Quotes by Humorists - Page 5

Writing is a muscle. Smaller than a hamstring and slightly bigger than a bicep, and it needs to be exercised to get stronger. Think of your words as reps, your paragraphs as sets, your pages as daily workouts. Think of your laptop as a machine like the one at the gym where you open and close your inner thighs in front of everyone, exposing both your insecurities and your genitals. Because that is what writing is all about.
Colin Nissan
Mornings before daylight I slipped into cornfields and borrowed a watermelon, or a mushmelon, or a punkin, or some new corn, or things of that kind. Pap always said it warn’t no harm to borrow things if you was meaning to pay them back some time; but the widow said it warn’t anything but a soft name for stealing, and no decent body would do it.
Mark Twain
Th' first thing to have in a libry is a shelf.Fr'm time to time this can be decorated with lithrachure.But th' shelf is th' main thing.
Finley Peter Dunne
A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.
David Sedaris
As we grow older, our bodies get shorter and our anecdotes longer.
Robert Quillen
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.
Will Rogers
We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without.
Jerome K. Jerome
In the kitchen, I turn on a TV set that has hundreds of channels devoted to every conceivable subject including celebrity bunion removal (This week: David Hasselhoff). I tune in to one of the literally dozens of news shows, all of which feature a format of 55 percent celebrities promoting things, 30 percent emails from viewers, and 15 percent YouTube videos showing bears jumping on trampolines. While I'm catching up on these developments, I turn on the programmable coffeemaker, which I hope that someday, perhaps by attending community college, I will learn to program.
Dave Barry
Truth is stranger than fiction...
Mark Twain
In New York I'd go to the movies three or four times a week. Here I've upped it to six or seven, mainly because I'm too lazy to do anything else. Fortunately, going to the movies seems to suddenly qualify as an intellectual accomplishment, on a par with reading a book or devoting time to serious thought. It's not that the movies have gotten any more strenuous, it's just that a lot of people are as lazy as I am, and together we've agreed to lower the bar.
David Sedaris
When a man gets talking about himself he seldom fails to be eloquent and often reaches the sublime.
Josh Billings
So slip on your goggles and your reading trunks, for the sun is high. Let me leave you with one more thought. In what season of the year do we find ourselves - I'm speaking for a moment in terms of the physical world - wading through things? Surf. Kelp. Books. Summer.
Roy Blount Jr.
Don’t you realize the Internet is just a way for millions of sad people to be completely alone together?
Wayne Gladstone
Flying from the U.S. to Tokyo takes approximately as long as law school.
Dave Barry
It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream--a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought--a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!
Mark Twain
Get your facts first and then you can distort 'em as much as you please.
Mark Twain
The trouble ain't that people are ignorant: it's that they know so much that ain't so.
Josh Billings
I deserve it all. Let the cold world do its worst; one thing I know--there's a grave somewhere for me. The world may go on just as its always done, and take everything from me--loved ones, property, everything--but it can't take that. Some day I'll lie down in it and forget it all, and my poor broken heart will be at rest.
Mark Twain
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
Mark Twain
Never call anyone a baboon unless you are sure of your facts.
Will Cuppy
Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You have to set yourself on fire.
Arnold H. Glasow
I think the purpose of life is to be useful to be responsible to be honorable to be compassionate. It is after all to matter: to count to stand for something to have made some difference that you lived at all.
Leo. C Rosten
What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so.
Mark Twain
The more you read and observe about this Politics thing,you got to admit that each party is worse than the other.The one that's out always looks the best
Will Rogers
Streets flooded. Please advise.
Robert Benchley
The way I saw it, if my students were willing to pretend I was a teacher, the least I could do was return the favor and pretend that they were writers.
David Sedaris
The houses looked like something a child might draw, a row of shaky squares with triangles on top. Add a door, add two windows. Think of putting a tree in the front yard, and then decide against it because branches aren't worth the trouble.
David Sedaris
If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.
Mark Twain
To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and made her a Negro. She was a slave, and salable as such.
Mark Twain
Gossip is vice enjoyed vicariously - the sweet subtle satisfaction without the risk.
Kin Hubbard
Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.
Will Rogers
The problem with winter sports is that -- follow me closely here -- they generally take place in winter.
Dave Barry
But books were full of stories and stories were full of lies and lies hurt Jesus's feelings, so I didn't know what to think. I blamed my family. They were the ones who taught me so much about telling stories, and how not to do it, and then, in inspired moments of surprise, how to tell one so good you forgot what day it was, and I liked forgetting what day it was, so I made certain life choices that would allow me to get paid to forget what day it was and teach others to forget what day it was, which is, after all, what I think heaven probably is: the whole world, forgetting what day it is. You have to, I bet, with an endless supply of them.
Harrison Scott Key
If you ever injected truth into politics you would have no politics.
Will Rogers
I want a house that has got over all its troubles I don't want to spend the rest of my life bringing up a young and inexperienced house.
Jerome K. Jerome
Daylight would have shown a wilderness weathered and blowzy, a wanton that had lived her summer too fast and too greedily. It would have shown the white birches pale and shivering in a sudden ague, and here and there an ash or a sumac burning red, like a hectic spot, where the first frosts already had set the marks of their galloping consumption on the cheek of the forest, giving warning of the time when the white plague of the winter would make a massacre of all this present glory and turn the trees to naked skeletons and stretch a bony bare cadaver on every steeper hillside to bleach there until the snows covered things up. But now the kindly nighttime had all signs and threats of approaching death, so that each shriveled speckled leaf, as revealed and traced in the waning light, seemed flawless — a perfect part of a perfect tapestry.
Irvin S. Cobb
New Orleans food is as delicious as the less criminal forms of sin.
Mark Twain
The fragrance of the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
Mark Twain
He's as nutty as a vegan T-bone.
David Sedaris
I should never make anything of a fisherman. I had not got sufficient imagination
Jerome K. Jerome
The truly innocent are those who not only are guiltless themselves but who think others are.
Josh Billings
I often arrive at quite sensible ideas and judgements, on the spur of the moment. It is when I stop to think that I become foolish.
Jerome K. Jerome
Passing the SAT: My personal theory is that it has to do with how much money you send them in the mail. I think the amounts they tell you to send are actually just suggested minimum donations - if you get my drift.
Dave Barry
Yes, I am of old family, and not illiterate. I am a fossil."   "A which?"   "Fossil. The first horses were fossils. They date back two million years.
Mark Twain
Wit is the sudden marriage of ideas which before their union were not perceived to have any relation.
Mark Twain
Go jogging? And get hit by a meteor?
Robert Benchley
Try to avoid getting involved with somebody who's gonna need killing before it's over. It may seem to you that that narrows the field somewhat, but be diligent.
Jill Conner Browne
When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.
Mark Twain
Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers
Low ceiling, stone walls, a dirt floor stamped with paw prints. I never go in without announcing myself. 'Hyaa!' I yell. 'Hyaa. Hyaa!' It's the sound my father makes when entering his toolshed, the cry of cowboys as they round up dogies, and it suggests a certain degree of authority. Snakes, bats, weasels --it's time to head up and move on out.
David Sedaris
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.
Jerome K. Jerome
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
Mark Twain
HARV appeared in front of me, arms crossed, head tilted. “You really should read your e-mails from Randy more carefully,” he lectured.“I skim them,” I protested.“Well, if you skimmed them more carefully you would know that prolonged exposure to stealth mode may lead to side effects.”“I can handle . . .”“Impotence.” HARV smiled.“Oh,” I said.“Randy hasn’t really tested it on humans. It’s extra tough to get volunteers for those types of experiments,” HARV said. “Though he has computer simulated it and the results tend to support this conclusion.”“Let’s try to limit our use of stealth mode from now on,” I said.
John Zakour
We may not pay Satan reverence for that would be indiscreet but we can at least respect his talents.
Mark Twain
If you can try to nap where someone's sitting,Although there is another empty chair,Then rub against his ankle without quittingUntil he rises from your favorite lair;If you can whine and whimper by a portalUntil the bolted door is opened wide,Then howl as if you've got a wound that's mortalUntil he comes and lets you back inside;If you can give a guest a nasty spiking,But purr when you are petted by a thief;If you can find the food not to your likingBecause they put some cheese in with the beef;If you can leave no proffered hand unbitten,And pay no heed to any rule or ban,then all will say you are a Cat, my kitten.And -- which is more -- you'll make a fool of Man!
Henry N. Beard
If there exists in this universe anything more infuriating and crazy-making than a man, I don't know what it is, thank you, and I don't want to know.
Jill Conner Browne
Don't needlessly draw attention to yourself. If you're twerking on the beach, a circling pteracuda could mistake you for a wounded animal.
Andrew Shaffer
She ignored my observation. This generally happens with me. Show me a woman, I sometimes say, and I will show you someone who is going to ignore my observations.
P.G. Wodehouse
Rich old people are more attractive than poor old people, so by all means, try to get rich before age sets in. Otherwise, you'll just be playing catch-up for the rest of your life and that will just wear you out, let me tell you.
Jill Conner Browne
Well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view of the case, and so I dropped the matter. When you can't cure a disaster by argument, what is the use to argue?
Mark Twain