs at your jokes when they're not so good and sympathizes with your problems when they're not so bad.
Arnold Glasow
...but wasn't everyone in England supposed to be a detective? Wasn't every crime, no matter how complex, solved in a timely fashion by either a professional or a hobbyist? That's the impression you get from British books and TV shows. Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, Hetty Wainthropp, Inspector George Gently: they come from every class and corner of the country. There's even Edith Pargeter's Brother Cadfael, a Benedictine monk who solved crimes in twelfth-century Shrewsbury. No surveillance cameras, no fingerprints, not even a telephone, and still he cracked every case that came his way.
David Sedaris
And indeed there will be timeTo wonder, 'Do I shed?' and, 'Do I shed?'Time to turn back and stretch out on the bed,And give myself a bath before I'm fed --(They will say: 'It's the short-haired ones I prefer.')My flea collar buckled neatly in my fur,My expression cool and distant but softened by a gentle purr --(They will say: 'I'm allergic to his fur!')Do I dareJump up on the table?In an instant there is timeFor excursions and inversions that will make me seem unst
Henry N. Beard
There are two days in the week about which and upon which I never worry. ... One of these days is Yesterday ... And the other day I do not worry about is Tomorrow.
Robert Jones Burdette
Camping is nature's way of promoting the motel business.
Dave Barry
Faced with an exciting question, science tended to provide the dullest possible answer.
David Sedaris
Marriage is not a process for prolonging the life of love, sir. It merely mummifies its corpse.
P.G. Wodehouse
If man could be crossed with a cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.
Mark Twain
My number one fear is heights. Well, not so much the heights but the falling from heights. Actually the falling isn’t that bad (I have a strong heart), it’s the sudden stops that are painful. Believe me — I experienced it once.
John Zakour
No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of the word; they have not deserved it . . .It is like your paltry race--always lying, always claiming virtues which it hasn't got, always denying them to the higher animals, which alone posses them. No brute ever does a cruel thing--that is the monopoly of those with the Moral Sense. When a brute inflicts pain he does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing as wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of inflicting it--only man does that. Inspired by that mongrel Morel Sense of his! A sense whose function is to distinguish between right and wrong, with liberty to choose which of them he will do. Now what advantage can he get out of that? He is always choosing, and in nine time out of ten he prefers the wrong. There shouldn't be any wrong; and without the Moral Sense there couldn't be any. And yet he is such an unreasoning creature that he is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades him to the bottom layer of animated beings and is a shameful possession. Are you feeling better? Let me show you something.
Mark Twain
No country can be well governed unless its citizens as a body keep religiously before their minds that they are the guardians of the law, and that the law officers are only the machinery for its execution, nothing more.
Mark Twain
the squeeky wheel gets the grease.
Josh Billings
Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain
I hate you' she said to me one afternoon. 'I really, really hate you.' Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help but take it personally.
David Sedaris
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.
Will Rogers
Grief can take care of itself but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.
Mark Twain