Quotes by Humorists - Page 6

It is not that I believe that there are too many idiots in this world, just that lightning isn't distributed right.
Mark Twain
Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.
Mark Twain
You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you will stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears, but they will be there.
Mark Twain
Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the 'Titanic' who waved off the dessert cart.
Erma Bombeck
Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it.
Mark Twain
There’s nothing as cozy as a piece of candy and a book.
Betty MacDonald
Nick got home the first week in December, to find New York still wallowing in its post-Armistice euphoria. Service men were celebrities wherever they went, and nothing was too good for them-especially the ones who were wounded-until it came down to such practical matters as finding housing or a job...It too him awhile to come to the conclusion that all the talk about help for veterans was just that, and anything that was done for him would have to be done by himself.
Nathaniel Benchley
The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I have finished my travels.
Mark Twain
The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.
Sam Levenson
Today the same thing over. I've got it up the tree again.
Mark Twain
The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.
Leo Rosten
I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart is riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.
Mark Twain
There ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Mark Twain
There are two kinds of patriotism -- monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one case the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism; in the other, neither the government nor the entire nation is privileged to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be. The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: "The King can do no wrong." We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: "Our country, right or wrong!" We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had:-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism.
Mark Twain
Words can be as irrevocable as an action. They can cut as deeply as a surgeon’s scalpel.
Gina Barreca
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
There comes a time in a man's life when he hears the call of the sea. If the man has a brain in his head, he will hang up the phone immediately.
Dave Barry
There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
Erma Bombeck
It's brain," I said; "pure brain! What do you do to get like that, Jeeves? I believe you must eat a lot of fish, or something. Do you eat a lot of fish, Jeeves?""No, sir.""Oh, well, then, it's just a gift, I take it; and if you aren't born that way there's no use worrying.
P.G. Wodehouse
Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
Dave Barry
In short, immaturity is spoiled. And what is spoiled doesn’t ripen. It goes bad early, gets bitter and withers on the vine.
Gina Barreca
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Mark Twain
Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
Mark Twain
Because a superior fried-chicken restaurant is often the institutional extension of a single chicken-obsessed woman, I realize that, like a good secondhand bookstore or a bad South American dictatorship, it is not easily passed down intact.
Calvin Trillin
Dreams have only one owner at a time. That's why dreamers are lonely.
Erma Bombeck
Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
Mark Twain
Like so many substantial citizens of America, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag.
P.G. Wodehouse
Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.
Erma Bombeck
There are those who would misteach us that to stick in a rut is consistency - and a virtue and that to climb out of the rut is inconsistency - and a vice.
Mark Twain
Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
Mark Twain
Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.
Mark Twain
A home without a cat — and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat — may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?
Mark Twain
Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have the man looked honest enough.
Mark Twain
How empty is theory in the presence of fact!
Mark Twain
Curious," it said. "What you call your decent self doesn't dare look me in the eye! What a mistake people make who say that the man who won't look you in the eye is not to be trusted! As if mere brazenness were a sign of honesty; really, the theory of decency is the most amusing thing in the world.
John Kendrick Bangs
Television has a real problem. They have no page two.
Art Buchwald
You won't mind my calling you Comrade, will you? I've just become a socialist. It's a great scheme. You ought to be one. You work for the equal distribution of property, and start by collaring all you can and sitting on it.
P.G. Wodehouse
It's safe to assume that by 2085 guns will be sold in vending machines but you won't be able to smoke anywhere in America.
David Sedaris
If you want to be successful, it's just this simple. Know what you are doing. Love what you are doing. And believe in what you are doing.
Will Rogers
So, what you’re basically telling me is death is boring but no worse than hanging out with family.
John Zakour
I haven't heard of anybody who wants to stop living on account of the cost.
Kin Hubbard
Mac had many admirable qualities, but not tact. He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about the Winter Sports at Moscow.
P.G. Wodehouse
It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Mark Twain
I am persuaded that a coldly-thought-out and independent verdict upon a fashion in clothes, or manners, or literature, or politics, or religion, or any other matter that is projected into the field of our notice and interest, is a most rare thing -- if it has indeed ever existed.
Mark Twain
Be good and you will be lonesome.
Mark Twain
It isn't so astonishing the number of things that I can remember as the number of things I can remember that aren't so.
Mark Twain
The thing for us to do is just to do our duty, and not worry about whether anybody sees us do it or not.
Mark Twain
If you have not seen it, FOOTBALL is a game in which men shove one another back and forth for no reason. They do not choose how, when, or whom they shove. All that has been decided for them in advance. All they need to do is follow the orders given to them before the game, showing them where to run and how to violently deploy the meat of their bodies against the meat that is running at them. They are doing this in order to please one angry old man on the sidelines. This old man is called the "coach" or "yelling surrogate dad who will never be happy.
John Hodgman
In Japanese and Italian, the response to ["How are you?"] is "I'm fine, and you?" In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by "Not so good.
David Sedaris
The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.
Mark Twain
Some breakfast food manufacturer hit upon the simple notion of emptying out the leavings of carthorse nose bags, adding a few other things like unconsumed portions of chicken layer's mash, and the sweepings of racing stables, packing the mixture in little bags and selling them in health food shops.
Frank Muir
Have you ever seen a man, woman, or child who wasn’t eating an egg or just going to eat an egg or just coming away from eating an egg? I tell you, the good old egg is the foundation of daily life. Stop the first man you meet in the street and ask him which he’d sooner lose, his egg or his wife, and see what he says!
P.G. Wodehouse
Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: 'I wasn't worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.
Mark Twain
You ever want to negotiate a hostage situation in Quebec, I'm your man. Send me in for a little parley and the francophone miscreants will flee, hands over bleeding ears.
Will Ferguson
Ah, fish, there is no fareQuite like a flounder! They surely will not missA piece or two from stacks of sole like this;I'll steal a few, but leave the lion's share.Look! the lamplight on the lane is prettyThey're back from walking out on Dover Beach.I think I'll hide and spare myselpf the speech,For we are in a world untouched by pityWhere ignorant humans curse the k
Henry N. Beard
Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.
Mark Twain
I am not always good and noble. I am the hero of this story, but I have my off moments.
P.G. Wodehouse
English I remember I remember The house where I was born The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn He never came a wink too soon Nor brought too long a day But now I often wish the night Had borne my breath away!
Thomas Hood
The best bet is to bet on yourself.
Arnold Glasow
Each one of us is left to choose our own quality of life and take pleasure where we find it with the understanding that, like Mom used to say, sooner or later something's gonna get you.
David Sedaris