Humour
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A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
A consultant is a person who takes your money and annoys your employees while tirelessly searching for the best way to extend the consulting contract.
By definition, risk-takers often fail. So do morons. In practice it's difficult to sort them out.
Consultants eventually leave, which makes them excellent scapegoats for major management blunders.
Good advertising can make people buy your product even if it sucks ... A dollar spent on brainwashing is more cost-effective than a dollar spent on product improvement.
He had been kicked in the head by a mule when young, and believed everything he read in the Sunday papers.
She was short on intellect, but long on shape.
Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next, they say it has been discovered before. Lastly, they say they have always believed it.
A celebrity is one who works hard all his life to become well-known and then goes through back streets wearing dark glasses so he won't be recognized.
A conference is a gathering of important people who, singly, can do nothing but together can decide that nothing can be done.
A molehill man is a pseudo-busy executive who comes to work at 9 a.m. and finds a molehill on his desk. He has until 5 p.m. to make this molehill into a mountain. An accomplished molehill man will often have his mountain finished before lunch.
Condensed milk is wonderful. I don't see how they can get a cow to sit down on those little cans.
Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style; it will just look ridiculous year after year.
Let's give a welcome to Macaca here.
A stockbroker is someone who takes all your money and invests it until it's gone.
I recently turned sixty. Practically a third of my life is over.
It was partially my fault that we got divorced ... I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.
It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.
More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
Work was like cats were supposed to be: if you disliked and feared it ... it knew at once and sought you out and jumped on your lap and climbed all over you to show how much it loved you.
A bachelor is one who enjoys the chase but does not eat the game.
A test of whether you have achieved true fame is when a deranged person believes himself to be you.
All marriages are happy. It's the living together afterward that causes all the trouble.
All the world is mad, except thee and me, and even thee's a little mad at times.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
God grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway, the good fortune to run into the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference.
I love a Martini,said Mabel,
I only have two at the most,
After three, I am under the table,
After four, I am under my host.
If the soup had been as warm as the wine, and the wine as old as the fish, and the fish as young as the maid, and the maid as willing as the hostess, it would have been a very good meal.
Marriage is the price men pay for sex; sex is the price women pay for marriage.
Never marry for money, but marry where money is.
On the door to success it says: push and pull.
Publicity is easy to get. Just be so successful you don't need it, and then you'll get it.
She was poor but she was honest,
Victim of a rich man's game.
First he loved her, then he left her,
And she lost her maiden name ...
It's the same the whole world over,
It's the poor wot gets the blame,
It's the rich wot gets the gravy.
Ain't it all a bleedin' shame?
Some time when you're feeling important
Some time when your ego's in bloom
Some time when you feel you are
The best qualified man in the room,
Some time when you feel that your going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow this simple instruction
And see how it humbles the soul.
Take a bucket and fill it with water
Place your hands in it up to your wrists
Take them out and the hole that remains
Is a measure of how you'll be missed.
You may splash all you like as they enter
You may stir up the water galore
But take them out and in just a moment
It will look just the same as before.
The moral of this is quite simple
Just do the best that you can.
Be proud of yourself but remember
There is no indispensable man.
Someone has said that the ideal life is to live in an English country home, engage a Chinese cook, marry a Japanese wife, and take a French mistress.
The codfish lays ten thousand eggs
The homely hen lays one.
The codfish never cackles
To tell you that she's done.
And so we scorn the codfish,
While the humble hen we prize,
Which only goes to show you
That it pays to advertise.
There are three kinds of lie: a small lie, a big lie and politics.
There are three statements that you should never believe: (1)A cheque is in the post; (2)I am from the Government and I am here to help you; (3)Of course, darling, I will still respect you in the morning.
What the brassière said to the top hat:You go on ahead while I give these two a lift.
When God gave out heads,
I thought He said Beds,
and I asked for a soft one.
When God gave out looks,
I thought He said books,
and I didn't want any.
When God gave out noses,
I thought He said roses
and I asked for a red one.
When God gave out ears,
I thought He said beers,
and I asked for two big ones.
When God gave out chins,
I thought He said gins,
and I asked for a double.
When God gave out brains,
I thought He said trains
and I said I'd take the next one.
When God gave out legs,
I thought He said kegs,
so I ordered two fat ones.
Since then I'm trying to listen better.
When the client moans and sighs
Make his logo twice the size.
If he still should prove refractory,
Show a picture of a factory.
Only in the gravest cases
Should you show the clients' faces.
Women's faults are many
Men have only two:
Everything they say
And everything they do.
Managers who are skilled communicators may also be good at covering up real problems.
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake.
At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end,
The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire;
Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.
Salad. I can't bear salad. It grows while you're eating it, you know. Have you noticed? You start one side of your plate and by the time you've got to the other, there's a fresh crop of lettuce taken root and sprouted up.
Woe betide the man who dares to pay a woman a compliment today ... Forget the flowers, the chocolates, the soft word - rather woo her with a self-defence manual in one hand and a family planning leaflet in the other.
She used to diet on any kind of food she could lay her hands on.
When you apply the word power to a man, it means strong and bold - very positive attributes. When you use it to describe a woman, it suggests bitchy, insensitive, hard.
For man's greatest crime is to have been born.
There's a sucker born every minute.
Beauty comes in all sizes - not just size 5.
A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.
After a long silence, Dodge cleared his throat.I think I speak for all of us when I say, 'Huh?
And even, if circumstances required, a contingency plan for his contingency plan's contingency plan.
Well now,the scholar went on,I'm just an old fuddy-duddy who could use a tan, so you needn't grant my opinion any authority, but I consider the queendom lucky that a handful of Milliners and their children lived incognito among the population during Redd's tyranny.
Have you noticed ... there is never any third act in a nightmare? They bring you to a climax of terror and then leave you there. They are the work of poor dramatists.
Fame is failure disguised as money.
I was ... court-martialled in my absence, sentenced to death in my absence. So I said, right, you can shoot me in my absence.
Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
I never sleep through a performance. I always make sure that I am awake for the intermission.
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
Life, you know, is rather like opening a tin of sardines. We're all of us looking for the key.
Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
You only have to survive in England and all is forgiven you ... if you can eat a boiled egg at ninety in England they think you deserve a Nobel Prize.
The rough broad difference between the American and the European business man is that the latter is anxious to leave his work, while the former is anxious to get to it.
You don't look so hot yourself.
Poor fellow, he suffers from files.
Acquaintance: a person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think.
CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Advice is like castor oil, easy enough to give but dreadful uneasy to take.
As a general rule, if you want to get at the truth - hear both sides and believe neither.
In youth we run into difficulties; in old age difficulties run into us.
There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him.
When a dog bites a man, that isn't news. It often happens. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.
If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
Laughter rises out of tragedy, when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.
The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
When you look like your passport photo, it's time to go home.
Guidelines for bureaucrats: (1) When in charge, ponder. (2) When in trouble, delegate. (3) When in doubt, mumble.
I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were wearing masks for.
That favourite subject, Myself.
I believe in benevolent dictatorships, provided I am the dictator.
The fence around a cemetery is foolish, for those inside can't come out and those outside don't want to get in.
The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.
The funny thing is better TV shows don't cost that much more than lousy TV shows.
The market will pay better to entertain than educate.
Wall Street is the only place people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from people who take the subway.
Our wrangling lawyers ... are so litigious and busy here on earth, that I think they will plead their clients' causes hereafter, some of them in hell.
Genius ... has been described as a supreme capacity for taking trouble ... It might be more fitly described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds and keeping them therein so long as the genius remains.
Home, Sweet Homemust surely have been written by a bachelor.
All tragedies are finish'd by death,
All comedies are ended by a marriage.
When they ask me,Who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan?I'm going to say,You know, I don't know. Do you know?
God has forgotten me.
Give me the avowed, the erect, the manly foe,
Bold I can meet - perhaps may turn his blow!
But of all plagues, Good Heaven, thy wrath can send,
Save, save, Oh, save me from the candid friend!
If you are ever in doubt as to whether or not you should kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.
That's the reason they're called lessons,the Gryphon remarked:because they lessen from day to day.
Clothes are our weapons, our challenges, and our visible insult.
Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people.
He was a man with a great future behind him.
If something pleasant happens to you, don't forget to tell it to your friends, to make them feel bad.
I have always heard it said, that to do a kindness to clowns, is like throwing water into the sea.
Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.
When he said we were trying to make a fool of him, I could only murmur that the Creator had beat us to it.
A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquaintance, next a mistress, and only then a friend.
Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too.
When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say,You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair.
Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly; devils fall because of their gravity.
My country, right or wrongis a thing no patriot would ever think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying,My mother, drunk or sober.
Of all the modern phenomena, the most monstrous and ominous, the most manifestly rotting with disease, the most grimly prophetic of destruction, the most clearly and unmistakably inspired by evil spirits, the most instantly and awfully overshadowed by the wrath of heaven, the most near to madness and moral chaos, the most vivid with devilry and despair, is the practice of having to listen to loud music while eating a meal in a restaurant.
Tea, although an Oriental,
Is a gentleman at least;
Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast.
There is a great deal of difference between the eager man who wants to read a book and the tired man who wants a book to read.
Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
Odd things animals. All dogs look up at you. All cats look down at you. Only a pig looks at you as an equal.
I don't remember the Clave inviting you into the Glass City, Magnus Bane.
They didn't,Magnus said.
Your wards are down.
Really?the Consul's voice dripped sarcasm.
I hadn't noticed.
That's terrible. Someone should have told you.He glanced at Luke.
Tell him the wards are down.
When I was in England, I experimented with marijuana a time or two, and I didn't like it. I didn't inhale and never tried it again.
I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top.
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
Courtship is to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.
That's what I say about restaurants - the back part is manufacturing, the front part is retailing, the theatre is what holds the whole thing together.
I think there's a terrific merit in having no sense of humour, no sense of irony, practically no sense of anything at all. If you're born with these so-called defects you have a very good chance of getting to the top. That's what's enabled her [Mrs. Thatcher] to turn Britain into a cross between Singapore and Telford.
Friendship is love minus sex and plus reason. Love is friendship plus sex and minus reason.
If you don't say anything you won't be called on to repeat it.
Last night I dreamt I ate a ten-pound marshmallow. When I woke up the pillow was gone.
The thing that best defines a child is the total inability to receive information from anything not plugged in.
I can take any amount of criticism, so long as it is unqualified praise.
I was delighted to see that you thought I was as good as I thought I was.
Never trust men with short legs. Brains too near their bottoms.
Time has convinced me of one thing. Television is for appearing on, not for looking at.
But what is woman? - only one of Nature's agreeable blunders.
The man that hails you Tom or Jack,
And proves by thumps upon your back
How he esteems your merit,
Is such a friend, that one had need
Be very much his friend indeed
To pardon or to bear it.
I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life.
There was no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.
To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people. I've known sheep that could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs. But you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?
I have never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.
Running after women never hurt anybody - it's catching 'em that does the damage.
He had ambitions, at one time, to become a sex maniac, but he failed his practical.
See how the rascals use me! They will not let my play run and yet they steal my thunder!
Minds are like parachutes: they only function when they are open.
My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.
Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.
Whoever loves, if he do not propose
The right true end of love, he's one that goes
To sea for nothing but to make him sick.
To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him - two.
A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.
Humour is the instinct for taking pain playfully.
It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humour.
Some of them think they have me by the balls, but their hands aren't big enough.
We are willing to spend the least amount of money to keep a kid at home, more to put him in a foster home, and the most to institutionalize him.
If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.
The hardest thing to understand in the world is the income tax.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.
When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute - and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity.
An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.
Failing is good as long as it doesn't become a habit.
We will ship them our garbage. We believe in full disclosure.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame.
Computers are like bikinis. They save people a lot of guesswork.
When the meek inherit the earth, lawyers will be there to work out the deal.
We're not quarrelling! We're in complete agreement! We hate each other!
A man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
Never give a sucker an even break.
England is the paradise of women, the purgatory of men, and the hell of horses.
A mountain in labour shouted so loud that everyone, summoned by the noise, ran up expecting that she would be delivered of a city bigger than Paris; she brought forth a mouse.
Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.
History books which contain no lies are extremely dull.
The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
God heals and the doctor takes the fees.
He that falls in love with himself, will have no rivals.
He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.
He that teaches himself hath a fool for a master.
The awe and dread with which the untutored savage contemplates his mother-in-law are amongst the most familiar facts of anthropology.
I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.
Men weren't really the enemy - they were fellow victims suffering from an outmoded masculine mystique that made them feel unnecessarily inadequate when there were no bears to kill.
Having one child makes you a parent; having two you are a referee.
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning, and does not stop until you get into the office.
The world is full of willing people: some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and won't, and that's the wife who can't cook and will.
A cousin of mine who was a casualty surgeon in Manhattan tells me that he and his colleagues had a one-word nickname for bikers: Donors.
Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings.
It is better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same.
Diplomacy is to do and say
The nastiest thing in the nicest way.
Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.
A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
The best number for a dinner party is two: myself and a damn good head waiter.
Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post how it feels about dogs.
My momma always said, life was like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're gonna get.
Oh, innocent victims of Cupid,
Remember this terse little verse;
To let a fool kiss you is stupid,
To let a kiss fool you is worse.
What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.
Accountants are the witch-doctors of the modern world and willing to turn their hands to any kind of magic.
Three things happen when you get to my age. First your memory starts to go ... and I have forgotten the other two.
Taking fun as simply fun and earnestness in earnest shows how thoroughly thou none of the two discernest.
I don't think that work ever really destroyed anybody. I think that lack of work destroys them a hell of a lot more.
If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
A woman's mind is cleaner than a man's; she changes it more often.
A humorist is a person who feels bad, but who feels good about it.
If I had my life to live over, I would perhaps have more actual troubles but I'd have fewer imaginary ones.
It is a good thing that life is not as serious as it seems to a waiter.
When I started out, people were afraid of parish priests. Now they're afraid of newspaper editors.
If this is justice, I am a banana.
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it.
A man has his clothes made to fit him; a woman makes herself fit her clothes.
A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour.
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
If we cannot be powerful and happy and prey on others, we invent conscience and prey on ourselves.
Young women with ambitions should be very crafty and cautious, lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world.
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
Distant relatives are the best kind, and the further the better.
Nobody ever fergits where he buried a hatchet.
I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar, for the great esteem he expressed for fat men, and his aversion to lean ones.
Making and preserving friends. Select some sound hearts. Be careful not to bruise them with unfeeling words. Take of milk of human kindness one heartful. Add to this plenty of tact. Warm the mixture with plenty of sympathy. Do not let it get too hot at first, lest it only ferment mischief. Knead with plenty of oil of unselfishness to make all smooth. Beware of jars (lovely wording). The mixture should be kept in a warm corner of the heart. Years only serve to improve the flavour of friends thus preserved.
Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.
An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting to think about than sex.
Beauty for some provides escape,
Who gain a happiness in eyeing
The gorgeous buttocks of the ape
Or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
I like liquor - its taste and its effects - and that is just the reason why I never drink it.
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
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.
If you haven't struck oil in your first three minutes, stop boring!
A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.
Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
A speech is a solemn responsibility. The man who makes a bad thirty-minute speech to two hundred people wastes only a half-hour of his own time. But he wastes one hundred hours of the audience's time - more than four days - which should be a hanging offense.
Research! A mere excuse for idleness; it has never achieved, and will never achieve any results of the slightest value.
Business is like sex. When it's good, it's very, very good; when it's not so good, it's still good.
I feel sorry for those who live without competition ... fat, dumb, and unhappy in cradle-to-grave security.
If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
Do you know what Lisa Olson has in common with the Iraqis? They've both seen Patriot missiles up close.
I don't like to hire consultants. They're like castrated bulls: all they can do is advise.
I see nothing wrong with power as long as I am the fellow who has it.
I don't suffer fools, and I like to see fools suffer.
Being kissed by a man who didn't wax his moustache was - like eating an egg without salt.
What do you do when your competitor's drowning? Get a live hose and stick it in his mouth.
As usual, there's a great woman behind every idiot.
When you ask one friend to dine,
Give him your best wine!
When you ask two,
The second best will do!
When I appear in public, people expect me to neigh, grind my teeth, paw the ground, and swish my tail.
The trouble with marriage is that, while every woman is at heart a mother, every man is at heart a bachelor.
The living are just the dead on holiday.
Age is other things too. It is wisdom, if one has lived one's life properly. It is experience and knowledge. And it is getting to know all the ways the world turns, so that if you cannot turn the world the way you want, you can at least get out of the way so you won't get run over.
A hypocrite is a person who - but who isn't?
A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.
An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.
If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
It is a cheering thought to think that God is on the side of the best digestion.
Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
Prohibition makes you want to cry in your beer, and denies you the beer to cry into.
As to those who can find it in them to employ the doubtlessly useful wordbrunch, do they, I wonder, ever up-grade it tobruncheon? This is the kind of question I ponder on while waiting for the kettle to boil. The active mind is never at rest.
I must say that I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.
I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.
In England, Justice is open to all, like the Ritz hotel.
I always wait for the Times each morning. I look at the obituary column and if I'm not in it, I go to work.
People often feed the hungry so that nothing may disturb their own enjoyment of a good meal.
The only thing experience teaches us is that experience teaches us nothing.
Except for the con men borrowing money they shouldn't get and the widows who have to visit with the handsome young men in the trust department, no sane person ever enjoyed visiting a bank.
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make a better soup.
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
Men have a much better time of it than women; for one thing, they marry later; for another thing, they die earlier.
Continental people have a sex life; the English have hot-water bottles.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
Money can't buy friends, but you can get a better class of enemy.
When I am sad and weary
When I think all hope has gone
When I walk along High Holborn
I think of you with nothing on.
Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.
An author is a fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on boring future generations.
Everybody sets out to do something, and everybody does something, but no one does what he sets out to do.
High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.
Show me the man who has enjoyed his schooldays and I will show you a bully and a bore.
No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.
Restaurants have this in common with ladies: the best are often not the most enjoyable, nor the grandest the most friendly, and the pleasures of the evening are frequently spoiled by the writing of an exorbitant cheque.
It has to be admitted that we English have sex on the brain, which is a very unsatisfactory place to have it.
Money is like manure. If you spread it around, it does a lot of good, but if you pile it up in one place, it stinks like hell.
And one thing I'd like to point out is that the system worked.
A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
Beneath this slab
John Brown is stowed
He watched the ads
And not the road.
Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, And that's what parents were created for.
Experience! Wise men do not need it.
Experience! Idiots do not heed it.
One would be in less danger
From the wiles of the stranger
If one's own kin and kith
Were more fun to be with.
You don't need to interpret the tea leaves stuck in a cup to understand that people who work sitting down get paid more than those people who work standing up.
When a woman is wearing shorts her charms are enlarged without being enhanced.
And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
There are interesting failures. There are prestige failures, and there are financial failures, but this is the sort of failure that gives failures a bad name.
Middle age is when, wherever you go on holiday, you pack a sweater.
Everywhere I go I am asked if university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them.
I feel these days like a very large flamingo. No matter what way I turn, there is always a very large bill.
Bureaucratic time ... slower than geologic time but more expensive than time spent with Madame Claude's girls in Paris.
Dating is a social engagement with the threat of sex at its conclusion.
Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
It is a mistake to use highfalutin language when you advertise to uneducated people. I once used the wordobsoletein a headline, only to discover that 43 per cent of the housewives had no idea what it meant. In another headline, I used the wordineffable,only to discover that I didn't know what it meant myself.
In 1969 I published a small book on Humility. It was a pioneering work which has not, to my knowledge, been superseded.
The difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.
By the time you say you're his,
Shivering and sighing
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin - it is the triumphant twang of a bedspring.
I come from an environment where, if you see a snake, you kill it. At General Motors, if you see a snake, the first thing you do is hire a consultant on snakes.
The debt is like a crazy aunt we keep down in the basement. All the neighbors know she's there, but nobody wants to talk about her.
Oops.
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at becoming incompetent.
The noblest of all dogs is the hot-dog; it feeds the hand that bites it.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
The best index to a person's character is (a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back.
Chief executives, who themselves own few shares of their companies, have no more feeling for the average stockholder than they do for baboons in Africa.
We Bishops, in our proper dress, originated the mini-skirt. But we allowed Mary Quant to steal the thunder and make three million quid out of it last year.
I'm not afraid of life and I'm not afraid of death: Dying's the bore.
Cured yesterday of my disease. I died last night of the physician.
Having money is rather like being a blond. It is more fun but not vital.
In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.
In an examination those who do not wish to know ask questions of those who cannot tell.
A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist.
Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hit man.
You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by the way he eats jelly beans.
A singer can shatter glass with the proper high note,he said,but the simplest way to break glass is simply to drop it on the floor.
To run this business ... you need ... optimism, humanism, enthusiasm, intuition, curiosity, love, humour, magic and fun, and that secret ingredient - euphoria.
Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.
I don't make jokes; I just watch the government and report the facts.
I have always noticed that people will never laugh at anything that is not based on truth.
Outside of traffic, there is nothing that has held this country back as much as committees.
You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.
We find it easy to believe that praise is sincere: why should anyone lie in telling us the truth?
Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.
Humor is the affectionate communication of insight.
A bachelor gets tangled up with a lot of women in order to avoid getting tied up by one.
A Bachelor of Arts is one who makes love to a lot of women, and yet has the art to remain a bachelor.
It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him.
Never trust a husband too far or a bachelor too near.
Nowdays most women grow old gracefully; most men, disgracefully.
When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn't a sign that theydon't understandone another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
The man who accepts the laissez-faire doctrine would allow his garden to grow wild so that roses might fight it out with the weeds and the fittest might survive.
Fashion is something barbarous for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.
Contract: an agreement that is binding on the weaker party.*
As I grow older and older
And totter towards the tomb,
I find that I care less and less
Who goes to bed with whom.
There's a time when you have to explain to your children why they're born, and it's a marvelous thing if you know the reason by then.
Please return this book; I find that though many of my friends are poor arithmeticians, they are nearly all good bookkeepers.
Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.
I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.
Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has; but I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.
When we are born, we cry that we are come
To this great stage of fools:
Alfred Hitchcock: One look at you, Mr Shaw, and I know there's famine in the land.
Bernard Shaw: One look at you, Mr Hitchcock, and I know who caused it.
Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
I think the most ridiculous sight in the world is a man on a bicycle, working away with his feet as hard as he possibly can, and believing that his horse is carrying him, instead of, as anyone can see, he carrying the horse.
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.
The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.
What God hath joined together no man shall ever put asunder; God will take care of that.
What if the child inherits my beauty and your brains?
Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
It's better to be the head of a chicken than the tail of a cow.
I can't stand whispering. Every time a doctor whispers in the hospital, next day there's a funeral.
Inconsistency is the only thing in which men are consistent.
Gentlemen, you are now about to embark on a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.
Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life - save only this - that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.
Most people sell their souls and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.
Going to marry her! Impossible! You mean a part of her; he could not marry her all himself ... There is enough of her to furnish wives for a whole parish ... You might people a colony with her; or give an assembly with her; or perhaps take your morning's walk round her, always provided there were frequent resting-places, and you were in rude health.
Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.
Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
Don't cut my throat, I may want to do that later myself.
Don't drink in the hotel bar, that's where I do my drinking.
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.
I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.
I suppose flattery hurts no one - that is, if he doesn't inhale.
A diplomat ... is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.
There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
Family! ... the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
I loathe people who keep dogs. They're cowards who have not got the guts to bite people themselves.
There should be some professional exam for these analysts. Most of the time they talk through their backsides.
There are three things I always forget. Names, faces, and - the third I can't remember.
He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.
I shall be like that tree, I shall die at the top.
There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies.
Boys are perhaps beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of eighteen months and ninety years.
Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.
Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity.
The trouble with being in the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.
Nobody should be chief executive officer of anything for more than five or six years. By then he's stale, bored, and utterly dependent upon his own cliches.
All the president is is a glorified PR man who spends his life flattering, kissing, and kicking people to get them to do what they are supposed to do anyway.
I have found that the best way to give advise to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.
If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.
It's a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.
Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Ah well, I am a great and sublime fool. But then I am God's fool, and all His work must be contemplated with respect.
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.
An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.
Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.
Don't go to sleep, so many people die there.
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
He had had much experience of physicians, and saidthe 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.
I am pushing sixty. That is enough exercise for me.
I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it, but I couldn't find honest employment.
I don't mind what the opposition say of me, so long as they don't tell the truth about me; but when they descend to telling the truth about me, I consider that is taking an unfair advantage.
I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me - I always feel that they have not said enough.
I have never taken any exercise, except for sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome.
I refused to attend his funeral. But I wrote a very nice letter explaining that I approved of it.
I take my only exercise acting as pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.
I was born modest, but it didn't last.
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
In the matter of diet - I have been persistently strict in sticking to the things that didn't agree with me until one or the other of us got the best of it.
It is a free press ... There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.
It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
July 4. Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than in all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the country has grown so.
Leavin' me as happy as a dog with two tails.
[Mankind] in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon - laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution - these can lift at a colossal humbug - push it a little, weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an eager impulse to contribute to charity, wait, and count to forty. To save three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five.
That is just the way of the world; an enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
The secret source of humour itself is not joy, but sorrow. There is no humour in heaven.
To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did; I ought to know because I've done it a thousand times.
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Never have children, only grandchildren.
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
Begin, baby boy: if you haven't had a smile for your parent, then neither will a god think you worth inviting to dinner, nor a goddess to bed.
My prayer to God is a very short one:O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.God has granted it.
Lawyers should never marry other lawyers. This is called inbreeding, from which comes idiot children and more lawyers.
A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye.
Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.
An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.
After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
Be careful to choose your enemies well. Friends don't much matter. But the choice of enemies is very important.
By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Divorces are made in heaven.
Examinations are of no value whatsoever. If a man is a gentleman, he knows quite enough, and if he is not a gentleman, whatever he knows is bad for him.
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.
I can believe in anything, provided that it is quite incredible.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their good intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not one who is a fool. They are all men of some intellectual power, and consequently they all appreciate me.
I don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one may be accepted. One usually is, I believe. Then the excitement is all over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations with myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.
I only care to see doctors when I am in perfect health; then they comfort one, but when one is ill they are most depressing.
In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But ... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
It is only about things that do not interest one that one can give a really unbiassed opinion, which is no doubt the reason why an unbiassed opinion is always absolutely valueless.
Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious: both are disappointed.
Mrs. Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris.
Lady Hunstanton: Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to?
Lord Illingworth: Oh, they go to America.
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
One should always play fairly - when one has the winning cards.
The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.
There is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love: it is the faithless who know love's tragedies.
Those whom the gods hate die old.
To make a good salad is to be a brilliant diplomatist - the problem is entirely the same in both cases. To know how much oil one must mix with one's vinegar.
To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other's character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
When I ask for a watercress sandwich, I do not mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it.
When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know that it is.
When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving oneself; and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
Where will it all end? Half the world does not believe in God, and the other half does not believe in me.
Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and are not.
I've met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you're twenty minutes.
Balding is God's way of showing you are only human ... he takes the hair off your head and sticks it in your ears.
Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; and now I have six children, and no theories.
Money sometimes makes fools of important persons, but it may also make important persons of fools.
If money is your motivation, forget it.
You cannot hope to bribe or twist (thank God!) the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to.
The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral or fattening.
An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Be wise with speed; a fool at forty is a fool indeed.
I'd like to introduce you to some friends of mine. I want to break off with them.
My wife is a light eater. As soon as it's light, she starts eating.
My wife wanted her face lifted. They couldn't do that. But for $80, they lowered her body.
Now she's on a diet. Coconuts and bananas. She hasn't lost any weight. But she can climb a tree!
Take my wife-please.
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.
