Quotes by Humorists - Page 8

Love at first sight is easy to understand it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.
Sam Levenson
Love is a madness if thwarted it develops fast.
Mark Twain
The year's in the wane There is nothing adoring The night has no eve And the day has no morning Cold winter gives warning!
Thomas Hood
Of all God's creatures there is only one that cannot be made the slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If man could be crossed with the cat it would improve man but it would deteriorate the cat.
Mark Twain
The quizzical expression of the monkey at the zoo comes from his wondering whether he is his brother's keeper or his keeper's brother.
Evan Esar
Many a man that couldn't direct ye to th' drug store on th' corner when he was thirty will get a respectful hearin' when age has further impaired his mind.
Finley Peter Dunne
Put all thine eggs in one basket and - watch that basket.
Mark Twain
When a man comes to me for advice I find out the kind of advice he wants and I give it to him.
Josh Billings
Necessity is the mother of "taking chances."
Mark Twain
Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist - it reduces him to his fighting weight.
Josh Billings
When Eve upon the first of men The apple pressed with specious cant Oh! what a thousand pities then That Adam was not adamant.
Thomas Hood
Even if you're on the right track you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers
Trouble will come soon enough and when he does come receive him as pleasantly as possible ... the more amiably you greet him the sooner he will go away.
Artemus Ward
Failing to be there when a man wants her is a woman's greatest sin except to be there when he doesn't want her.
Helen Rowland
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.
Mark Twain
It's pretty hard to be efficient without being obnoxious.
Kin Hubbard
A public library is the most enduring of memorials, the trustiest monument for the preservation of an event or a name or an affection; for it, and it only, is respected by wars and revolutions, and survives
Mark Twain
Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madams, greeting punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their books.
Guy Browning
Come on," he said. "Bring the poker."I brought the tongs as well. I felt like it.
P.G. Wodehouse
It was a nasty look. It made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended to bury later on, when he had time.
P.G. Wodehouse
And so the merry party began. It was one of those jolly, happy, bread-crumbling parties where you cough twice before you speak, and then decide not to say it after all.
P.G. Wodehouse
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
I had one of those ideas I do sometimes get, though admittedly a chump of the premier class.
P.G. Wodehouse
It may have happened, it may not have happened but it could have happened.
Mark Twain
Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.
Mark Twain
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
Satan must have been pretty simple, even according to the New Testament, or he wouldn't have led Christ up on a high mountain and offered him the world if he would fall down and worship him. That was a manifestly absurd proposition, because Christ, as the Son of God, already owned the world; and besides, what Satan showed him was only a few rocky acres of Palestine. It is just as if some one should try to buy Rockefeller, the owner of all the Standard Oil Company, with a gallon of kerosene.
Mark Twain
After a long time and many questions, Satan said, "The spider kills the fly, and eats it; the bird kills the spider and eats it; the wildcat kills the goose; the -- well, they all kill each other. It is murder all along the line. Here are countless multitudes of creatures, and they all kill, kill, kill, they are all murderers. And they are not to blame, Divine One?
Mark Twain
Satan had been making admiring remarks about certain of the Creator's sparkling industries -- remarks which, being read between the lines, were sarcasms.
Mark Twain
No, it was a human thing. You should not insult the brutes by such a misuse of the word; they have not deserved it . . .It is like your paltry race--always lying, always claiming virtues which it hasn't got, always denying them to the higher animals, which alone posses them. No brute ever does a cruel thing--that is the monopoly of those with the Moral Sense. When a brute inflicts pain he does it innocently; it is not wrong; for him there is no such thing as wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure of inflicting it--only man does that. Inspired by that mongrel Morel Sense of his! A sense whose function is to distinguish between right and wrong, with liberty to choose which of them he will do. Now what advantage can he get out of that? He is always choosing, and in nine time out of ten he prefers the wrong. There shouldn't be any wrong; and without the Moral Sense there couldn't be any. And yet he is such an unreasoning creature that he is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades him to the bottom layer of animated beings and is a shameful possession. Are you feeling better? Let me show you something.
Mark Twain
We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his talents.
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
Who knows, he may grow up to be President someday, unless they hang him first!" Aunt Polly about Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain
If we hadn’t our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature which compensates for all its bullying vagaries-the ice storm: when a leafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top – ice that is as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strung with ice-beads, frozen dew-drops, and the whole tree sparkles cold and white, like the Shah of Persia’s diamond plume. Then the wind waves the branches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads and drops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold-the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong.
Mark Twain
The cells smell is a great feature of French prisons. Ours in No.44 was one of those fine broad-shouldered up and coming young smells, which stand on both feet and look the world in the eye. We became very fond and proud of it.
P.G. Wodehouse
Thanks to my solid academic training, today I can write hundreds of words on virtually any topic without possessing a shred of information, which is how I got a good job in journalism.
Dave Barry
It is not that I object to the work, mind you; 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
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
The brains of members of the Press departments of motion-picture studios resemble soup at a cheap restaurant. It is wiser not to stir them.
P.G. Wodehouse
The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.
Mark Twain
It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
Jerome K. Jerome
The wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling.
Mark Twain
How empty is theory in the presence of fact!
Mark Twain
...there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.
P.G. Wodehouse
I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn't like it, and changed.
David Sedaris
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
This is one of the defining sorrows of books: that we cannot see one another.
John Hodgman
The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion.
Arnold H. Glasow
I am not one of those who in expressing opinions confine themselves to facts.
Mark Twain
Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.
Mark Twain
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
In asking me to contribute a mite to the memorial to Gutenberg you give me pleasure and do me honor. The world concedes without hesitation or dispute that Gutenberg’s invention is incomparably the mightiest event that has ever happened in profane history. It created a new and wonderful earth, and along with it a new hell. It has added new details, new developments and new marvels to both in every year during five centuries. It found Truth walking, and gave it a pair of wings; it found Falsehood trotting, and gave it two pair. It found Science hiding in corners and hunted; it has given it the freedom of the land, the seas and the skies, and made it the world’s welcome quest. It found the arts and occupations few, it multiplies them every year. It found the inventor shunned and despised, it has made him great and given him the globe for his estate. It found religion a master and an oppression, it has made it man’s friend and benefactor. It found War comparatively cheap but inefficient, it has made it dear but competent. It has set peoples free, and other peoples it has enslaved; it is the father and protector of human liberty, and it has made despotisms possible where they were not possible before. Whatever the world is, today, good and bad together, that is what Gutenberg’s invention has made it: for from that source it has all come. But he has our homage; for what he said to the reproaching angel in his dream has come true, and the evil wrought through his mighty invention is immeasurably outbalanced by the good it has brought to the race of men.
Mark Twain
There are various methods by which you may achieve ignominy and shame. By murdering a large and respected family in cold blood and afterward depositing their bodies in the water companies' reservoir, you will gain much unpopularity in the neighborhood of your crime, and even robbing a church will get you cordially disliked, especially by the vicar. But if you desire to drain to the dregs the fullest cup of scorn and hatred that a fellow human creature can pour out for you, let a young mother hear you call dear baby "it.
Jerome K. Jerome
It went automatically to a heavy-weight mother with beetling eyebrows who looked as if she had just come from doing a spot of knitting at the foot of the guillotine.
P.G. Wodehouse
There are things you forget naturally-computer passwords, your father's continuing relationship with life-and then there are things you can't forget that you wish you could.
David Sedaris
Whether it is the best of times or the worst of times, it is the only time we've got.
Art Buchwald
I could see he meant no offense, but in my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners."Manners!" he said. "Why, it is merely the truth, and truth is good manners; manners are a fiction.
Mark Twain
Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astound the other.
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
Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.
Erma Bombeck