Quotes by Humorists - Page 12

If the writer doesn't sweat, the reader will.
Mark Twain
Never use the passive voice. Do not say, 'It will get done.' Say, 'I'll do it,' and then stick to a solid, unwavering deadline
Gina Barreca
The time to being writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.
Mark Twain
The writing begins when you've finished. Only then do you know what you're trying to say.
Mark Twain
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up. ~Mark Twain, "The Innocents Abroad
Mark Twain
Ah, Antonio, it IS the noblest sport that ever was. I would give a year of my life to see it. Is the bull always killed?"   "Yes. Sometimes a bull is timid, finding himself in so strange a place, and he stands trembling, or tries to retreat. Then everybody despises him for his cowardice and wants him punished and made ridiculous; so they hough him from behind, and it is the funniest thing in the world to see him hobbling around on his severed legs; the whole vast house goes into hurricanes of laughter over it; I have laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks to see it. When he has furnished...
Mark Twain
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
It made one mad, for pleasure; and we could not take our eyes from him, and the looks that went out of our eyes came from our hearts, and their dumb speech was worship.
Mark Twain
When they came it was as if the lord of the world had arrived, and had brought all the glories of its kingdoms along; and when they went they left a calm behind which was like the deep sleep which follows an orgy.
Mark Twain
I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.
Jerome K. Jerome
You know that kind of quiver that trembles around through you when you are seeing something so strange and enchanting and wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and look at it; and you know how you gaze, and your lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you wouldn't be anywhere but there, not for the world.
Mark Twain
Harris said, however, that the river would suit him to a "T." I don't know what a "T" is (except a sixpenny one, which includes bread-and- butter and cake AD LIB., and is cheap at the price, if you haven't had any dinner). It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly to its credit.
Jerome K. Jerome
I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.
Jerome K. Jerome
Every one knew he could foretell wars and famines, though that was not so hard, for there was always a war, and generally a famine somewhere.
Mark Twain
It is a curious fact, but nobody ever is sea-sick - on land. At sea, you come across plenty of people very bad indeed, whole boat-loads of them; but I never met a man yet, on land, who had ever known at all what it was to be sea-sick. Where the thousands upon thousands of bad sailors that swarm in every ship hide themselves when they are on land is a mystery.
Jerome K. Jerome
A good leader takes a little more than his share of the blame, a little less than his share of the credit.
Arnold H. Glasow
At the beginning of that interval a type-machine was a curiosity. The person who owned one was a curiosity, too. But now it is the other way about: the person who doesn't own one is a curiosity.
Mark Twain
People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.
Leo Rosten
Whether it is the best of times or the worst of times, it is the only time we have.
Art Buchwald
Grandparenthood is one of life's rewards for surviving your own children.
Erma Bombeck
There was a time when the one singular thing that held a marriage together was the threat of getting the kids.
Erma Bombeck
A man who carries a cat by the tail learns a lesson he can learn in no other way.
Mark Twain
Embrace tomfoolery as if it were a rich relative on his deathbed.
Barb Best
He had had much experience of physicians, and said 'the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd druther not'.
Mark Twain
A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.
Leo Rosten
...writing Jeeves stories gives me a great deal of pleasure and keeps me out of the public houses.
P.G. Wodehouse
Ambition is enthusiasm with a purpose.
Frank Tyger
This is the age of the specialist, and years ago Rollo had settled on his career. Even as a boy, hardly capable of connected thought, he had been convinced that his speciality, the one thing he could do really well, was to inherit money.
P.G. Wodehouse
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. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.
Mark Twain
Nobody likes having a problem, but having a convoluted, bureaucratic one is even more galling.
David Sedaris
One very important key to maintaining our daily sanity is a simple scheduling tactic I call Putting Things the Hell Off.
Ian Frazier
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
Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn't turn it on.
Erma Bombeck
Man is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight
Mark Twain
By educating me at home, my parents were able to give me individualized attention without the usual distractions that kids in regular school experience, like dating and friendship. Not to mention that traditional school can be dangerous. I’ve heard about kids catching the flu and chicken pox, even Judaism.And how about those poor kids lugging all those heavy books to and from school every day? My books never went anywhere, just like me. I felt so bad when I’d see kids on my street giggling and chasing each other around with those awkward backpacks.
Colin Nissan
LEARN FROM THE MASTERS: Mark Twain once said, “Show, don’t tell.” This is an incredibly important lesson for writers to remember; never get such a giant head that you feel entitled to throw around obscure phrases like “Show, don’t tell.” Thanks for nothing, Mr. Cryptic.
Colin Nissan
My mother was, for the most part, delighted with my brother and regarded him with the bemused curiosity of a brood hen discovering she has hatched a completely different species. 'I think it was very nice of Paul to give me this vase,' she once said, arranging a bouquet of wildflowers into the skull-shaped bong my brother had left on the kitchen table. 'It's nontraditional, but that's the Rooster's way. He's a free spirit, and we're lucky to have him.
David Sedaris
An oyster has hardly any more reasoning power than a scientist has; and so it it is reasonably certain that this one jumped to the conclusion that the nineteen million years was a preparation for him; but that would be just like an oyster, which is the most conceited animal there is, except man. And anyway, this one could not know, at that early date, that he was only an incident in a scheme, and that there was some more in the scheme yet.
Mark Twain
The woman spoke with a heavy western North Carolina accent, which I used to discredit her authority. Here was a person for whom the word 'pen' had two syllables. He people undoubtedly drank from clay jugs and hollered for Paw when the vittles were ready-- so who was she to advise me on anything?
David Sedaris
He would be a consul no doubt by and by, at some foreign port, of the language of which he was ignorant; though if ignorance of language were a qualification he might have been a consul at home.
Mark Twain
An honest politician is an oxymoron.
Mark Twain
An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere.- A Tramp Abroad
Mark Twain
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me.
Erma Bombeck
October: This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in stocks. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and February.
Mark Twain
I don't understand German myself. I learned it at school, but forgot every word of it two years after I had left, and have felt much better ever since.
Jerome K. Jerome
And yet it seems so full of comfort and of strength, the night. In its great presence, our small sorrows creep away, ashamed. The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained face upto hers, and smiles, and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone.Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night's heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great presence, all human life's like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but the angels of God.
Jerome K. Jerome
Patriotism is about a desire for progress, not a yearning for repetition.
Gina Barreca
Well, reading Twitter’s a lot like staring at an ant farm,” Tobey explained while wiping some cheese from his mouth. “Except without all the productivity.
Wayne Gladstone
You aren't really old until nothing is fun enough to make you forget the weather.
Robert Quillen
But old fools is the biggest fools there is.
Mark Twain
Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.
Mark Twain
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.
Mark Twain
I had been to school most all the time, and could spell, and read, and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway.
Mark Twain
But music didn't make my mother nervous. She was more concerned about the agenda of women who thought it was a good idea to wear pastel, shoulder-padded suits while they all marched single file toward a better tomorrow.
Wayne Gladstone
It was a dreadful thing to see. Humans beings can be awful cruel to one another.
Mark Twain
If man could be crossed with a cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.
Mark Twain
If an animal does something, we call it instinct. If we do the same thing for the same reason, we call it intelligence.
Will Cuppy
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and today -- all without seeing him. It is a long time to be alone; still, it is better to be alone that unwelcome. I had to have company -- I was made for it, I think -- so I made friends with the animals.
Mark Twain
Infant wart hogs resemble both sides of the family.
Will Cuppy
Whales are silly once every two years. The young are called short-heads or baby blimps. Many whale romances begin in Baffin's bay and end in Procter and Gamble's factory, Staten Island.
Will Cuppy