Quotes by Humorists - Page 12

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
Mark Twain
T[he rules of writing] require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.
Mark Twain
But, if you've decided to go out on a limb and kill one, for goodness' sake, be prepared. We all read, with dismay, the sad story of a good woman wronged in south Mississippi who took that option and made a complete mess of the entire thing. See, first she shot him. Well, she saw right off the bat that that was a mistake because then she had this enormous dead body to deal with. He was every bit as much trouble to her dead as he ever had been alive, and was getting more so all the time. So then, she made another snap decision to cut him up in pieces and dispose of him a hunk at a time. More poor planning. First, she didn't have the proper carving utensils on hand and hacking him up proved to be just a major chore, plus it made just this colossal mess on her off-white shag living room carpet. It's getting to be like the Cat in the Hat now, only Thing Two ain't showing up to help with the clean-up. She finally gets him into portable-size portions, and wouldn't you know it? Cheap trash bags. Can anything else possible go wrong for this poor woman? So, the lesson here is obvious--for want of a small chain saw, a roll of Visqueen and some genuine Hefty bags, she is in Parchman Penitentiary today instead of New Orleans, where she'd planned to go with her new boyfriend. Preparation is everything.
Jill Conner Browne
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
Mark Twain
Squiffy, have you ever felt a sort of strange emptiness in the heart? A sort of aching void of the soul?''Oh, rather!''What do you do about it?''I generally take a couple of cocktails.
P.G. Wodehouse
Do the thing you fear the most and the death of fear is certain.
Mark Twain
The noisy jay swoops by and reviles me, he complains of my meow and my malingering.I too am not a bit subdued, I too am uncontrollable,I sound my splenetic yowl over the roof of the h
Henry N. Beard
Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.
Mark Twain
I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't.
Mark Twain
All of us are born with a set of instinctive fears - of falling, of the dark, of lobsters, of falling on lobsters in the dark, of speaking before a Rotary Club, and of the words "Some Assembly Required".
Dave Barry
I had to have company -- I was made for it, I think -- so I made friends with the animals. They are just charming, and they have the kindest disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail, if they've got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion or anything you want to propose.
Mark Twain
I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.
Mark Twain
Before marriage, a man declares that he would lay down his life to serve you; after marriage, he won`t even lay down his newspaper to talk to you.
Helen Rowland
If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won't sit on a hot stove again. That cat won't sit on a cold stove either. That cat just don't like stoves.
Mark Twain
Who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it?
Mark Twain
Kakimi chertyami oni viigrali holodnuyu voinu?"This translates roughly to: "How the hell did these people win the Cold War?
Dave Barry
In the darkest of times, laughter helps revolutionize our perspective.
Phil Callaway
As a matter of fact, Ona spent more credits on the window shades alone than you will make in your entire lifetime and that’s if you live to be 185.”“And that’s meant to make me feel better?” I said.“No, that is meant to inform you. I am your computer not your nanny.
John Zakour
...there is a celebrated aphorism insisting that the best way to live is to 'work like you don't need the money, dance like nobody is watching, and love like you've never been hurt.'...After years of hearing and reading these lines I have decided to tell the truth: the original version is wrong. There is a grave error in the wording of this adage. The correct version should go as follows:Love like you don't need the money,Work like nobody is watching,Dance like you've never been hurt.See? Doesn't that make more sense?
Gina Barreca
Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.
P.G. Wodehouse
When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he's doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.
Erma Bombeck
I'm not a member of any organized party I'm a Democrat.
Will Rogers
Hugh and I have been together for so long that in order to arouse extraordinary passion, we need to engage in physical combat. Once, he hit me on the back of the head with a broken wineglass, and I fell to the floor pretending to be unconscious. That was romantic, or would have been had he rushed to my side rather than stepping over my body to fetch the dustpan.
David Sedaris
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits. Fanatics will never learn that, though it be written in letters of gold across the sky. It is the prohibition that makes anything precious
Mark Twain
Tomorrow night I appear for the first time before a Boston audience - 4000 critics.
Mark Twain
Use what you stand for and what you oppose as a foundation to write great content that resonates with readers and creates a ripple effect.
Mark Twain
I'm not absolutely certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it's Shakespeare -- or, if not, it's some equally brainy lad -- who says that it's always just when a chappie is feeling particularly top-hole, and more than usually braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with a bit of lead piping.
P.G. Wodehouse
Babies are such a nice way to start people.
Don Herold
Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.
Erma Bombeck
The things I've bought from strangers in the dark would curl your hair.
David Sedaris
It’s been a tough couple of years for condescending nerds. And if bookstores fall, Jon, America will be inundated with a wandering, snarky underclass of unemployable purveyors of useless and arcane esoterica.
John Hodgman
The world gets better every day - then worse again in the evening.
Kin Hubbard
The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained in the public service a year or two.
Mark Twain
3. When making your dramatic exit, crawl along one of the web strands that extend outward from the center. Avoid the webbing that runs in concentric circles, as it's the stickiest. 4. Once you've escaped, say something snarky to the queen, like "Sorry I couldn't stick around.
Andrew Shaffer
When we remember that we are all mad the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
Jerome K. Jerome
I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.
Mark Twain
I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn't do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking--thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me all the time: in the day and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a-floating along, talking and singing and laughing. But somehow I couldn't seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, 'stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him again in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had small-pox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the ONLY one he's got now; and then I happened to look around and see that paper.It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:"All right, then, I'll GO to hell"--and tore it up.
Mark Twain
When humor goes, there goes civilization.
Erma Bombeck
Harris said, however, that the river would suit him to a "T." I don't know what a "T" is (except a sixpenny one, which includes bread-and- butter and cake AD LIB., and is cheap at the price, if you haven't had any dinner). It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly to its credit.
Jerome K. Jerome
Well, reading Twitter’s a lot like staring at an ant farm,” Tobey explained while wiping some cheese from his mouth. “Except without all the productivity.
Wayne Gladstone
For he did not seem to know any way to do a person a kindness but by killing him.
Mark Twain
When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened. It is sad to go to pieces like this but we all have to do it.
Mark Twain
Adam was the only man who when he said a good thing knew that nobody had said it before him.
Mark Twain
Yeah, but will it hurt?”’ I asked.“This is science, Zach,” Randy said, reassuringly, as he tilted my head back and lowered the lens to my eye. “Of course it will hurt.
John Zakour
While the archetype of the tinker is generally the whipping person in classical bedtimes stories, this particular individual was a tinker by trade and just happened to be economically disadvantaged.
James Finn Garner
...there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.
P.G. Wodehouse
Look forward. Every regret, every mournful thought, takes so much out of your life.
Prentice Mulford
Summer is the time when it is too hot to do the job that it was too cold to do last winter.
Mark Twain
He had just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wanted to eat, but certainly no more.
P.G. Wodehouse
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Mark Twain
In one terrible instant, that terrible thing happened, the single most tragic experience of my, and just about any, childhood: boredom.
Harrison Scott Key
Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential.
Will Cuppy
I like my tea like I like my men,” I say. With the last name “Grey.” But I realize that’s too forward, so I add, “Black.”He raises an eyebrow.“I mean, not that I exclusively like black men,” I say, trying to recover. “I like other kinds of tea. And men.”“Have you ever tasted...white tea, Anna?
Andrew Shaffer
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
Mark Twain
We don't shoot somebody soon, I'm gonna forget how
Dave Barry
I am only human, although I regret it.
Mark Twain
Peace and rest at length have come All the day's long toil is past And each heart is whispering "Home Home at last!"
Thomas Hood
O bed! O bed! Delicious bed! That heaven on earth to the weary head!
Thomas Hood
A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.
P.G. Wodehouse