Quotes by Humorists - Page 19

The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.
Mark Twain
Happiness is a Swedish sunset it is there for all but most of us look the other way and lose it.
Mark Twain
It was a dreadful thing to see. Humans beings can be awful cruel to one another.
Mark Twain
I followed the other Experiment around, yesterday afternoon, at a distance, to see what it might be for, if I could. But I was not able to make [it] out. I think it is a man. I had never seen a man, but it looked like one, and I feel sure that that is what it is. I realize that I feel more curiosity about it than about any of the other reptiles. If it is a reptile, and I suppose it is; for it has frowzy hair and blue eyes, and looks like a reptile. It has no hips; it tapers like a carrot; when it stands, it spreads itself apart like a derrick; so I think it is a reptile, though it may be architecture.
Mark Twain
The only way that I could figure they could improve upon Coca-Cola, one of life's most delightful elixirs, which studies prove will heal the sick and occasionally raise the dead, is to put bourbon in it.
Lewis Grizzard
There is this advantage about German beer: it does not make a man drunk as the word drunk is understood in England. There is nothing objectionable about him; he is simply tired. He does not want to talk; he wants to be let alone, to go to sleep; it does not matter where— anywhere.
Jerome K. Jerome
The quizzical expression of the monkey at the zoo comes from his wondering whether he is his brother's keeper or his keeper's brother.
Evan Esar
Unhappiness is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.
Don Herold
If I'm walking down an American street and anyone darker than a peanut shell approaches, I'll say, "Hello." This because, if I don't say it, he or she might think that I'm anxious. Which, of course, I must be, otherwise I'd walk by in silence, just as I do with my fellow Caucasians.Does this make me racist, or simply race conscious? Either way, I'm more afraid of conservatives than I am of black people.
David Sedaris
...writing Jeeves stories gives me a great deal of pleasure and keeps me out of the public houses.
P.G. Wodehouse
Never allow someone to be your priority while allowing yourself to be their option.
Mark Twain
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
Will Rogers
Gravity is a contributing factor in nearly 73 percent of all accidents involving falling objects.
Dave Barry
The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.
Mark Twain
I smiled, reached into my pockets and pulled out a pair of ultrapowerful earplugs, the kind that are standard issue for skyway construction workers, artillery soldiers, and roadies for the thirty-five most popular teen boy bands.
John Zakour
I have lived a long life and had many troubles, most of which never happened
Mark Twain
Loose and forbear!
Mark Twain
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.
Mark Twain
Intellectual controversies tend to be like dog fights without the teeth, in which the barking not the biting does the damage.
Luis Fernando Verissimo
Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like.
David Sedaris
The writing begins when you've finished. Only then do you know what you're trying to say.
Mark Twain
Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for -- annually, not oftener -- if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians. Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man's side, consequently on the Lord's side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.
Mark Twain
Never have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
Mark Twain
We had a little slave boy whom we had hired from some one, there in Hannibal. He was from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and had been brought away from his family and his friends, half way across the American continent, and sold. He was a cheery spirit, innocent and gentle, and the noisiest creature that ever was, perhaps. All day long he was singing, whistling, yelling, whooping, laughing - it was maddening, devastating, unendurable. At last, one day, I lost all my temper, and went raging to my mother, and said Sandy had been singing for an hour without a single break, and I couldn't stand it, and wouldn't she please shut him up.The tears came into her eyes, and her lip trembled, and she said something like this - 'Poor thing, when he sings, it shows that he is not remembering, and that comforts me; but when he is still, I am afraid he is thinking, and I cannot bear it. He will never see his mother again; if he can sing, I must not hinder it, but be thankful for it. If you were older, you would understand me; then that friendless child's noise would make you glad.' It was a simple speech, and made up of small words, but it went home, and Sandy's noise was not a trouble to me any more.
Mark Twain
Be wise as a serpent and wary as a dove!
Mark Twain
This is peculiarly an age in which each of us may, if he do but search diligently, find the literature suited to his mental powers.
P.G. Wodehouse
The Creator made Italy with designs by Michelangelo.
Mark Twain
There are three things which the public will always clamor for sooner or later: namely novelty novelty novelty.
Thomas Hood
You can lead a man up to the university but you can't make him think.
Finley Peter Dunne
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
Mark Twain
Supposing is good, but finding out is better.
Mark Twain
It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.
Erma Bombeck
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that but the really great make you feel that you too can become great.
Mark Twain
Failing to be there when a man wants her is a woman's greatest sin except to be there when he doesn't want her.
Helen Rowland
It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.
P.G. Wodehouse
I have had an aversion to good spelling for sixty years and more, merely for the reason that when I was a boy there was not a thing I could do creditably except spell according to the book. It was a poor and mean distinction, and I early learned to disenjoy it. I suppose that this is because the ability to spell correctly is a talent, not an acquirement. There is some dignity about an acquirement, because it is a product of your own labor. It is earned, whereas to be able to do a thing merely by the grace of God, and not by your own effort, transfers the thing to our heavenly home--where possibly it is a matter of pride and satisfaction, but it leaves you naked and bankrupt.
Mark Twain
You know you're a mom when you open the door to the dishwasher mid-cycle and think, 'This is the closest I'm going to get to a spa treatment till next Mother's Day.'""Joining the words 'Lose Weight, Effortlessly!' in the same sentence may be a form of hate speech.""Try to make time for the things that are important, not just the things that are urgent.""I want my work to matter, my words to count for the good, and to spread some good cheer along the way.
Judy Gruen
In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?
Mark Twain
I am strongly of the opinion that, after the age of twenty-one, a man ought not to be out of bed and awake at four in the morning. The hour breeds thought. At twenty-one, life being all future, it may be examined with impunity. But, at thirty, having become an uncomfortable mixture of future and past, it is a thing to be looked at only when the sun is high and the world full of warmth and optimism.
P.G. Wodehouse
There is such a thing as too much couth.
S.J. Perelman
If he were a man of strong mind, it only gave him fits; but a person of mere average intellect it usually sent mad.
Jerome K. Jerome
You can't do much for the poor, as they are not in with the right people.
Will Cuppy
Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist - it reduces him to his fighting weight.
Josh Billings
Lord, my hands were made for blessing, but not my feet!
Giovannino Guareschi
The outer garments of to-day will become the under-clothes of some destined to-morrow, and centuries hence a man found walking on the public highways dressed as you are will be arrested by the police for shocking the sense of propriety of the community, and so on. It will go on and on until you will find human beings everywhere decked out in layer after layer of clothes until he or she has lost all semblance to that beautiful thing that an all-wise Providence has designed us to be.
John Kendrick Bangs
Feminine psychology is admittedly odd, sir. The poet Pope...""Never mind about the poet Pope, Jeeves.""No, sir.""There are times when one wants to hear all about the poet Pope and times when one doesn't.""Very true, sir.
P.G. Wodehouse
High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water.
Mark Twain
Don't use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.
Mark Twain
Some folks can look so busy doing nothin' that they seem indispensable.
Kin Hubbard
Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on 'The Survival of the Fittest.' These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.
Mark Twain
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.
Mark Twain
There is no greater loan than a sympathetic ear.
Frank Tyger
Satan had been making admiring remarks about certain of the Creator's sparkling industries -- remarks which, being read between the lines, were sarcasms.
Mark Twain
You remind me of an old cat I once had. Whenever he killed a mouse he would bring it into the drawing-room and lay it affectionately at my feet. I would reject the corpse with horror and turn him out, but back he would come with his loathsome gift. I simply couldn’t make him understand that he was not doing me a kindness. He thought highly of his mouse and it was beyond him to realize that I did not want it.You are just the same with your chivalry. It’s very kind of you to keep offering me your dead mouse; but honestly I have no use for it. I won’t take favors just because I happen to be a female.
P.G. Wodehouse
As scarce as truth is the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
Josh Billings
That’s just the way: a person does a low-down thing, and then he don’t want to take no consequences of it. Thinks as long as he can hide it, it ain’t no disgrace.
Mark Twain
I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories.
Dave Barry
It always does seem to me that I am doing more work than I should do. It is not that I object to the work, mind you; I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart.You cannot give me too much work; to accumulate work has almost become a passion with me: my study is so full of it now, that there is hardly an inch of room for any more. I shall have to throw out a wing soon.And I am careful of my work, too. Why, some of the work that I have by me now has been in my possession for years and years, and there isn’t a finger-mark on it. I take a great pride in my work; I take it down now and then and dust it. No man keeps his work in a better state of preservation than I do.But, though I crave for work, I still like to be fair. I do not ask for more than my proper share.
Jerome K. Jerome
This is indeed India! "…. The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of traditions, whose yesterday’s bear date with the modering antiquities for the rest of nations-the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the world combined.
Mark Twain
Don't gamble take all your savings and buy some good stock and hold it till it goes up then sell it. If it don't go up don't buy it.
Will Rogers