Funny
Definition: Causing laughter or amusement; humorous. Comic strips in newspapers.
Number of Quotes: 328
I prefer the word homemaker
because housewife
always implies that there may be a wife someplace else.
Bella Abzug
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
Douglas Adams
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Douglas Adams
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.
Scott Adams
By definition, risk-takers often fail. So do morons. In practice it's difficult to sort them out.
Scott Adams
Consultants eventually leave, which makes them excellent scapegoats for major management blunders.
Scott Adams
The biggest change in the workplace of the future will be the widespread realization
that having one idiot boss is a much higher risk than having many idiot clients.
Scott Adams
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.
Fred Allen
A conference is a gathering of important people who, singly, can do nothing but together can decide that nothing can be done.
Fred Allen
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.
Fred Allen
Her hat is a creation that will never go out of style; it will just look ridiculous year after year.
Fred Allen
It was partially my fault that we got divorced ... I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.
Woody Allen
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.
Woody Allen
A bachelor is one who enjoys the chase but does not eat the game.
A Treasury of Humorous Quotations
Anonymous
A test of whether you have achieved true fame is when a deranged person believes himself to be you.
BBC Radio Quote ... Unquote
Anonymous
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.
BBC Radio Quote ... Unquote
Anonymous
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.
BBC Radio Quote ... Unquote
Anonymous
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.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations
Anonymous
There are three kinds of lie: a small lie, a big lie and politics.
Time Magazine
Anonymous
What the brassière said to the top hat: You go on ahead while I give these two a lift.
A Gentleman Publisher's Commonplace Book
Anonymous
Managers who are skilled communicators may also be good at covering up real problems.
Chris Argyris
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Isaac Asimov
She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake.
Margot Asquith
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.
Alan Ayckbourn
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.
Alan Ayckbourn
She used to diet on any kind of food she could lay her hands on.
Arthur Baer
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.
Jill Barad
For man's greatest crime is to have been born.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca
There's a sucker born every minute.
P. T. Barnum
Beauty comes in all sizes - not just size 5.
Roseanne Barr
A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch.
James Beard
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.
Max Beerbohm
Fame is failure disguised as money.
Brendan Behan
Retirement is an illusion. Not a reward but a mantrap. The bankrupt underside
of success. A shortcut to death. Golf courses are too much like cemetries.
Saul Bellow
I never sleep through a performance. I always make sure that I am awake for the intermission.
Robert Benchley
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.
Robert Benchley
Life, you know, is rather like opening a tin of sardines. We're all of us looking for the key.
Alan Bennett
Standards are always out of date. That is what makes them standards.
Alan Bennett
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.
Alan Bennett
Poor fellow, he suffers from files.
Aneurin Bevan
Acquaintance: a person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
Ambrose Bierce
BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think that we think.
Ambrose Bierce
COMMERCE, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.
Ambrose Bierce
CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Ambrose Bierce
In youth we run into difficulties; in old age difficulties run into us.
Josh Billings
There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
Josh Billings
If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
Erma Bombeck
The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
Erma Bombeck
Guidelines for bureaucrats: (1) When in charge, ponder. (2) When in trouble, delegate. (3) When in doubt, mumble.
James Boren
I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were wearing masks for.
James Boren
That favourite subject, Myself.
James Boswell
The fence around a cemetery is foolish, for those inside can't come out and those outside don't want to get in.
Arthur Brisbane
The fact that people will be full of greed, fear, or folly is predictable. The sequence is not predictable.
Warren Buffett
Wall Street is the only place people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from people who take the subway.
Warren Buffett
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.
Robert Burton
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.
Samuel Butler (Author)
Home, Sweet Home
must surely have been written by a bachelor.
Samuel Butler (Author)
God has forgotten me.
Referring to her long life at the age of 120.
Jeanne Calment
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!
George Canning
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.
Thomas Carlyle
That's the reason they're called lessons,
the Gryphon remarked: because they lessen from day to day.
Lewis Carroll
He was a man with a great future behind him.
Angela Carter
If something pleasant happens to you, don't forget to tell it to your friends, to make them feel bad.
Casimir
Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.
George Chapman
When he said we were trying to make a fool of him, I could only murmur that the Creator had beat us to it.
Ilka Chase
A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquaintance, next a mistress, and only then a friend.
Anton Chekhov
Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you, too.
Anton Chekhov
When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair.
Anton Chekhov
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.
G. K. Chesterton
Thieves respect property; they merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
G. K. Chesterton
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
Winston Churchill
Odd things animals. All dogs look up at you. All cats look down at you. Only a pig looks at you as an equal.
Winston Churchill
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.
Frank Colby
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
Charles Colton
Courtship is to marriage, as a very witty prologue to a very dull play.
William Congreve
Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.
Cyril Connolly
Friendship is love minus sex and plus reason. Love is friendship plus sex and minus reason.
Mason Cooley
If you don't say anything you won't be called on to repeat it.
Calvin Coolidge
Last night I dreamt I ate a ten-pound marshmallow. When I woke up the pillow was gone.
Tommy Cooper
The thing that best defines a child is the total inability to receive information from anything not plugged in.
Bill Cosby
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Leonard Courtney
I can take any amount of criticism, so long as it is unqualified praise.
Noël Coward
Never trust men with short legs. Brains too near their bottoms.
Noël Coward
I would be married, but I'd have no wife, I would be married to a single life.
Richard Crashaw
There was no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.
Quentin Crisp
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?
Jamie Lee Curtis
Running after women never hurt anybody - it's catching 'em that does the damage.
Jack Davies
Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.
Benjamin Disraeli
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.
John Donne
To find a friend one must close one eye. To keep him - two.
Norman Douglas
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.
Marian Edelman
The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.
Edward VIII
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.
Albert Einstein
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.
Albert Einstein
Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
Evan Esar
An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame.
Sam Ewing
Computers are like bikinis. They save people a lot of guesswork.
Sam Ewing
When the meek inherit the earth, lawyers will be there to work out the deal.
Sam Ewing
A man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.
William Faulkner
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
W. C. Fields
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.
Henry Ford
The books that everybody admires are those that nobody reads.
Anatole France
A single man has not nearly the value he would have in a state of union. He is an incomplete animal. He resembles the odd half of a pair of scissors.
Benjamin Franklin
God heals and the doctor takes the fees.
Benjamin Franklin
He that falls in love with himself, will have no rivals.
Benjamin Franklin
He that lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.
Benjamin Franklin
He that teaches himself hath a fool for a master.
Benjamin Franklin
I love children, especially when they cry, for then someone takes them away.
Nancy Freeman-Mitford
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
Robert Frost
Having one child makes you a parent; having two you are a referee.
David Frost
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.
Robert Frost
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.
Robert Frost
The world is full of willing people: some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
Robert Frost
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.
Robert Frost
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.
Stephen Fry
It is better to give than to lend, and it costs about the same.
Philip Gibbs
Diplomacy is to do and say
The nastiest thing in the nicest way.
Isaac Goldberg
A verbal contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Samuel Goldwyn
Brain cells create ideas. Stress kills brain cells. Stress is not a good idea.
Doug Hall
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post how it feels about dogs.
Christopher Hampton
My momma always said, life was like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're gonna get.
Tom Hanks
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.
E. Y. Harburg
What is a committee? A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary.
Richard Harkness
Accountants are the witch-doctors of the modern world and willing to turn their hands to any kind of magic.
Quoted in February, 1964.
Charles Harman
Three things happen when you get to my age. First your memory starts to go ... and I have forgotten the other two.
Denis Healey
I don't think that work ever really destroyed anybody. I think that lack of work destroys them a hell of a lot more.
Katherine Hepburn
If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.
Katherine Hepburn
A woman's mind is cleaner than a man's; she changes it more often.
Oliver Herford
When I started out, people were afraid of parish priests. Now they're afraid of newspaper editors.
Michael D. Higgins
If this is justice, I am a banana.
Ian Hislop
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
Eric Hoffer
A man has his clothes made to fit him; a woman makes herself fit her clothes.
E. W. Howe
A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour.
Elbert Hubbard
Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.
Elbert Hubbard
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Elbert Hubbard
Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
Kin Hubbard
Distant relatives are the best kind, and the further the better.
Kin Hubbard
Nobody ever fergits where he buried a hatchet.
Kin Hubbard
I cannot but bless the memory of Julius Caesar,
for the great esteem he expressed for fat men, and his aversion to lean ones.
David Hume
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.
Barry Humphries
Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feeling passes.
Robert M. Hutchins
An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting to think about than sex.
Aldous Huxley
Beauty for some provides escape,
Who gain a happiness in eyeing
The gorgeous buttocks of the ape
Or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
Aldous Huxley
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
Thomas Jefferson
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
If you haven't struck oil in your first three minutes, stop boring!
George Jessel
A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Samuel Johnson
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
Samuel Johnson
Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
Samuel Johnson
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.
Jenkin Lloyd Jones
Business is like sex. When it's good, it's very, very good; when it's not so good, it's still good.
George Katona
I feel sorry for those who live without competition ... fat, dumb, and unhappy in cradle-to-grave security.
Donald Kendall
Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
John F. Kennedy
I don't like to hire consultants. They're like castrated bulls: all they can do is advise.
Victor Kiam
I see nothing wrong with power as long as I am the fellow who has it.
Cecil King
I don't suffer fools, and I like to see fools suffer.
Florence King
Being kissed by a man who didn't wax his moustache was - like eating an egg without salt.
Rudyard Kipling
What do you do when your competitor's drowning? Get a live hose and stick it in his mouth.
Ray Kroc
As usual, there's a great woman behind every idiot.
John Lennon
When you ask one friend to dine,
Give him your best wine!
When you ask two,
The second best will do!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
When I appear in public, people expect me to neigh, grind my teeth, paw the ground, and swish my tail.
Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise
The trouble with marriage is that, while every woman is at heart a mother, every man is at heart a bachelor.
E. V. Lucas
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.
Miriam Makeba
As to those who can find it in them to employ the doubtlessly useful word brunch
, do they, I wonder, ever up-grade it to
bruncheon
? This is the kind of question I ponder on while waiting for the kettle to boil. The active mind is never at rest.
Arthur Marshall
I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception.
Groucho Marx
In England, Justice is open to all, like the Ritz hotel.
James Mathew
People often feed the hungry so that nothing may disturb their own enjoyment of a good meal.
W. Somerset Maugham
The only thing experience teaches us is that experience teaches us nothing.
André Maurois
Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and only the pig enjoys himself.
Mark McCormack
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make a better soup.
H. L. Mencken
I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.
H. L. Mencken
In the main, there are two sorts of books: those that no one reads and those that no one ought to read.
H. L. Mencken
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
John Stuart Mill
Money can't buy friends, but you can get a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan
Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.
Margaret Mitchell
An author is a fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on boring future generations.
Montesquieu
High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.
Christopher Morley
Show me the man who has enjoyed his schooldays and I will show you a bully and a bore.
Robert Morley
No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.
John Mortimer
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.
John Mortimer
It has to be admitted that we English have sex on the brain, which is a very unsatisfactory place to have it.
Malcolm Muggeridge
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.
Clint Murchison
Monopoly is a terrible thing, till you have it.
Rupert Murdoch
Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, And that's what parents were created for.
Ogden Nash
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.
Ogden Nash
When a woman is wearing shorts her charms are enlarged without being enhanced.
Beverley Nichols
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.
David Niven
Middle age is when, wherever you go on holiday, you pack a sweater.
Denis Norden
Everywhere I go I am asked if university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them.
Flannery O'Connor
I feel these days like a very large flamingo. No matter what way I turn, there is always a very large bill.
Joseph O'Connor
Bureaucratic time ... slower than geologic time but more expensive than time spent with Madame Claude's girls in Paris.
P. J. O'Rourke
Dating is a social engagement with the threat of sex at its conclusion.
P. J. O'Rourke
Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'Rourke
In 1969 I published a small book on Humility. It was a pioneering work which has not, to my knowledge, been superseded.
Francis Pakenham
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.
Dorothy Parker
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.
Dorothy Parker
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.
Ross Perot
Equal opportunity means everyone will have a fair chance at becoming incompetent.
Laurence J. Peter
The noblest of all dogs is the hot-dog; it feeds the hand that bites it.
Laurence J. Peter
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.
T. Boone Pickens
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.
Victor J. Pike
I'm not afraid of life and I'm not afraid of death: Dying's the bore.
Katherine Anne Porter
In many walks of life, a conscience is a more expensive encumbrance than a wife or a carriage.
Thomas De Quincey
In an examination those who do not wish to know ask questions of those who cannot tell.
Walter Raleigh
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.
Ronald Reagan
You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by the way he eats jelly beans.
Ronald Reagan
Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it.
Will Rogers
I don't make jokes; I just watch the government and report the facts.
Will Rogers
Outside of traffic, there is nothing that has held this country back as much as committees.
Will Rogers
You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way.
Will Rogers
A bachelor gets tangled up with a lot of women in order to avoid getting tied up by one.
Helen Rowland
A Bachelor of Arts is one who makes love to a lot of women, and yet has the art to remain a bachelor.
Helen Rowland
It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another woman twenty minutes to make a fool of him.
Helen Rowland
Never trust a husband too far or a bachelor too near.
Helen Rowland
When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn't a sign that they don't understand
one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.
Helen Rowland
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance.
John Ruskin
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.
John Ruskin
Fashion is something barbarous for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
George Santayana
Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend.
John Singer Sargent
Contract: an agreement that is binding on the weaker party.
*
*Attribution questionable.
Frederick Sawyer
Father's Day was comical in part because fathers seemed so out of place or uncomfortable in this holiday world of sentimental gifts
and domestic flattery. The little remembrances
of flowers, cards, and novelties became funny when showered on Father; they
opened up a line of humor that played on the gendered incongruities of holiday gift giving. As one editorial writer on the holiday
put the matter in 1925, fathers have 'no talent for the fribbles and frabbles and furbelows with which Mother signalizes well-being.
Leigh Eric Schmidt
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.
Hazel Scott
Please return this book; I find that though many of my friends are poor arithmeticians, they are nearly all good bookkeepers.
Walter Scott
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.
Dr. Seuss
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.
Twelfth Night
William Shakespeare
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.
George Bernard Shaw
Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
George Bernard Shaw
The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.
George Bernard Shaw
What God hath joined together no man shall ever put asunder; God will take care of that.
George Bernard Shaw
What if the child inherits my beauty and your brains?
George Bernard Shaw
Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you.
Spoken to a young lady.
Richard Sheridan
I can't stand whispering. Every time a doctor whispers in the hospital, next day there's a funeral.
Neil Simon
Inconsistency is the only thing in which men are consistent.
Horace Smith
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.
John Alexander Smith
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.
John Alexander Smith
Most people sell their souls and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.
Logan Pearsall Smith
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.
Sydney Smith
Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise.
Philip Stanhope
The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
Philip Stanhope
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.
Laurence Sterne
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.
Adlai Stevenson
I suppose flattery hurts no one - that is, if he doesn't inhale.
Adlai Stevenson
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.
Caskie Stinnett
There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.
Rex Stout
Family! ... the home of all social evil, a charitable institution for comfortable women, an anchorage for house-fathers, and a hell for children.
August Strindberg
I loathe people who keep dogs. They're cowards who have not got the guts to bite people themselves.
August Strindberg
There should be some professional exam for these analysts. Most of the time they talk through their backsides.
Alan Sugar
There are three things I always forget. Names, faces, and - the third I can't remember.
Italo Svevo
He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.
Jonathan Swift
There are few wild beasts more to be dreaded than a talking man having nothing to say.
Jonathan Swift
The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.
Thomas Szasz
Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies.
Dylan Thomas
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.
James Thurber
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.
Mark Twain
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
Mark Twain
Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.
Mark Twain
An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.
Mark Twain
Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
Mark Twain
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society.
Mark Twain
Golf is a good walk spoiled.
Mark Twain
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain
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
I am pushing sixty. That is enough exercise for me.
Mark Twain
I became a newspaperman. I hated to do it, but I couldn't find honest employment.
Mark Twain
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.
Mark Twain
I have been complimented myself a great many times, and they always embarrass me - I always feel that they have not said enough.
Mark Twain
I have never taken any exercise, except for sleeping and resting, and I never intend to take any. Exercise is loathsome.
Mark Twain
I never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain
I take my only exercise acting as pallbearer at the funerals of my friends who exercise regularly.
Mark Twain
I was born modest, but it didn't last.
Mark Twain
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.
Mark Twain
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.
Mark Twain
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.
Mark Twain
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.
Mark Twain
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.
Mark Twain
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Mark Twain
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.
Mark Twain
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
Mark Twain
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.
Mark Twain
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.
Mark Twain
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Gore Vidal
Never have children, only grandchildren.
Gore Vidal
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
Gore Vidal
My prayer to God is a very short one: O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.
God has granted it.
Voltaire
Lawyers should never marry other lawyers. This is called inbreeding, from which comes idiot children and more lawyers.
David Wayne
Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
Mae West
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.
Mae West
After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.
Oscar Wilde
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde
Bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
Oscar Wilde
Be careful to choose your enemies well. Friends don't much matter. But the choice of enemies is very important.
Oscar Wilde
By persistently remaining single a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.
Oscar Wilde
Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.
Oscar Wilde
Divorces are made in heaven.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Oscar Wilde
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
Oscar Wilde
Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
Oscar Wilde
Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.
Oscar Wilde
Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Oscar Wilde
In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
Oscar Wilde
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But ... it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Oscar Wilde
Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious: both are disappointed.
Oscar Wilde
One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.
Oscar Wilde
One should always play fairly - when one has the winning cards.
Oscar Wilde
The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.
Oscar Wilde
The only difference between a saint and a sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde
The only possible form of exercise is to talk, not to walk.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Oscar Wilde
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.
Oscar Wilde
To lose one parent...may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Oscar Wilde
When I ask for a watercress sandwich, I do not mean a loaf with a field in the middle of it.
Oscar Wilde
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.
Oscar Wilde
When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde
Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and are not.
Oscar Wilde
I've met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you're twenty minutes.
Billy Wilder
Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; and now I have six children, and no theories.
John Wilmot
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.
Humbert Wolfe
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral or fattening.
Alexander Woollcott
An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.
Henry Wotton
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Be wise with speed; a fool at forty is a fool indeed.
Edward Young
I'd like to introduce you to some friends of mine. I want to break off with them.
Henny Youngman
My wife is a light eater. As soon as it's light, she starts eating.
Henny Youngman
My wife wanted her face lifted. They couldn't do that. But for $80, they lowered her body.
Henny Youngman
Now she's on a diet. Coconuts and bananas. She hasn't lost any weight. But she can climb a tree!
Henny Youngman
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.
Henny Youngman
Last on Earth
