Quotes by Humorists - Page 11

Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?
P.G. Wodehouse
They [dogs] never talk about themselves but listen to you while you talk about yourself, and keep up an appearance of being interested in the conversation.
Jerome K. Jerome
Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.
Dave Barry
You can say any fool thing to a dog and the dog will just give you this look that says, 'My GOSH, you're RIGHT! I NEVER would've thought of that!
Dave Barry
Laugh now, cry later.
Erma Bombeck
Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Write without pay until somebody offers to pay.
Mark Twain
Humor is tragedy plus time.
Mark Twain
Had his brain been constructed of silk, he would have been hard put to it to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers.
P.G. Wodehouse
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!-Incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who "didn't know what fear was," we ought always to add the flea-and put him at the head of the procession.
Mark Twain
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
Pre-forty, you can wash your face with Tide and use Vaseline for moisturizer, toss on a little mascara and lip gloss, and you're a friggin' cover girl. Those of us on the slippery slope that is the Other Side of Forty can testify-- those days are so over. You pore over labels promising everything short of actual rebirth-- you will buy most of them for an average of $450 per quarter once-- and none of them will work. You will still be getting older and poorer with every passing purchase.
Jill Conner Browne
I would later discover it was a bad idea to gather more than two of these people in an enclosed area for any length of time. The stage was not only a physical place but also a state of mind, and the word audience was defined as anyone forced to suffer your company. We young actors were a string of lightbulbs left burning 24 hours a day, exhausting ourselves and others with our self-proclaimed brilliance.
David Sedaris
Has anybody ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.
P.G. Wodehouse
[On writing Jeeves and Wooster stories]:You tell yourself that you can take Jeeves stories or leave them alone, that one more can't possibly hurt you, because you know you can pull up whenever you feel like it, but it is merely wish-full thinking. The craving has gripped you and there is no resisting it.You have passed the point of no return.
P.G. Wodehouse
Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.
Erma Bombeck
My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out over things I didn't do, which only makes me look more suspect.
David Sedaris
I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.
David Sedaris
Conscience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.
Evan Esar
...the existential paradox we all experience; we feel that we are immortal, yet we know that we will die.
Calvin Trillin
Cats are people, and the sooner the world accepts that fact, the better off the world will be.
H. Allen Smith
Then the cow asked:"What is a mirror?""It is a hole in the wall," said the cat. "You look in it, and there you see the picture, and it is so dainty and charming and ethereal and inspiring in its unimaginable beauty that your head turns round and round, and you almost swoon with ecstasy.
Mark Twain
That's the way with a cat, you know -- any cat; they don't give a damn for discipline. And they can't help it, they're made so. But it ain't really insubordination, when you come to look at it right and fair -- it's a word that don't apply to a cat. A cat ain't ever anybody's slave or serf or servant, and can't be -- it ain't in him to be. And so, he don't have to obey anybody. He is the only creature in heaven or earth or anywhere that don't have to obey somebody or other, including the angels. It sets him above the whole ruck, it puts him in a class by himself. He is independent. You understand the size of it? He is the only independent person there is. In heaven or anywhere else. There's always somebody a king has to obey -- a trollop, or a priest, or a ring, or a nation, or a deity or what not -- but it ain't so with a cat. A cat ain't servant nor slave to anybody at all. He's got all the independence there is, in Heaven or anywhere else, there ain't any left over for anybody else. He's your friend, if you like, but that's the limit -- equal terms, too, be you king or be you cobbler; you can't play any I'm-better-than-you on a cat -- no, sir! Yes, he's your friend, if you like, but you got to treat him like a gentleman, there ain't any other terms. The minute you don't, he pulls freight.
Mark Twain
Randall, the gay alcoholic in the house next door, boldly peeps through my windows. 'Boy, you sure rock in that chair a lot,' he said last week, his face pressed against my screen. This time I was lying on my bed with Katherine's cats. I'm watching them while she's out of town. I can be very mushy, and he watched me kissing them and saying that all the other cats in the neighborhood were jealous of their beauty.
David Sedaris
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
You can never know where I am or what I am,But I am good company to you nonetheless,And really do regret I broke your ink
Henry N. Beard
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
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
And indeed there will be timeTo wonder, 'Do I shed?' and, 'Do I shed?'Time to turn back and stretch out on the bed,And give myself a bath before I'm fed --(They will say: 'It's the short-haired ones I prefer.')My flea collar buckled neatly in my fur,My expression cool and distant but softened by a gentle purr --(They will say: 'I'm allergic to his fur!')Do I dareJump up on the table?In an instant there is timeFor excursions and inversions that will make me seem unst
Henry N. Beard
Behold the day-break!I awaken you by sitting on your chest and purring in your face,I stir you with muscular paw-prods, I rouse you with toe-
Henry N. Beard
I situate myself, and seat myself,And where you recline I shall recline,For every armchair belonging to you as good as belongs to me.I loaf and curl up my tailI yawn and loaf at my ease after rolling in the catnip p
Henry N. Beard
If a cat spoke, it would say things like 'Hey, I don’t see the problem here.
Roy Blount Jr.
There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.
Dan Greenberg
While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.
Mark Twain
There is, incidently, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person.
Dan Greenberg
Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.
Mark Twain
Of all God's creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the leash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve the man, but it would deteriorate the cat.
Mark Twain
A person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful.
Mark Twain
A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.
Mark Twain
Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.
Mark Twain
I hate Risk. I have for many years now. I hate that you still like Risk. I hate that you guilt me into playing with you because no one else will. I hate that you do the accents of the countries you’re attacking from. And I hate that you wear a beret every time we play. God, do I hate the beret.
Colin Nissan
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
Perfect grammar--persistent, continuous, sustained--is the fourth dimension, so to speak: many have sought it, but none has found it.
Mark Twain
Once again, we come to the holiday season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
Dave Barry
There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas — something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails.
Jerome K. Jerome
Next to a circus there ain't nothing that packs up and tears out any quicker than the Christmas spirit
Kin Hubbard
O Christmas Sun! What holy task is thine!To fold a world in the embrace of God!
Guy Wetmore Carryl
On a busy day twenty-two thousand people come to visit Santa, and I was told that it is an elf's lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity. I promised to keep that in mind.
David Sedaris
In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!
Dave Barry
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
I find that, as a rule, when a thing is a wonder to us it is not because of what we see in it, but because of what others have seen in it. We get almost all our wonders at second hand.
Mark Twain
The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be?--it is the same the angels breathe.
Mark Twain
Who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it?
Mark Twain