Quotes by Humorists - Page 8

Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the vast limits of their knowledge.
Mark Twain
We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.
Will Rogers
To bring up a child in the way he should go travel that way yourself once in a while.
Josh Billings
It's pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.
Kin Hubbard
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.
P.G. Wodehouse
Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?
Erma Bombeck
Honesty: The best of all the lost arts.
Mark Twain
There are 2,500 kinds of sponges, all of them consist largely of holes.
Will Cuppy
The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul.
Mark Twain
I attributed their behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV, but television didn't teach you everything. Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable. This was one of the things you were supposed to learn simply by being alive, and it angered me that the Tomkeys did not understand it.
David Sedaris
I asked her, dreamily, if we had met, and when she told me that we had not, I gave her a little finger wave, the type a leprechaun might offer a pixie who was floating by on a maple leaf. "Well, hi there," I whispered.
David Sedaris
There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.
Mark Twain
The less we know the more we suspect.
H. W. Shaw
Oh! would I were dead now Or up in my bed now To cover my head now And have a good cry!
Thomas Hood
When your mother asks, "Do you want a piece of advice?" it's a mere formality. It doesn't matter if you answer yes or no. You're going to get it anyway.
Erma Bombeck
There's one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him; if he says yes, you know he's crooked.
Mark Twain
[T]he success of every novel -- if it's a novel of action -- depends on the high spots. The thing to do is to say to yourself, "What are my big scenes?" and then get every drop of juice out of
P.G. Wodehouse
But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand.
Jerome K. Jerome
Why do you want a political career? Have you ever been in the House of Commons and taken a good look at the inmates? As weird a gaggle of freaks and sub-humans as was ever collected in one spot.
P.G. Wodehouse
In Russia, as I sat there day after day wearing headphones, listening to the interpreter struggle to make our words relevant, I wondered if we could establish meaningful rapport with a nation that had never seen raisins dance in dark glasses on TV...never had a garage sale.
Erma Bombeck
One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a women is, until after considerable acquaintance with her.
Mark Twain
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
Mark Twain
Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.
Mark Twain
That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.
Mark Twain
To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.
Josh Billings
I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.
Mark Twain
Human nature appears to be just the same, all over the world
Mark Twain
For as long as I can remember, my father saved. He saves money, he saves disfigured sticks that resemble disfigured celebrities, and most of all, he saves food. Cherry tomatoes, sausage biscuits, the olives plucked from other people's martinis --he hides these things in strange places until they are rotten. And then he eats them.
David Sedaris
If stupidity got us into this, why can't stupidity get us out?
Will Rogers
Nothing exists; all is a dream. God—man—the world—the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars—a dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing exists save empty space—and you!
Mark Twain
It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me it's the parts that I do understand.
Mark Twain
What George was thinking was that the late king Herod had been unjustly blamed for a policy which had been both statesmanlike and in the interests of the public. He was blaming the mawkish sentimentality of the modern legal system which ranks the evisceration and secret burial of small boys as a crime.
P.G. Wodehouse
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
Mark Twain
An honest politician is an oxymoron.
Mark Twain
Man has imagined a heaven, and has left entirely out of it the supremest of all his delights...sexual intercourse!...His heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque. I give you my word, it has not a single feature in it that he actually values.
Mark Twain
If stupidity got us in this mess, how come it can't get us out.
Will Rogers
For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.
Sam Levenson
I couldn't have made a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham.
P.G. Wodehouse
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Mark Twain
I am not a glutton-I am an explorer of food.
Erma Bombeck
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not succeed.
Mark Twain
what is joy without sorrow? what is success without failure? what is a win without a loss? what is health without illness? you have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. there is always going to be suffering. it’s how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.
Mark Twain
A few alligators are naturally of the vicious type and inclined to resent it when you prod them with a stick. You can find out which ones these are by prodding them.
Will Cuppy
Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.
Erma Bombeck
...with each new book of mine I have always the feeling that this time I have picked a lemon in the garden of literature.
P.G. Wodehouse
It's considered good sportsmanship not to pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling.
Mark Twain
If a woman likes another woman she's cordial. If she doesn't like her she's very cordial.
Irvin S. Cobb
Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.
Erma Bombeck
The true philosopher is a man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his armchair.
P.G. Wodehouse
Vice goes a long way tow'rd makin' life bearable. A little vice now an' thin is relished by th' best iv men.
Finley Peter Dunne
The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. I would not interfere with any one's religion, either to strengthen it or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one's religion can affect his hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life--hence it is a valuable possession to him.
Mark Twain
Grandparenthood is one of life's rewards for surviving your own children.
Erma Bombeck
When I was a boy of fourteen my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.
Mark Twain
Would Crazy Horse have spent this much to remodel a kitchen?
Ian Frazier
Every once in a while, people need to be in the presence of things that are really far away.
Ian Frazier
Love the quest marriage the conquest divorce the inquest.
Helen Rowland
Error will slip through a crack while truth will stick in a doorway.
H. W. Shaw
From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.
P.G. Wodehouse
Speaking up is important. Yet to speak up without listening is like banging pots and pans together: Even if it gets you attention, it’s not going to get you respect.
Gina Barreca
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles but most of them never happened.
Mark Twain