Quotes by Humorists - Page 11

Never let your education interfere with your learning.
Mark Twain
Patriotism is about a desire for progress, not a yearning for repetition.
Gina Barreca
You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.
P.G. Wodehouse
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain
After breakfast the host takes the young man into a corner, and explains to him that what he saw was the ghost of a lady who had been murdered in that very bed, or who had murdered somebody else there - it does not really matter which: you can be a ghost by murdering somebody else or by being murdered yourself, whichever you prefer. The murdered ghost is, perhaps, the more popular; but, on the other hand, you can frighten people better if you are the murdered one, because then you can show your wounds and do groans.("Introduction" to TOLD AFTER SUPPER)
Jerome K. Jerome
Infant wart hogs resemble both sides of the family.
Will Cuppy
There has never been a just [war], never an honorable one--on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful--as usual--will shout for the war. The pulpit will--warily and cautiously--object--at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it.' Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers--as earlier--but do not dare say so. And now the whole nation--pulpit and all--will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.
Mark Twain
If a Greek woman tells you to do something, you do it.
Dave Barry
Behold the day-break!I awaken you by sitting on your chest and purring in your face,I stir you with muscular paw-prods, I rouse you with toe-
Henry N. Beard
There are two kinds of travel: first class and with children.
Robert Benchley
I don't know what humor is.
Will Rogers
You see, the catch about portrait painting—I've looked into the thing a bit— is that you can't startpainting portraits till people come along and ask you to, andthey won't come and ask you to until you've painted a lot first.This makes it kind of difficult for a chappie.
P.G. Wodehouse
Good friends good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain
No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there is wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick.
Erma Bombeck
There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
Josh Billings
The landscape is best described as 'pedestrian hostile.' It's pointless to try to take a walk, so I generally just stay in the room and think about shooting myself in the head.
David Sedaris
Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?
P.G. Wodehouse
The awful part of the writing game is that you can never be sure the stuff is any good.
P.G. Wodehouse
How rude of me, we haven’t even introduced ourselves. We’re the Andersons. I’m Evan, the lovely size-zero lass in the floppy sun hat is my wife Amy, and these are our best friends/children, Evan and Amy Jr. As you can see, we’re very fit and active. You know what our family’s average percentage of body fat is? Three. Yes, really. We got it tested last year when we all became organ donors.You may have noticed that I’m carrying Amy on my back. We do that a lot. At least once a day, and not just when we’re in fields like this; we do it on beaches and in urban environments as well. That’s what happens when your love is deep and playful like ours. You should also know that we also dab frosting on each other’s noses every single time we eat cupcakes, which is both mischievous and very us. Do you guys even eat cupcakes?
Colin Nissan
The follies which a man regrets most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.
Helen Rowland
Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor both to yourself and to your country let men label you as they may.
Mark Twain
We have all been empowered by the web: everyone with a keyboard can now effectively broadcast to a national audience. In a sense, it puts each of us on the same footing as the major media conglomerates, except for AOL, who now apparently own all our thoughts and teeth.
John Hodgman
If it wasn't for faith there would be no living in this world we couldn't even eat hash with any safety.
Josh Billings
When even the brightest mind in our world has been trained up from childhood in a superstition of any kind, it will never be possible for that mind, in its maturity, to examine sincerely, dispassionately, and conscientiously any evidence or any circumstance which shall seem to cast a doubt upon the validity of that superstition. I doubt if I could do it myself.
Mark Twain
And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess.
Art Buchwald
I spent the afternoon musing on Life. If you come to think of it, what a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don't you know, if you see what I mean. At any moment you may be strolling peacefully along, and all the time Life's waiting around the corner to fetch you one. You can't tell when you may be going to get it. It's all dashed puzzling. Here was poor old George, as well-meaning a fellow as every stepped, getting swatted all over the ring by the hand of Fate. Why? That's what I asked myself. Just Life, don't you know. That's all there was about it.
P.G. Wodehouse
One must make allowances for a parental instinct that has been starving for twenty-five or thirty years. It is famished, it is crazed with hunger by that time, and will be entirely satisfied with anything that comes handy; its taste is atrophied, it can't tell mud cat from shad. A devil born to a young couple is measurably recognizable by them as a devil before long, but a devil adopted by an old couple is an angel to them, and remains so, through thick and thin.
Mark Twain
You will never win if you never begin.
Helen Rowland
Everybody is ignorant, Just on different subjects.
Will Rogers
Go to bed early get up early-this is wise.
Mark Twain
In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!
Dave Barry
Well, there are times when one would like to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.
Mark Twain
I'm dating myself, but this was before Jesus Christ. We worshiped a God named Sashatiba, who had five eyes, including one on the Adam's apple.
David Sedaris
We will then hear from the founder of the Mayo Clinic . . . Dr. Ted Clinic.
Dave Barry
Now, then, that is the tale. Some of it is true.
Mark Twain
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing nothing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness, like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.
Jerome K. Jerome
There is no unhappiness like the misery of sighting land again after a cheerful careless voyage.
Mark Twain
Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
Mark Twain
A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.
Mark Twain
I like the trail that the Internet created. For example, I was watching one of those Douglas Sirk movies, and I noticed that Rock Hudson towered over everyone, and I typed in "How tall was" and I saw "How tall was Jesus," and I'm like, "Sure," and half an hour later you're somewhere you didn't expect to be. It doesn't work that same way in books, does it? Even if you have an encyclopedia, the trail isn't that crazy. I like that aspect of it.
David Sedaris
Children have but little charity for each other's defects.
Mark Twain
Well, you know, there are limits to the sacred claims of friendship.
P.G. Wodehouse
I have seen my kid struggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.
Erma Bombeck
Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.
P.G. Wodehouse
People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.
Leo Rosten
On a New York subway you get fined for spitting, but you can throw up for nothing.
Lewis Grizzard
I take my only exercise acting as a pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.
Mark Twain
Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.
Mark Twain
Housework can kill you if done right.
Erma Bombeck
A week after my drugs ran out, I left my bed to perform at the college, deciding at the last minute to skip both the doughnut toss and the march of the headless plush toys. Instead, I just heated up a skillet of plastic soldiers, poured a milkshake over my head and called it a night.
David Sedaris
The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.
Will Rogers
What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?
P.G. Wodehouse
Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.
P.G. Wodehouse
Herschel removed the speckled tent-roof from the world and exposed the immeasurable deeps of space, dim-flecked with fleets of colossal suns sailing their billion-leagued remoteness.
Mark Twain
The minute you read something that you can't understand, you can almost be sure that it was drawn up by a lawyer.
Will Rogers
As a general thing when a woman wears the pants in a family she has a good right to them.
Josh Billings
Apparently he was not the sharpest quill on the porcupine if you get my drift.
Dave Barry
A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle.
P.G. Wodehouse
All right, then, I'll go to hell.
Mark Twain
Make money and the whole world will conspire to call you a gentleman.
Mark Twain