Mitch Hedberg (quotes)

/in , /by
  • Why are there no “during” pictures?
  • I can read minds, but I’m illiterate.
  • Dogs are forever in the pushup position.
  • I remixed a remix, it was back to normal.
  • A sleeping bag is a tortilla for a human.
  • A snake bite emergency kit is a body bag.
  • Waffles are like pancakes with syrup traps
  • It’s hard to fight when you’re in a gazebo.
  • A burrito is a sleeping bag for ground beef.
  • I’d hate to be a giraffe with a sore throat.
  • I think pickles are cucumbers that sold out.
  • Bologna is a deli meat for people with eyes.
  • A burrito is a sleeping bag for ground beef!
  • A waffle is like a pancake with a syrup trap.
  • Well, that’s a ‘fresher’. I’m going on break.
  • Every picture of you is when you were younger.
  • I’m an ice sculptor. Last night I made a cube.
  • No, I was just good at holding ice cream cones.
  • A severed foot is the ultimate stocking stuffer.
  • My girlfriend works at Hooters. In the kitchen.
  • I can’t eat spaghetti. There’s too many of them.
  • I got an ant farm; them fellas didn’t grow sh*t.
  • A snake bite emergency repair kit is a body bag.
  • I think Big Foot is blurry, that’s the problem.
  • I tried to throw a yo-yo away. It was impossible.
  • Live album: Mitch All Together””. December 9, 2003.
  • I have no problem not listening to the Temptations.
  • I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.
  • Every book is a children’s book if the kid can read!
  • Fettucini alfredo is macaroni and cheese for adults.
  • I like Kit-Kat, unless I’m with four or more people.
  • If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be messed-up.
  • A lollipop is a cross between hard candy and garbage.
  • Why is Cloud 9 so amazing? What is wrong with Cloud 8?
  • I got binoculars ’cause I don’t want to go that close.
  • All these jokes have been pre-approved as funny by me.
  • I’m against picketing, but I don’t know how to show it.
  • Onions make me sad. A lot of people don’t realize that.
  • I drank some boiling water because I wanted to whistle.
  • Snake eyes is a gambling term, and an animal term, too.
  • I type 101 words a minute, but it’s in my own language.
  • An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs.
  • Escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.
  • This jacket is dry clean only… which means it’s dirty.
  • I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too.
  • This shirt is “dry-clean only”… Which means it’s dirty.
  • I type a 101 words a minute. But it’s in my own language.
  • I drank some boiling water… because I wanted to whistle.
  • If 13 is unlucky, then 12 and 14 are guilty by association.
  • I wear a necklace, cause I wanna know when I’m upside down.
  • If you want to talk to me after the show, I’d be surprised.
  • Live album: Strategic Grill Locations””. September 7, 1999.
  • My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them.
  • I used to be a hot-tar roofer. Yeah, I remember that… day.
  • I am wearing a vest. If I had no arms, it would be a jacket.
  • I can read minds. But it’s pointless because I’m illiterate.
  • I haven’t slept for ten days, because that would be too long.
  • I think foosball is a combination of soccer and shish kabobs.
  • Mitch”, but then reattach it and call it “Mitch-all-together.
  • I don’t wear a watch because I want my arms to weigh the same.
  • I can whistle with my fingers, especially if I have a whistle.
  • I had a chicken finger that was so big, it was a chicken hand.
  • Hey, you know what keeps me from acting? Fuckin’… auditions.
  • I haven’t slept for 10 days… because that would be too long.
  • If I had nine of my fingers missing I wouldn’t type any slower.
  • I ate one anchovy, and that is why I did not eat two anchovies.
  • People on the 14th floor, you know what floor you’re really on.
  • Is a hippopotamus a hippopotamus or just a really cool opotamus?
  • Last time I called shotgun we had rented a limo, so I messed up!
  • I gotta idea for sweat shops… air conditioning! Problem solved.
  • I like rice. Rice is great if you want to eat 2,000 of something.
  • I like vending machines, because snacks are better when they fall.
  • I want to ride in a cold air balloon. “This isn’t going anywhere!”
  • I tried to freshen up a room, so I held a Certs in front of a fan.
  • I went to a tent store. “What kind of tent do you need?” “Circus.”
  • If I had nine of my fingers missing… I wouldn’t type any slower.
  • I know people who believe in ghosts but don’t believe in themselves.
  • I wish I could play little league now. I’d be way better than before.
  • If you are flammable and have legs, you are not blocking a fire exit.
  • Alcoholism is the only disease that you can get yelled at for having.
  • Because of acid, I now know that butter is way better than margarine.
  • I wear a necklace now… because I like to know when I’m upside down.
  • Sometimes I get really lonely. Especially when I’m throwing a Frisbee.
  • Swiss Cheese is a rip-off It’s the only cheese I can bite into and miss
  • I like wearing necklaces, because it lets me know when I’m upside down.
  • When you put Listerine in your mouth, it hurts. Germs do not go quietly.
  • I put fruit on top of my waffles, because I want something to brush off.
  • Here’s a thought for sweat shop owners: Air Conditioning. Problem solved.
  • I think animal crackers make people think that all animals taste the same.
  • I had the cab driver drive me here backwards, and the dude owed me $27.50.
  • I bought myself a parrot, but it did not say “I’m hungry”, and so it died.
  • If my kid couldn’t draw I’d make sure that my kitchen magnets didn’t work.
  • I’d like to get four people who do cart wheels very good, and make a cart.
  • I saw this wino, he was eating grapes. It’s like, “Dude, you have to wait.”
  • I saw this wino, he was eating grapes. I was like, “Dude, you have to wait”.
  • Pibb is a poor imitation of Dr. Pepper. Dude didn’t even get his degree.
  • I’m not into sports. I mean…I like Gatorade, but that’s as far as it goes.
  • I like to take a toothpick and throw it in the forest and say “You’re home!”
  • I would imagine the inside of a bottle of cleaning fluid… is fuckin’ clean.
  • I once saw a forklift lift a crate of forks. And it was way to literal for me.
  • I’m gonna fix that last joke by taking out all the words and adding new ones.
  • Well, I was lost but now I live here! I have severely improved my predicament!
  • I saw a human pyramid once. It was very unnecessary. It did not need to exist.
  • I cannot tell you what hotel I’m staying at, but there are two trees involved.
  • That would be cool if you lived with a monster… you would never get hiccups!
  • I like the Fed Ex driver because he’s a drug dealer and he don’t even know it.
  • I’m a hard act to follow, because when I’m done, I take the microphone with me.
  • I’m a heroine addict… I need to have sex with women who saved someone’s life.
  • Rice is great if you’re really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something.
  • I wanted to buy a candle holder, but the store didn’t have one. So I got a cake.
  • When I was a boy, I laid in my twin-sized bed and wondered where my brother was.
  • I was going to get my teeth whitened, but I said, “I’ll just get a tan instead.”
  • One time I was forced to go to the doctors because of a sports accident. Herpes.
  • If you have to release bad news to the public, it would help if you are not ugly.
  • If you can’t sleep, count sheep. Don’t count endangered animals. You will run out.
  • I’m a heroine addict. I need to have sex with women who have saved someone’s life.
  • When someone hands you a flyer, it’s like they’re saying here you throw this away.
  • I got two stools, in case I want to sit down and sit down again on something else.
  • I don’t have a microwave oven, but I do have a clock that occasionally cooks shit.
  • I don’t have a microwave oven, but I do have a clock that occasionally cooks stuff.
  • I’m into carpooling, because sometimes my car gets hot and needs to refresh itself.
  • What am I drinking? NyQuil on the rocks, for when you’re feeling sick but sociable.
  • I would like it if four people did a cartwheel all at once… so I can make a cart.
  • I don’t have a girlfriend. But I do know a woman who’d be mad at me for saying that.
  • S. – This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.
  • I bought a seven-dollar pen because I always lose pens and I got sick of not caring.
  • I had my palm read. I wrote something on it first to see if she would read that too.
  • I met this girl, she was an actress, and she gave me her number. It started with 555.
  • If you’re a fish and you want to be a fish-stick, you have to have very good posture.
  • It’s weird… people say they’re not like apes. Now how do you explain football then?
  • I find a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced by whether or not I have bread.
  • I got my hair highlighted because I felt some strands were more important than others.
  • If I had a dollar for every time I said that, I’d be making money in a very weird way.
  • I want to be a rebellious McDonald’s owner. Cheeseburgers… NOPE… we got spaghetti!
  • A fly was very close to being called a land, because that’s what it does half the time.
  • I got a smoke alarm at home, but really it’s more like a 9-volt-battery-slowly-drainer.
  • I want to make a vending machine that sells vending machines. It’d have to be real big.
  • Cavities are made by sugar. So if you need to dig a hole, then lay down some candy bars!
  • A fly was very close to being called a “land” because that’s what it does half the time.
  • I ran some Evian water through a filter… the shit disappeared! It was so fuckin’ pure.
  • 2-in-1 is a stupid term, because 1 is not big enough to hold 2. That’s why 2 was created.
  • If you have dentures, do not use artificial sweeteners because you will get a fake cavity.
  • If you’re a fish, and you want to become a fish stick, you have to have very good posture.
  • Making Maps, Second Edition by John Krygier, Denis Wood, The Guilford Press, (p. 58), 2011.
  • I bought myself a parrot, the parrot talked, but it did not say “I’m hungry”… so it died.
  • I would imagine that if you could understand Morse code, a tap dancer would drive you crazy.
  • I saw a seagull hanging out by a lake, but I said, “Don’t worry, Dude. I won’t say anything.”
  • I had a paper route when I was a kid. I was supposed to go to 2,000 houses. Or two dumpsters.
  • I love blackjack. But I’m not addicted to gambling. I’m addicted to sitting in a semi circle.
  • I was gonna have my teeth whitened, but then I said, “Fuck that, I’ll just get a tan instead.
  • I played golf… I did not get a hole in one, but I did hit a guy. That’s way more satisfying.
  • I played in a death-metal band. People either loved us or hated us. Or they thought we were OK.
  • I’ve got a wallet, it’s orange. In case I wanna buy a deer. That doesn’t make any sense at all.
  • If you find yourself lost in the woods, build a house. “Well, I was lost, but now I live here!”
  • I wanted to get a tape recorder, but I got a parrot instead. I think I did that joke backwards.
  • I don’t have a girlfriend. I just know a girl who would get really mad if she heard me say that.
  • Yeah, I’m not into sports. If someone told me I had athlete’s foot, I’d say that’s not my foot!
  • I love my fed-ex guy cause he’s a drug dealer and he don’t even know it…and he’s always on time.
  • I got some tartar-control toothpaste a while back. I’ve still got tartar, but it’s under control.
  • I got a king-sized bed. I don’t know any kings, but if one came over, I guess he’d be comfortable.
  • Live album: “Mitch All Together”. Track 3 “Not Track Five, Not Chainsaw Juggler”, December 9, 2003.
  • I have a few cavities. I don’t like to call ’em cavities. I like to call ’em “places to put stuff.”
  • The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I’ll never be as good as a wall.
  • It’s hard to dance if you just lost your wallet. Whoa Where’s my wallet But, hey this song is funky.
  • I like to play blackjack. I’m not addicting to gambling… I’m addicting to sitting in a semicircle.
  • I hate flossing, I wish I just had one long curvy tooth. They didn’t have to make separations for me.
  • I got a king size bed. I don’t know any kings, but if one came over, I guess he would be comfortable.
  • I want to get non-aerosol mace, you just rub it in. “Dude who is attacking me – come a little closer!”
  • I think pickles are cucumbers that sold out. They sold their soul to the devil, and the devil is dill.
  • I played in a death metal band. People either loved us or they hated us… or they thought we were OK.
  • I went to a record store, they said they specialized in hard-to-find records. Nothing was alphabetized!
  • I can’t wait to get off the stage, because I’ve got some LifeSavers in my pocket and pineapple is next!
  • I recently took up ice sculpting. Last night I made an ice cube. This morning I made 12, I was prolific.
  • I don’t like grouper fish. Well, they’re okay. They hang around star fish. Because they’re grouper fish.
  • I’m sick of Soup Of The Day, man. It’s time we make a decision. I need to know what Soup From Now On is.
  • I’ve always wanted to have a suitcase handcuffed to my wrist. That’s not a full joke there! It’s filler.
  • Y’know, you can’t please all the people all the time… and last night, all those people were at my show.
  • My friend asked me if I wanted a frozen banana. I said ‘No, but I want a regular banana later, so… yeah.’
  • They say the recipe for Sprite is lemon and lime. I tried to make it at home. There’s more to it than that.
  • I saw on HBO they were advertising a boxing match “It’s a fight to the finish”. That’s a good place to end.
  • The commercial for Diet Dr. Pepper says it tastes just like regular Dr. Pepper. Well, then they screwed up!
  • Sometimes I fall asleep at night with my clothes on. I’m going to have all my clothes made out of blankets.
  • I saw a guy juggling chain saws, it was cool, unless something needed to be sawed down, then it’s annoying.
  • I know a lot about cars, man. I can look at any car’s headlights and tell you exactly which way it’s coming.
  • I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just going to ask them where they’re goin’, and hook up with them later.
  • I wish they made fajita cologne, because that stuff smells good. What’s that you’re wearing? That’s sizzlin’!
  • The thing that’s depressing about tennis is that no matter how good I get, I will never be as good as a wall.
  • You should never tell someone they have a nice dimple, because maybe they were shot in the face with a BB gun.
  • If you drink O’Douls, you don’t drink; but if you drink 20 O’Douls in a half hour, then you’re a non-alcoholic.
  • My manager said, “Don’t use liquor as a crutch!” I can’t use liquor as a crutch, because a crutch helps me walk.
  • I went to a restaurant with my friend, and he said, “Pass the salt.” I said, “Screw you! Sit closer to the salt.”
  • I had a paper route when I was a kid. I was a paperboy. I was supposed to go to 2,000 houses… or two dumpsters.
  • I like rice. Rice is great if you’re hungry and want 2000 of something picketing, but I don’t know how to show it.
  • You know, I’m sick of following my dreams, man. I’m just gonna ask where they’re going and hook up with ’em later.
  • I tried to walk into Target, but I missed. I think the entrance to Target should have people splattered all around.
  • XM radio doesn’t have commercials, so after about thirty minutes of listening to it, I’m like, “What should I buy?”
  • Every time I go and shave, I assume there’s someone else on the planet shaving. So I say, ‘I’m gonna go shave, too.’
  • I would like to go fishing and catch a fish stick. That would be convenient. I could easily get a job at Mrs. Paul’s.
  • I had to take a physical to do this show. They had a lot of weird questions like, “Have you ever tried sugar or PCP?”
  • I spilled some vodka on the carpet, and I vacuumed it up, and the vacuum got drunk. I had to take the Hoover to detox.
  • If Spiderman was real, and I was a criminal, and he shot me with his web, I would say, “Dude, thanks for the hammock.”
  • It’s very dangerous to wave to people you don’t know because what if they don’t have hands? They’ll think you’re cocky.
  • Kittens play with yarn, they bat it around. What they’re really doing is saying, “I can’t knit, get this away from me!”
  • I would imagine the inside of a bottle of cleaning fluid is really clean. I would imagine a vodka bottle is really drunk.
  • I like to smoke a pipe, because it’s the punch line indicator. Whenever I take a hit of the pipe, you should be laughing.
  • When you open the elevator on the top floor of a building and the other guy doesn’t get out, something is seriously wrong.
  • I went to the store and bought eight apples; the clerk said, “Do you want these in a bag?” I said, “Oh, no, man, I juggle.”
  • I didn’t go to college, but if I did, I would’ve taken all my tests at a restaurant, ’cause ‘The customer is always right’.
  • I went to a cigar store, the man behind the counter asked me, “What kind of cigars do you like?” I answered, “It’s a Boys.”
  • When I was on acid, I would see things like beams of light and I would hear sounds that sounded an awful lot like car horns.
  • I’d like to see a forklift lift a crate of forks. It’d be so damn literal! You are using that machine to it’s exact purpose!
  • Comedy clubs have brick walls behind the performer. Bricks make you funny. When I’m in front of a fireplace, I’m hilarious.
  • I was in a convenience store, reading a magazine. The clerk told me, “this is not a library!” “OK! I will talk louder, then!”
  • If I was a mechanic and someone called me and said their car would not start, I would say, “Hey – maybe a killer is after you!”
  • I miss the $2 bill, ’cause I can break a two. $20, no. $10, no. $5, maybe, $2? Oh yeah. What do you need, a one and another one?
  • Why is Cloud 9 so amazing? What is wrong with Cloud 8? That joke came off the top of my head, and the top of my head ain’t funny!
  • I like to hold the microphone cord like this, I pinch it together, then I let it go, then you hear a whole bunch of jokes at once.
  • I went to the airport, I put my bag in the x-ray machine, I found out my bag has cancer. It only has six more months to hold stuff.
  • I rented a car. I didn’t really need one, I just wanted to make one less available. I wanted one businessman on the bus with no car.
  • My belt holds my pants up, but the belt loops hold my belt up. I don’t really know what’s happening down there. Who is the real hero?
  • I read that MTV’s Real World got 40,000 applications. That’s amazing, such an even number. You would have thought it would be 40,008.
  • I sometimes close my eyes during a show because I have drawn a picture of an audience enjoying the show more on the back of my eyelids.
  • One time a guy handed me a picture, he said “Here’s a picture of me when I was younger.” Every picture of you is when you were younger.
  • I want to rob a bank with a BB gun. “Give me all your money or I will give you a dimple! I will be rich, you will be cute. We both win.”
  • If you had a friend who was a tightrope walker, and you were walking down a sidewalk, and he fell, that would be completely unacceptable.
  • People who smoke cigarettes, they say “You don’t know how hard it is to quit smoking.” Yes I do. It’s as hard as it is to start flossing.
  • Do you think I am standing here, making this up as I go? I am sorry to disillusion you. I am not Robin Williams. I am the king of the pen.
  • I have an idea for sweatshops: air conditioning! That’s simple. 14 year old boys working twelve hour days? “Yeah, but they’re comfortable!”
  • My lucky number is four billion. That doesn’t come in real handy when you’re gambling. “Come on, four billion. Fuck. Seven. Not even close.
  • My hotel doesn’t have a 13th floor because of superstition. But, c’mon man, people on the 14th floor, you know what floor you’re really on.
  • I got an ant farm. Them fellas didn’t grow anything. Hey, how about some celery? Plus, if I tore your legs off, you would look like snowmen.
  • I hate arrows. They try to tell me which direction to go. It’s like “I ain’t going that way, line with two thirds of a triangle on the end!”
  • I want to get a job naming kitchen appliances. That seems easy; refrigerator, toaster, blender. You just say what the thing does and add “er”.
  • I’ve never been to a hotel with a rotating restaurant on top, but one time I took my girlfriend to a merry-go-round, and I gave her a burrito.
  • We’re gonna have to sweeten some of these jokes for the CD. You know what sweeten means, right? Sweeten is a show-biz term for “add sugar to”.
  • I have a roommate, and I signed a year lease. I screwed up! That’s like I wrote a joke that didn’t work, but now I have to tell it for a year.
  • The Kit Kat candy bar has the name Kit Kat imprinted into the chocolate. That robs you of chocolate! That’s a clever chocolate-saving technique.
  • I used to drink wine. This girl asked me, “Doesn’t wine give you a headache?” “Yeah, eventually, but the first and the middle part are amazing!”
  • I want to get a vending machine, with fun sized candy bars, and the glass in front is a magnifying glass. You’ll be mad, but it will be too late.
  • I did a radio interview; the DJ’s first question was “Who are you?” I had to think. Is this guy really deep, or did I drive to the wrong station?
  • People teach their dogs to sit; it’s a trick. I’ve been sitting my whole life, and a dog has never looked at me as though he thought I was tricky.
  • I got into an argument with a girlfriend inside of a tent. That’s a bad place for an argument. Because then I tried to walk out and slam the flap.
  • I got in an argument with a girlfriend inside of a tent. That’s a bad place for an argument, because I tried to walk out, and had to slam the flap.
  • People ask me for my autograph after a show. I’m not famous, I think they’re messing with me. I think they’re trying to make me late for something.
  • If a drink was ice cold, it would be impossible to drink. Because it would be solid. Here’s a drink, Mitch – it’s ice cold. I guess I could lick it.
  • When you go to a bar that has a black light, everybody looks cool. Except for me, because I was under the impression that the mustard stain came out.
  • I wrote my friend a letter using a highlighting pen. But he could not read it, he thought I was trying to show him certain parts of a piece of paper.
  • I don’t want to have my face on the cover of a Wheaties box. I wanna have my face on the cover of a Rice Krispies box. “Snap, Krackle, Mitch and Pop”!
  • I was in a park and I saw a kid flying a kite and he was so excited that his kite was in the sky. I don’t know why, that’s what they’re supposed to do.
  • I hate dreaming because when you want to sleep, you want to sleep. Dreaming is work. Next thing you know, I have to build a go-cart with my ex-landlord.
  • I tried to have a cookie, and this girl said, “I’m mailing those cookies to my friend.” So I couldn’t have one. You shouldn’t make cookies untouchable.
  • I have a “Do Not Disturb” sign on my hotel door. It’s time to go to “Don’t Disturb”. It’s been “Do Not” for too long. We should embrace the contraction.
  • If you’re watching a parade, don’t follow it. It never changes. If the parade is boring, run in the opposite direction. You will fast-forward the parade.
  • I have an underwater camera just in case I crash my car into a river, and at the last minute I see a photo opportunity of a fish that I have never seen.
  • I have a Sharpie. I love Sharpies. You know what they say on them? Not for letter writing. That sucks. Now I have to communicate with my dad using numbers.
  • .. I can’t eat spaghetti, there’s too many of them. No matter how hungry I am, 1,000 of something is too many. I’ll have 1,000 pieces of noodles.
  • That would be cool if the earth’s crust was made out of graham cracker. It would disappear just like the ozone layer, but for completely different reasons.
  • I heard a guy tell me he liked cherries. I waited to hear if he was going to say “tomatoes”, then I realized he like cherries just. That joke is ridiculous.
  • My roommate says, “I’m going to take a shower and shave. Does anyone need to use the bathroom?” It’s like some weird quiz where he reveals the answer first.
  • I got a hotel room at New York New York in Las Vegas and I was very happy. They’ve got that rollercoaster encircling the entire premises, just like Manhattan.
  • I don’t have any children, but if I had a baby, I would have to name it, so I would get a baby-naming book. Or I would invite somebody over who had a cast on.
  • My lucky number is four billion. That doesn’t come in real handy when you’re gambling. “Come on, four billion! Darn! Seven. Not even close. I need more dice.”
  • Wearing a turtleneck is like being strangled by a really weak guy, all day. Wearing a backpack and a turtleneck is like a weak midget trying to bring you down.
  • I thought my teeth were white until I washed my face with Noxzema. My teeth are off-white. I’m not even white. I’m off-white. It’s a new race; we will prevail!
  • My sister wanted to be an actress, but she never made it. She does live in a trailer. She got halfway. She’s an actress, she just never gets called to the set.
  • I had a Velcro wallet in a casino. That sound annoyed the hell out of me. Whenever I lost money, and I opened the wallet, it was like the sound of my addiction.
  • Knock on wood is a saying for good luck. I think that started when someone went to someone’s door to see if someone was home. “I hope Joe’s home, knock on wood!”
  • I was booked into the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas with three other comedians. We all were using the Riviera in-house shampoo, so we all had equal shine and bounce.
  • The only way I could get my old CD into stores is if I took one in and leave it. “Sir, you forgot this.” “No, I did not. That is for sale. Please alphabetize it.”
  • I met the girl who works at the Doubletree front desk, she gave me her number. It’s ZERO. I tried to call from here, some other woman answered. “You sound older!”
  • You know when they have a fishing show on TV? They catch the fish and then let it go. They don’t want to eat the fish, they just want to make it late for something.
  • One time I stayed at a haunted motel. When I checked into my room, there was a sheet on the floor, and I thought it was a ghost that had passed out, so I kicked it.
  • If I’m out to dinner with a group of friends, and somebody offers to pay for the check, I immediately reach for my wallet. Inside is a note that says, “Say thanks!”
  • I like to wear a “Do Not Disturb” sign around my neck so that little kids can’t tell me knock-knock jokes. “Hey, how ya doin’? Knock-knock.” “Read the sign, punk!”
  • I like refried beans. That’s why I wanna try fried beans, because maybe they’re just as good and we’re just wasting time. You don’t have to fry them again after all.
  • So, I sit at the hotel at night and I think of something that’s funny. Or, If the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of wasn’t funny.
  • I was going to stay overnight at my friend’s house – he said, “you’ll have to sleep on the floor.” Damn gravity! You don’t know how bad I wanted to sleep on the wall.
  • I bought a scratch off lottery ticket, but then I accidentally spilled calamine lotion on it, so it did not need to be scratched. Shoot! I will not know if I have won!
  • I would not want to be a mobile home repo man. Those would be hard to sneak away – “Knock knock – Hi, would you go cut your grass and look that way for a half an hour?”
  • My friend said to me, You know what I like? Mashed potatoes. I was like, Dude, you have to give me time to guess. If you’re going to quiz me you have to insert a pause.
  • Acid was my favorite drug. Acid opened up my mind, it expanded my mind. Because of acid, I now know that butter is way better than margarine. I saw through the bullshit.
  • I make myself a bowl of instant oatmeal, and then I don’t do anything for an hour. Why do I need the instant oatmeal? I could get the regular oatmeal and feel productive.
  • Look at the limes in this drink, how they float. That’s good news. Next time I’m on a boat, and it capsizes, I will reach for a lime. I’m saved by the buoyancy of citrus.
  • Chicago is known as the Windy City, and Montana is called the Big Sky State, so I think that we should somehow combine the two to create the ultimate kite-flying experience.
  • Magicians disappear all the time, but as soon as a regular person does it, everyone is all scared. “Tom’s gone!” “Is he a magician?” “No.” “Then let’s print up some flyers!”
  • They could take sesame seeds off the market and I wouldn’t even care. I can’t imagine 5 years from now saying, “Remember sesame seeds? What happened? All the buns are blank!”
  • I use the word totally too much. I need to change it up and use a word that is different but has the same meaning. Mitch do you like submarine sandwiches? All-encompassingly.
  • I wish my name was Brian because maybe sometimes people would misspell my name and call me Brain. That’s like a free compliment and you don’t even gotta be smart to notice it.
  • I used to buy a lot of M&Ms; they’re a delicious candy. But then I switched to aspirin. I find if you hand your friend two aspirin, he doesn’t look at you like you’re selfish.
  • I like vending machines, because snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at the store, oftentimes I will drop it so that is achieves its maximum flavor potential.
  • I had a stick of CareFree gum, but it didn’t work. I felt pretty good while I was blowing that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I was back to pondering my mortality.
  • I’ve never stayed at a bed and breakfast. If I did, I figure you would start to get hungry! “Is that all you got around here? Well, maybe you can direct me to a chair lunch dinner.”
  • I play the guitar. I taught myself how to play the guitar, which was a bad decision… because I didn’t know how to play it, so I was a shitty teacher. I would never have went to me.
  • An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.
  • I like the public hot-tub at the hotels. I like when a guy is already in there, I say, “Hey, do you mind if I join you?” Then I go turn the heat up, and I add some carrots and onions.
  • I wrote a script, and I gave it to a guy who reads scripts, and he read it, and he liked it, but he said he thinks I ought to re-write it. I said, “Fuck that – I’ll just make a copy!”
  • When it comes to racism, you hear people say, “I don’t care if people are white, black, purple or green.” Hold on, now, purple or green? Come on now, you gotta draw the line somewhere.
  • If I was a locksmith, I’d be pimping that out man. I’ll trade you a free key duplication for. That joke made me laugh before I could finish it, which is good, because it had no ending.
  • I don’t get the regular AIDS test anymore. I get the roundabout AIDS test. I ask my friend Brian, “Do you know anybody who has AIDS?”. He says, “No”. I say, “Cool, because you know me.”
  • I called the hotel operator and she said, “How can I direct your call?” I said, “Well, you could say ‘Action!’, and I’ll begin to dial. And when I say ‘Goodbye’, then you can yell ‘Cut!'”
  • I don’t know how to fix a car. If my car breaks down and the gas tank does not say “E”, I’m fucked… But if the gas tank says “E” I get all cocky. “I got this one, don’t worry about it.”
  • I like cottage cheese. That’s why I want to try other dwelling cheeses, too. How about studio apartment cheese? Tent cheese? Mobile home cheese? Do not eat mobile home cheese in a tornado.
  • I have a few cavities. I don’t like to call them cavities, though – I like to call them ‘places to put stuff’. ‘Do you know where I can store a pea’ ‘Yes, I have some locations available.’
  • I know people who believe in ghosts but don’t believe in themselves. It’s kind of sad. Okay you don’t think you’ll ever make it as a musician, but last night you saw a translucent caveman.
  • I travel with a boom box. When I get on a plane, I stuff the power cord for the boom box into the battery compartment. From an outsider’s point of view, it looks like I’ve got it all wrong.
  • Foosball screwed up my perception of soccer. I though you had to kick the ball and then spin around and around. I can’t do a back flip, much less several simultaneously with two other guys.
  • How does a sesame seed stick to a bun? That’s magical. There must be some sesame seed glue out there. Either that or they’re adhesive on one side. Peel off the backing, place it on the bun.
  • And then raised. And then beheaded. And then plucked. And then cut up. And then put on a grill. And then put on a bun. Damn, it’s gonna take a while. I don’t have time. Scrambled!
  • If you’re watching a parade, make sure you stand in one spot. Don’t follow it. It never changes. And if the parade is boring, run in the opposite direction. You will fast forward the parade.
  • If you boat a lot, you’re known as a boating enthusiast. I like to boat, but I just don’t want to ever be referred to as a ‘boating enthusiast’. I hope they call me ‘a guy who likes to boat’.
  • Alcoholism is a disease, but it’s the only one you can get yelled at for having. Goddamn it Otto, you are an alcoholic. Goddamn it Otto, you have Lupus… one of those two doesn’t sound right.
  • I don’t own a cell phone or a pager. I just hang around everyone I know, all the time. If someone wants to get a hold of me, they just say ‘Mitch,’ and I say ‘what?’ and turn my head slightly.
  • When you start out in comedy, or probably in a lot of things, you want it to happen fast. You don’t want to see yourself having to do this for seven years before you start to get some feedback.
  • I think we should only get 3 honks a month on the car horn. Then, someone cuts you off, you press the horn, and nothing happens. You’re like, “Crap! I wish I hadn’t seen Ricky on the sidewalk!”
  • I had a job interview at an insurance company once, and the lady said ‘Where do you see yourself in five years?’ I said, ‘Celebrating the fifth year anniversary of you asking me this question!’
  • This one commercial said, “Forget everything you know about slipcovers.” So I did, and it was a load off of my mind. Then the commercial tried to sell slipcovers, but I didn’t know what they were!
  • Imagine if you were a drummer, and you accidentally picked up two magic wands instead of sticks. There you are, keeping the beat, the next thing you know, your bass player turns into a can of soup.
  • I have some speakers up here, thank God, because last night I didn’t have them and I was telling jokes and I had no idea which joke I was telling. So I told jokes twice. I even told that one twice.
  • A friend said to me, “I think the weather is trippy.” I said, “No, man, it’s not the weather that’s trippy, perhaps it’s the way we perceive it.” And then I realized I just should have said, “Yeah.”
  • I went to the Home Depot, which was unnecessary. I need to go to the Apartment Depot. Which is just a big warehouse with a whole lot of people standing around saying “We don’t have to fix anything.”
  • Imagine if the headless horseman had a headless horse. That would be chaos. I would think that if you were the headless horseman’s horse, you would be very confused. “I don’t think this dude can see.”
  • You know crazy straws – they go all over the place? These straws are sane. They never lost their mind. They say, “we’re going straight to the mouth. That guy who takes a while to get there? He’s crazy.”
  • I like those blow-up beds. “This becomes a full size bed in three minutes!” Well, a mattress kicks your ass. Zero seconds. “Yeah, but you can store this thing.” You can store a bed, too – in the bedroom.
  • Advil has a candy coating. It’s delicious. Then it says on the bottle, do not have more than two. Then why do they have a candy coating? I cannot help myself. Let me have ten Advil, I have a sweet tooth.
  • I like cinnamon rolls, but I don’t always have time to make a pan. That’s why I wish they would sell cinnamon roll incense. After all I’d rather light a stick and have my roommate wake up with false hopes.
  • A lot of bands have intense names, like “Rigor Mortis” or “Mortuary”. We weren’t that intense, we called ourselves “Injured”. Later on we changed it to “Acapella” when we were walking out of the pawn shop.
  • I want to hang a map of the world in my house. Then I’m gonna put pins into all the locations I’ve traveled to, but first I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map, so it won’t fall down.
  • Onions make me sad, a lot of people don’t realize that. When I’m cutting onions, I’m sad. Because the plight of onions, it’s sad. But people don’t realize I’m actually crying – they think I’m just reacting.
  • I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I’m gonna put pins into all the locations that I’ve traveled to. But first, I’m gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won’t fall down.
  • Pepperidge Farm bread. That’s fancy bread. You can tell it’s fancy because it’s wrapped twice. You open it, and it still isn’t open. That’s why I don’t buy it. I don’t need another step between me and toast.
  • At my hotel room, my friend came over and asked to use the phone. I said Certainly. He said Do I need to dial 9 I say Yeah. Especially if it’s in the number. You can try four and five back to back real quick.
  • On a traffic light green means ‘go’ and yellow means ‘yield’, but on a banana it’s just the opposite. Green means ‘hold on,’ yellow means ‘go ahead,’ and red means, ‘where the hell did you get that banana at?’
  • I have a friend who is a juggler. If I’m at his house, I don’t like to take food from him, if it’s in threes. He has three apples left, I guess I can’t have one. I wouldn’t want to screw up his practice routine.
  • As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have to end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can’t be like pancakes. You’re all happy at first, but then by the end, you’re sick of ’em.
  • I was walking down the street with my friend and he said ‘I hear music,’ as though there’s any other way to take it in. ‘You’re not special. That’s how I receive it too… I tried to taste it, but it did not work’.
  • I went to a restaurant, and I saw a guy wearing a leather jacket, eating a hamburger, drinking a glass of milk. I said, “Dude, you are a cow. The metamorphosis is complete. Don’t fall asleep or I will tip you over!”
  • I like escalators, because an escalator can never break; it can only become stairs. There would never be an “Escalator Temporarily Out of Order” sign. Only an “Escalator Temporarily Stairs… Sorry for the Convenience.
  • I went to the park and saw this kid flying a kite. The kid was really excited. I don’t know why, that’s what they’re supposed to do. Now if he had had a chair on the other end of that string, I would have been impressed.
  • I hate sandwiches at New York delis. Too much meat on the sandwich. It’s like a cow with a cracker on either side. “Would you like anything else with the pastrami sandwich?” “Yeah, a loaf of bread and some other people!”
  • I don’t know how to fix a car. If the car breaks down, and the gas tank does not say “E”, I’m screwed. But if the gas tank says “E”, I get all cocky – “I’ve got this one, don’t worry.” So I get out the toolbox AKA wallet.
  • Sometimes I wake up and I think I should start wearing a beret, but I don’t do it. One day I’m gonna, though. You bet your ass, I will have a beret on. That’s ridiculous, but it’s true. I always fight with wearing a beret.
  • I want to be a race car passenger: just a guy who bugs the driver. Say man, can I turn on the radio? You should slow down. Why do we gotta keep going in circles? Can I put my feet out the window? Man, you really like Tide.
  • I like baked potatoes. I don’t have a microwave oven, and it takes forever to bake a potato in a conventional oven. Sometimes I’ll just throw one in there, even if I don’t want one, because by the time it’s done, who knows?
  • I’m a mumbler. If I’m walking with a friend, and I say something, he says, “What?” So I say it again, and he says, “What?” Really, it’s just some insignificant stuff I’m saying, but now I’m yelling, “That tree is far away!”
  • I think Pringles initial intention was to make tennis balls. But on the day that the rubber was supposed to show up, a big truckload of potatoes arrived. But Pringles is a laid back company. They said, “Screw it. Cut ’em up!”
  • I think Bigfoot is blurry, that’s the problem. It’s not the photographer’s fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that’s extra scary to me. There’s a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run, he’s fuzzy, get out of here.
  • I hate turkeys. If you stand in the meat section at the grocery store long enough, you start to get mad at turkeys. There’s turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Some one needs to tell the turkey, ‘man, just be yourself.’
  • Mitch’s Pizzaria… this week’s coupon: unlimited free pizza. Special Note: coupon not good at any of the Mitch’s Pizza locations. Free pizza oven with purchase of a small Coke. Two-for Tuesday: buy one pizza, get one franchise free.
  • I write jokes for a living, man. See I sit in my hotel at night, I think of something that’s funny and then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen’s too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain’t funny.
  • The next time I move I hope I get a real easy phone number, something like 2222222. People will ask, “Mitch, how do I get a hold of you?” I’ll say, “Just press two for a while, when I answer, you’ll know that you’ve pressed two enough.”
  • Every McDonald’s commercial ends the same way: Prices and participation may vary. I wanna open a McDonald’s and not participate in anything. I wanna be a stubborn McDonald’s owner. “Cheeseburgers?” “Nope! We got spaghetti, and blankets.”
  • I have a cheese-shredder at home, which is its positive name. They don’t call it by its negative name, which is sponge-ruiner. Because I wanted to clean it, but now I have little bits of sponge that would melt easily over tortilla chips.
  • There’s a guy in the audience with a distinctive laugh. I hope that guy is miked. The only problem with having a distinctive laugh is I know exactly when that guy isn’t laughing. “Oh, distinctive laugh doesn’t think that joke was funny!”
  • I like it when people come to see me again, but you end up playing to that person only. You know there’s other people out there, but you also know that the person who came to see you again is there. You’re like, “I hope he’s happy again.”
  • I like it when you buy something and pay with a credit card, they put your credit card on the receipt, but only the last four numbers. Aha! I’m really good at guessing twelve numbers. I can’t guess 16 numbers, so thanks for the assistance!
  • Xylophone is spelled with an X. That’s wrong. It should be a Z up front. Next time you spell xylophone, use a Z. If someone says, “That’s wrong!”, you say, “No, it ain’t.” If you think that’s wrong, then you need to have your head Z-rayed.
  • I hate dreaming. Because when you wanna sleep, you wanna sleep. Dreaming is work, you know? Like, there I am, laying in my comfortable bed in my hotel room. It’s beautiful. Next thing you know, I have to build a go-kart with my ex landlord.
  • I went to a pizzeria. The guy gave me the smallest slice possible. If the pizza was a pie chart with what would you do if you found a million dollars, he gave me the “Donate it to charity” slice. “I’d like to exchange this for the ‘Keep it!'”
  • My apartment is infested with koala bars. It’s the cutest infestation ever. Way better than cockroaches. When I turn on the light, a bunch of koala bears scatter. And I don’t want ’em to. I’m like, “Hey, hold on fellas. Let me hold one of you.”
  • You got to always take advantage of getting your room cleaned. You may think it’s nice not to have anybody in your room, like your privacy’s not being invaded. But there’s nothing like walking back into a clean room. You’ve got to remember that.
  • I don’t wear a watch because I want my arms to weigh the same. So if somebody asks me what time it is, I have to tell them something that is going on. “What time is it, Mitch?” “Uh, that guy is eating a hamburger.” “Shi*, I had to be somewhere…”
  • I got some tartar control toothpaste. I still have tartar, but that stuff’s under control. I got so much tartar, I don’t have to dip my fish sticks in anything. That’s actually kind of gross. After that joke, I have to clarify that I’m just joking.
  • I bought a house, it’s a two bedroom house, but I think it’s up to me to decide how many bedrooms there are. This bedroom has an oven in it. This bedroom has a lot of people sitting around watching TV. This bedroom is over in that other guy’s house.
  • My girlfriend is named Lynn. She spells her name “Lynn”. My old girlfriend’s name is Lyn, too, but she spells it “Lyn”. Every now and then I screw up, I call my new girlfriend by my old girlfriend’s name, and she can tell because I don’t say “n” as long.
  • Swiss cheese is the only cheese you can draw and people can identify. You can draw American cheese, but someone will think it’s cheddar. It’s the only cheese you can bite and miss. “Hey Mitch – does that sandwich have cheese on it?” “Every now and then!”
  • I get the Reese’s candy bar. You look at that, there’s an apostrophe-s there. That means the candy bar is his. I didn’t know that. Next time you’re eating a Reese’s candy bar, and a guy named Reese comes by and says, “Gimme that”, you better hand it over.
  • I like Kinko’s, because they’re open 24 hours. If it’s 5 am and I decide I need two of something, I’m covered! Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, and then I think, “Oh, yeah. Kinko’s. No problem. That will not remain singular.”
  • I`ve not really been angling to be a comedian. I knew comics and I loved them and I loved being funny, but I didn’t understand the whole concept of becoming one. My first couple of times on stage, I was like, “This is what I’m doing for sure.” I was so excited.
  • I was at this casino minding my own business, and this guy came up to me and said, ‘You’re gonna have to move, you’re blocking a fire exit.’ As though if there was a fire, I wasn’t gonna run. If you’re flammible and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit.
  • One time a guy handed me a picture. He said, ‘Here’s a picture of me when I was younger.’ Every picture is of you when you were younger. ‘Here’s a picture of me when I’m older.’ ‘You son of bit, how’d you pull that off Let me see that camera. What’s it look like’
  • I saw soda pop for $1.20 a six pack. That price messes with your head. You start thinking you’re gonna sell soda pop. Suddenly I’ve got packs of pop with me. “Looking to buy some pop? 50 cents a can. It’s not refrigerated because this is a half-assed commitment!”
  • You know when you see an advertisement for a casino, and they have a picture of a guy winning money? That’s false advertising, because that happens the least. That’s like if you’re advertising a hamburger, they could show a guy choking. “This is what happened once.”
  • I mumble a lot when im off stage, so a lot of times when im with a friend i’ll say something and he’ll be like what, and i’ll say it again and he’ll be like what, and i’ll say it again and he’ll still be like what, so now he’s got me yellin. Man that tree is far away
  • When I get a cold sore, I put Carmex on it, because Carmex is supposed to alleviate cold sores. I don’t know if it does help, but it will make them more shiny and noticeable. It’s like cold-sore-highlighter. Maybe they could come up with an arrow that heals cold sores.
  • I don’t think stand-up is being appreciated as much as it could be and I don’t think it has for a long time. There’s some great stand-up comics who come to a town and if they’re not a name, they don’t attract a crowd but in reality there are brilliant people out there.
  • A dog came to my door, so I gave him a bone, the dog took the bone into the back yard and buried it. I’m going to go plant a tree there, with bones on it, then the dog will come back and say, “Shoot! It worked! I must distribute these bones equally for I have a green paw!”
  • Every time I walk by a spy shop, I think that I need to put some surveillance on somebody. Rick’s been acting fishy! I need to buy a safe that looks like a Spray ‘N Wash can. “Hey, Mitch, can I use the Spray ‘N Wash?” “Yeah, if you want to spray your shirt with documents!”
  • My apartment is infested with koala bears. It’s the cutest infestation ever. Way better than cockroaches. When I turn on the light a bunch of koala bears scatter. But I don’t want ’em to, you know, I’m like “Hey, hold on, fellas. Let me hold one of you. And feed you a leaf.”
  • People think I’m into sports because I’m a man. But I’m not into sports. I like Gatorade, but that’s about as far as it goes. By the way, you don’t have to be sweaty and play basketball to enjoy Gatorade. You can just be a thirsty dude. Gatorade forgets about this demographic!
  • I thought I’d go to a craft fair, and there would be a jar of jellybeans there – “Guess how many jellybeans are in this jar, and win a prize”. Aw, come on, man, let just me have some. I’ll tell you what, guess how many jellybeans I want! If you guessed a handful, you are right.
  • I had a bag of Fritos, they were Texas grilled Fritos. These Fritos had grill marks on them. They remind me of summer, when we used to fire up the barbeque and throw down some Fritos. I can still see my dad with the apron on. Better flip that Frito, dad, you know how I like it.
  • If you don’t know a light bulb is a three-way light bulb, it messes with your head. You reach to turn it off, and it just gets brighter! That’s the exact opposite of what I wanted you to do! So you turn the switch again, and it gets brighter once more! I will break you, light bulb!
  • A friend gave me a drug for attention deficit disorder, because he’s afflicted, but I’m not. So what happened to me is I suddenly had an extra-long attention span. People would tell me a story, and it would end, and I’d get all mad. “Come on, man, there has to be more to that story.”
  • I like when they say a movie is inspired by a true story. That’s kind of silly. “Hey, Mitch, did you hear that story about that lady who drove her car into the lake with her kids and they all drowned?” “Yeah, I did, and you know what – that inspires me to write a movie about a gorilla!”
  • There was a product on late night TV that you could attach to your garden hose – “You can water your hard-to-reach plants with this.” Who would make their plants hard to reach? That seems so very mean. I know you need water, but I’m going to make you hard to reach. “Think like a cactus!”
  • As an adult, I’m not supposed to go down slides. So if I’m at the top of a slide, I have to pretend that I got there accidentally. “How the hell did I get up here? I guess I have to slide down. Whee!” That’s what you say when you’re having fun. You refer to yourself and some other people.
  • When you’re in Hollywood and you’re a comedian, everybody wants you to do other things. All right, you’re a stand-up comedian, can you write us a script? That’s not fair. That’s like if I worked hard to become a cook, and I’m a really good cook, they’d say, “OK, you’re a cook. Can you farm?”
  • I never joined the army because at ease was never that easy to me. Seemed rather uptight still. I don’t relax by parting my legs slightly and putting my hands behind my back. That does not equal ease. At ease was not being in the military. I am at ease, bro, because I am not in the military.
  • I made $3,000 opening for the Neville Brothers, and they paid me in cash. That was a bad situation, because I bought ridiculous stuff. I bought a snake bite emergency kit. Then I said to my friends, “Don’t even worry about snakes anymore”. My friend stepped on a worm, and I said, “Lay down!”
  • Earlier I`ve done hatever I could get my hands on to do for a living. I tried a couple of different things, but kitchen work was the best for me, because I took to a nomadic lifestyle before I started doing comedy. If you travel and get to a town and need a job, restaurants are always there.
  • I like it when you reach into a vending machine to grab your candy bar, and that flap goes up to block you from reaching up? That’s a good invention. Before that, it was hard times for the vending machine owners. “Yeah, what candy bar are you getting?” “That one, and every one on the bottom row!”
  • I had a box of Ritz crackers, and on the back of the box, they had all these suggestions for what to put on top of the Ritz. Try it with cheese. Try it with peanut butter. Come on, man, they’re crackers, that’s why I got them. I like crackers! I didn’t buy them because they’re little edible plates!
  • When you’re doing a show on stage, and they show you a red light, that means you have 5 minutes left. At some clubs, they hold a candle up in the back. That’s the worst method. You’re up here, and then you see a floating candle. “Oh, no! This place is haunted!” I can’t be funny when I’m frightened.
  • When we were on acid, we would go into the woods, because there was less chance that you would run into an authority figure. But we ran into a bear. My friend Duane was there, raising his right hand, swearing to help prevent forest fires. He told me, “Mitchell, Smokey is way more intense in person!”
  • I have found when I look at an audience that the expressions on the peoples’ faces aren’t always up to par with the sounds that they’re making. A crowd can sound like they’re having a good time when your eyes are closed but if you open your eyes, the looks on some of those faces don’t equal the sound.
  • You know they call corn-on-the-cob, “corn-on-the-cob”, but that’s how it comes out of the ground. They should just call it corn, and every other type of corn, corn-off-the-cob. It’s not like if someone cut off my arm they would call it “Mitch”, but then re-attached it, and call it “Mitch-all-together”.
  • That would be cool if you could eat a good food with a bad food and the good food would cover for the bad food when it got to your stomach. Like you could eat a carrot with an onion ring and they would travel down to your stomach, then they would get there, and the carrot would say, It’s cool, he’s with me.
  • I walked by a dry cleaner at 3 am, and there was a sign: “Sorry, we’re closed” You don’t have to be sorry, it’s 3 am, and you’re a dry cleaner! It would be ridiculous for me to expect you to be open! I’m not gonna walk in at 10 am and say “I walked by here at 3 and you were closed – somebody owes me an apology!”
  • You know when a company wants to use letters in their phone number, but often they’ll use too many letters? “Call 1-800-I-Really-Enjoy-Brand-New-Carpeting.” Too many letters, man, must I dial them all? “Hello? Hold on, man, I’m only on ‘Enjoy.’ How did you know I was calling? You’re good, I can see why they hired you!”
  • A minibar is a machine that makes everything expensive. When I take something out of the minibar, I always fathom that I’ll go and replace it before they check it off, but they make that stuff impossible to replace. I go to the store and ask, ‘Do you have coke in a glass harmonica …Do you have individually wrapped cashews’
  • I went to a heavy metal concert. The singer yelled out, “How many of you people feel like human beings tonight?” And then he said, “How many of you feel like animals?” The thing is, everyone cheered after the animals part, but I cheered after the human beings part because I did not know there was a second part to the question.
  • I think a rotisserie is like a really morbid ferris wheel for chickens. It’s a strange piece of machinery . . . We will take the chicken, kill it, impale it, and then rotate it. And I’ll be damned if I’m not hungry! Because spinning chicken carcasses make my mouth water! I like dizzy chicken. With a side of potatoes of some sort.
  • I have an oscillating fan at my house. It goes back and forth. It looks like the fan is saying “no.” So I like to ask it questions that a fan would say “no” to! Do you keep my hair in place? Do you keep my documents in order? Do you have 3 settings? LIAR! My fan lied to me. Now I will pull the pin up. Now you’re not saying ANYTHING!
  • I wrote a letter to my Dad – I wrote, “I really enjoy being here,” but I accidentally wrote rarely instead of really. But I still wanted to use it, so I wrote, “I rarely drive steamboats, Dad – there’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about me. Quit trying to act like I’m a steamboat operator.” This letter took a harsh turn right away.
  • I like when they say that a movie was “inspired by a true story” because that’s weird. It means the movie is not true, it was just inspired by a true story. “Hey Mitch, did you hear that story about that lady who drove her children into the river and they all drown?” “Yes I did. And that inspired me to write a movie about a gorilla.
  • Some comics get drunk before a show. I don’t. When I get drunk, I don’t want to stand in front of a bunch of people that I don’t know. That does not sound comfortable. Why have all these people gathered? And why am I elevated and not facing the same way as everyone else? And what is this electric stick in my hand? I want a chair too!
  • Has anyone seen me on Letterman? Two million people watch that show and I don’t know where they are. You might have seen this next comedian on the Late Show, but I think more people have seen me at the store. That should be my introduction. “You might have seen this next comedian at the store,” and people would say “Hell yes I have!”
  • I saw a commercial for an above-ground pool, it was 30 seconds long. Because that’s the maximum amount of time you can picture yourself having fun in an above-ground pool. If it was 31 seconds, the actor would say “The water is only up to here? What do I do now? Throw the ball back to Jimmy? Or put some goggles on and look at his feet?”
  • I was at a restaurant, and I ordered a chicken sandwich, but I don’t think the waitress understood me. She asked me, “How would you like your eggs?” I thought I would answer her anyway and said, “Incubated! And then raised, plucked, beheaded, cut up, put onto a grill, and then put onto a bun. Damn! I don’t have that much time! Scrambled!”
  • I opened-up a yogurt, underneath the lid it said, “Please try again.” because they were having a contest that I was unaware of. I thought maybe I opened the yogurt wrong. …Or maybe Yoplait was trying to inspire me… “Come on Mitchell, don’t give up!” An inspirational message from your friends at Yoplait, fruit on the bottom, hope on top.
  • My sister Wendy has a husband and two children, and they have a family photo on top of the VCR, where they’re all looking slightly to the left. As though something is going on over there! I guess something happened over to the left that made everybody happy! Except my sister is cross-eyed, so she can’t quite pull it off. One eye is right-on.
  • That’s always disappointed me, to see a guy in the crowd who doesn’t look like he’s having fun but in general if you just listen to the crowd it sounds like they’re having fun. So I don’t want to focus on the one guy who’s not having fun. And by closing my eyes and just listening, I can’t hear that he’s not laughing but I can see that he’s not laughing.
  • I had an apartment and I had a neighbor, and whenever he would knock on my wall I knew he wanted me to turn my music down and that made me angry ’cause I like loud music… so when he knocked on the wall, I’d mess with his head. I’d say Go around I cannot open the wall I dunno if you have a door on your side but over here there’s nothin’. It’s just flat.
  • I guess the one-liner kind of comic sounds like a guy who can talk and talk and whatever the subject is, he can pull out a one-liner, but I couldn’t do that. I didn’t like the association. I mean, I love Steven Wright, but so many people started saying “Steven Wright” to me, and I would get mad, because I never wanted to be thought of as copying anybody.
  • I hate turkeys. If you go to the grocery store, you start to get mad at turkeys. You see turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Somebody just needs to tell the turkeys, “Man, just be yourselves!” I already like you, little fella. I used to draw you. If you had a couple of fingers missing, you would draw a really messed-up turkey. That turkey was in an accident!
  • I saw a lady on TV, she was born without arms. That’s sad, but then they said, “Lola does not know the meaning of the word ‘can’t’.” That, to me, is even worse in a way. Not only is she missing arms, but she doesn’t understand simple contractions. It’s easy, Lola – you just take two words, put them together, take out the middle letters, put in a comma, and you raise it up!
  • I was at a bar, and this guy bumped into me, and he did not apologize, and he said, “Move!” I thought that was rude, so I said, “Go to hell!” Then I started to run. He caught up to me. He had a mustache, a goatee, a pair of earrings, sunglasses, a ponytail and he was wearing a hat. He said, “Hey, you got a lot of nerve!” I said, “Hey, you got a lot of… cranium accessories!”
  • I’m always on the road, and I drive rental cars. Sometimes I don’t know what’s going on with the car, and I’ll drive for ten miles with the emergency brake on. That doesn’t say a lot for me, but it doesn’t say a lot for the emergency brake. What kind of emergency is this? I need to not stop now. It’s not really an emergency brake, it’s an emergency make-the-car-smell-funny lever.
  • This product that was on TV was available for four easy payments of $19.95. I would like a product that was available for three easy payments and one complicated payment. We can’t tell you which payment it is, but one of these payments is going to be hard. The mailman will get shot, the envelope will not seal, the stamp will be in the wrong denomination. The final payment must be made in wampum.
  • Stand-up is an art but since it’s humor and it’s funny – a lot of guys that don’t think it’s art are probably coming from the angle that they don’t want to take it so seriously. I’ve always looked at it as an art but I don’t look at it as a pretentious art. I understand it has to be taken lightly because it is just comedy in the end, but the good stand-up comics are someone with something to say.
  • I ordered a club sandwich, but I’m not even a member. “I like my sandwiches with three pieces of bread.” “Well, so do I!” “Then let’s form a club.” “OK, but we need some more stipulations. Instead of cutting the sandwich once, let’s cut it again. Yes, four triangles, arranged in a circle, and in the middle we will dump chips.” “How do you feel about frilly toothpicks?” “I’m for ’em!” “Well, this club is formed.”
  • I don’t need a receipt for a doughnut. I’ll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut. End of transaction! We don’t need to bring ink and paper into this! I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d have to prove that I bought a doughnut. Some skeptical friend…’Don’t even act like I didn’t buy that doughnut! I’ve got the documentation right here! Oh, wait, it’s back home, in the file. Under d…for doughnut.’
  • Say, I was on The Craig Kilbourne Show and the next day I flew to Minneapolis. I was at the airport and a guy came up. He said, ‘Dude, I saw you on TV last night.’ But he did not say whether or not he thought I was good, he just confirmed that I was on television. So I turned my head away from him for about a minute, then I turned it back. I said, ‘Dude, I saw you at the airport about a minute ago. And you were good.’
  • People associate long hair with drug use. I wish people associated long hair with something other than drug use, like an extreme longing for cake. And then strangers would see a long haired guy and say, “That guy eats cake!” “He is on bundt cake!” Mothers saying to their daughters, “Don’t bring the cake eater over here anymore. He smells like flour. Did you see how excited he got when he found out your birthday was fast approaching?”
  • I find that a duck’s opinion of me is influenced by whether or not I have bread. A duck loves bread, but he does not have the capability to buy a loaf. That’s the biggest joke on the duck ever. If I worked at a convenience store, and a duck came in and stole a loaf of bread, I would let him go. I’d say, “Come back tomorrow, bring your friends!” When I think of a duck’s friends, I think of other ducks. But he could have, say, a beaver in tow.
  • I was on a bus once, it was in the middle of the night, and I had a box of crackers and a can of Easy Cheese. It was dark, and it was a surprise how much cheese I had applied on each cracker. That’s why they should have a glow-in-the-dark version of Easy Cheese. It’s not like the product has any integrity to begin with. If you buy a room-temperature cheese that you squeeze out of a can, you probably won’t get mad because it glows in the dark too.
  • You know when you go into a restaurant, and it gets busy and they start a waiting list, and they start calling out names, “DuFresnes, party of two.” They say again, “DuFresnes, party of two.” But then if no one answers, they’ll just go to the next name, “Bush, party of three.” Yeah, but what happened to the DuFresnes? No one seems to care. Who can eat at a time like this? People are missing! And they’re hungry! That’s a double whammy! “Bush, search party of three!” You can eat once you find the DuFresnes!
  • I went to England to tell jokes, and I wanted to tell my Smokey the Bear joke, but I had to ask the English people if they knew who Smokey the Bear is. But they don’t. In England, Smokey the Bear is not the forest-fire-prevention representative. They have Smackie the Frog. It’s a lot like a bear, but it’s a frog. And that’s a better system, I think we should adopt it. Because bears can be mean, but frogs are always cool. Never has there been a frog hopping toward me and I thought, “Man, I better play dead!”
  • Once I saw a duck walking down the street so I went into Subway and ordered two pieces of bread, and they informed me that they could not do that, like there was some speical rule at Subway that two pieces of bread weren’t allowed to touch. So the woman asked me what I wanted on the sandwich and I said I do not care, it is for a duck, and she was like oh then it’s free. I was not aware that ducks eat for free at Subway. It’s like give me a chicken fajita sub, but don’t worry about ringing it up, it is for a duck.
  • You know when you go to a restaurant on the weekends, it’s busy, so they start a waiting list? They start calling out names, they say “Dufrane, party of two. Table ready for Dufrane, party of two.” And if no one answers, they’ll say their name again. “Dufrane, party of two.” But then if no one answers they’ll just go right on to the next name. “Bush, party of three.” Yeah, but what happened to the Dufranes? No one seems to care. Who can eat at a time like this? People are missing. You people are selfish. The Dufranes are in someone’s trunk right now, with duct tape over their mouths. And they’re hungry – that’s a double whammy. We need help. “Bush, SEARCH party of three! You can eat once you find the Dufranes.”

 

Mae West (quotes)

/in , , /by
  • Sex is emotion in motion.
  • A man’s kiss is his signature.
  • I’m a good woman for a bad man.
  • Flattery will get you everywhere.
  • I’ve been things and seen places.
  • I like a man what takes his time.
  • He who hesitates is a damned fool.
  • Never ask a man where he has been.
  • It takes two to get one in trouble.
  • I’d like to see Paris before I die.
  • To err is human, but it feels divine.
  • I’ve been in more laps than a napkin.
  • I’ve been things and I’ve seen places.
  • Brains are an asset, if you hide them.
  • … love is banality to all outsiders.
  • Men are not realists – only women are.
  • Well behaved women do not make history.
  • I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
  • The best way to behave is to misbehave.
  • I’m single because I was born that way.
  • You are never too old to become younger!
  • Look your best – who said love is blind?
  • I speak two languages, Body and English.
  • Men are my life, diamonds are my career.
  • Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.
  • The curve is more powerful than the sword.
  • One more drink and I’ll be under the host.
  • It’s not what you say, but how you say it!
  • Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.
  • The best way to hold a man is in your arms.
  • Some of the wildest men make the best pets.
  • I like restraint, if it doesn’t go too far.
  • I don’t like myself, I’m crazy about myself.
  • The score never interested me, only the game.
  • I’m no angel, but I’ve spread my wings a bit.
  • When women go wrong, men go right after them.
  • A man in the house is worth two in the street.
  • The finest woman that ever walked the streets.
  • It is better to be looked over than overlooked.
  • It’s hard to be funny when you have to be clean.
  • I didn’t discover curves; I only uncovered them.
  • I started out as Snow White, but then I drifted.
  • I’ve always had a weakness for foreign affairs.
  • Curve: The loveliest distance between two points.
  • Love is what you make it and who you make it with.
  • I’m a woman of very few words, but lots of action.
  • Love isn’t an emotion or an instinct – it’s an art.
  • An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises.
  • I only like two kinds of men, domestic and imported.
  • I only have ‘yes’ men around me. Who needs ‘no’ men?
  • I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.
  • It’s easy to get married, but hard to stay that way.
  • I never loved another person the way I loved myself.
  • Give a man a free hand and he’ll run it all over you.
  • I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it.
  • Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache.
  • Don’t ever make the same mistake twice unless it pays.
  • I made myself platinum, but I was born a dirty blonde.
  • I always say, keep a diary and someday it’ll keep you.
  • I believe in the single standard — for men and women.
  • Diamonds talk, and I can stand listenin’ to ’em often.
  • I have never loved a man as much as I have loved myself
  • He’s the kind of man who picks his friends – to pieces.
  • When you get the personality, you don’t need the nudity.
  • I know so much about men because I went to night school.
  • The bite of existence did not cut into one in Hollywood.
  • If you put your foot in it, be sure it’s your best foot.
  • A dame that knows the ropes isn’t likely to get tied up.
  • Virtue has its own reward, but no sale at the box office.
  • Good theater is not what is expected, but what surprises.
  • When I’m good, I’m very good. But when I’m bad I’m better.
  • His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.
  • Give a man free hands, and you’ll know where to find them.
  • Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.
  • Let’s get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini.
  • Just a little sheep dip. Panacea for all stomach ailments.
  • A girl in the convertible is worth five in the phone book.
  • You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
  • It’s not what you can do, but the way you do it that counts.
  • Why don’t you come up and have a little … scotch and sofa?
  • Don’t let a man put anything over on you except an umbrella.
  • Dating means two things; disillusionment or a racing heart.
  • Kiss and make up-but too much makeup has ruined many a kiss.
  • Some women pick men to marry–and others pick them to pieces.
  • Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
  • Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
  • There are no good girls gone wrong – just bad girls found out.
  • Men are all alike – except the one you’ve met who’s different.
  • A man in love is like a clipped coupon – it’s time to cash in.
  • I consider sex a misdemeanor, the more I miss, de meaner I get.
  • It’s hard to find a good man, but it’s good to find a hard one.
  • Men are my hobby, if I ever got married I’d have to give it up.
  • He’s the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of.
  • I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it.
  • It’s not the men in my life that count, it’s the life in my men.
  • A good man is hard to find — but you’ll mostly find him asleep.
  • I never set out to make men a career; it just happened that way.
  • Personality is the most important thing to an actress’s success.
  • I’m the girl that works at Paramount all day, and Fox all night.
  • Never mind about the six feet. Let’s talk about the seven inches.
  • Love is the only industry which can’t operate on a five-day week.
  • I’m no model lady. A model’s just an imitation of the real thing.
  • Women like a man with a past, but they prefer a man with a present
  • Sometimes I don’t drink so the next day I can remember having fun.
  • Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can’t figure out what from.
  • The best way to learn to be a lady is to see how other ladies do it.
  • I’ll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.
  • Ten men waiting for me at the door? Send one of them home, I’m tired.
  • March isn’t the only thing that’s in like a lion and out like a lamb.
  • Don’t marry a man to reform him – that’s what reform schools are for.
  • You can do what you want, but saving love doesn’t bring any interest.
  • Life’s just a merry-go-round. Come on up. You might get a brass ring.
  • Hollywood was like a mouse being followed by a cat called television.
  • Marriage is a great institution, but I’m not ready for an institution.
  • Ladies who play with fire must remember that smoke gets in their eyes.
  • No one can have everything, so you have to try for what you want most.
  • Opportunity knocks for every man, but you have to give a woman a ring.
  • I go for two kinds of men. The kind with muscles, and the kind without.
  • Poor Mary Ann! She gave the guy an inch and now he thinks he’s a ruler.
  • Save a boyfriend for a rainy day – and another, in case it doesn’t rain.
  • Cultivate your curves – they may be dangerous but they won’t be avoided.
  • She’s the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong.
  • Brains are an asset to the woman in love who’s smart enough to hide ’em.
  • Any time you got nothing to do – and lots of time to do it – come on up.
  • Marriage is like a book. The whole story takes place between the covers.
  • We’re intellectual opposites. Well, I’m intellectual and you’re opposite.
  • Goodness, what beautiful diamonds!’ ‘Goodness had nothing to do with it’.
  • A woman in love can’t be reasonable – or she probably wouldn’t be in love.
  • Don’t cry for a man who’s left you–the next one may fall for your smile.
  • Don’t come crawlin’ to a man for love-he likes to get a run for his money.
  • Women with pasts interest men because they hope history will repeat itself.
  • Women are as old as they feel and men are old when they lose their feelings.
  • If I asked for a cup of coffee, someone would search for the double meaning.
  • Let men see what’s coming to them, and women will get what’s coming to them.
  • Women are like roads. The more curves they have, the more dangerous they are.
  • All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else.
  • I enjoyed the courtroom as just another stage but not so amusing as Broadway.
  • I see you’re a man with ideals. I better be going before you’ve still got them.
  • It’s all right for a perfect stranger to kiss your hand as long as he’s perfect.
  • Getting married is like trading in the adoration of many for the sarcasm of one.
  • A real farmer. He spent his childhood in the wheat, and his marriage in the hay.
  • In my long and colorful career, one thing stands out: I have been misunderstood.
  • Don’t keep a man guessing too long – he’s sure to find the answer somewhere else.
  • If a little is great, and a lot is better, then way too much is just about right!
  • Words should be used as tools of communication and not as a substitute for action
  • No gold-digging for me; I take diamonds! We may be off the gold standard someday.
  • You can say what you like about long dresses, but they cover a multitude of shins.
  • I have found men who didn’t know how to kiss. I’ve always found time to teach them.
  • I only read biographies, metaphysics and psychology. I can dream up my own fiction.
  • Men are like linoleum floors. Lay ’em right and you can walk all over them for years.
  • A man has one hundred dollars and you leave him with two dollars, that’s subtraction.
  • A man can be short and dumpy and getting bald but if he has fire, women will like him.
  • I have always felt a gift diamond shines so much better than one you buy for yourself.
  • A man has more character in his face at forty than at twenty – he has suffered longer.
  • Too many girls follow the line of least resistance, but a good line is hard to resist.
  • I don’t know a lot about politics, but I can recognise a good party man when I see one.
  • I like my clothes tight enough to show I’m a woman, but loose enough to show I’m a lady.
  • I’ve always taken men just as I found ’em, and thank heavens I’ve been able to find ’em.
  • Hiring someone to write your autobiography is like hiring someone to take a bath for you
  • Don’t forget honey. Never let one man worry your mind. Find ’em, fool ’em and forget ’em.
  • All the raves were just words. You don’t want to let words confuse you. Words come cheap.
  • I like a man who’s good, but not too good – for the good die young, and I hate a dead one.
  • It ain’t no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don’t break any.
  • Ya know it was a toss-up whether I go in for diamonds or sing in the choir. The choir lost.
  • I wrote the story myself. It’s all about a girl who lost her reputation but never missed it.
  • Sex with love is the greatest thing in life. But sex without love–that’s not so bad either.
  • When it comes to finances, remember that there are no withholding taxes on the wages of sin.
  • Always remember honey. A good motto is: Take all you can get and give as little as possible.
  • When you think about it, what other playwrights are there besides O’Neill, Tennessee and me?
  • You gotta get up early in the morning to catch a fox and stay up late at night to get a mink.
  • Men would wither and custom stale them, but diamonds! Ah, they were crystallized immortality!
  • I meet a man with a thousand dollars and leave him with two; that’s the meaning of subtraction.
  • Imagine censors that wouldn’t let you sit in a man’s lap. I’ve been in more laps than a napkin!
  • One and one is two, and two and two is four, and five will get you ten if you know how to work it.
  • Women want certain things in marriage–the right to a title and a front seat in the lap of luxury.
  • I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number of carats in a diamond.
  • Your real security is yourself. You know you can do it, and they can’t ever take that away from you.
  • The censors wouldn’t even let me sit on a guy’s lap, and I’ve been on more laps than a table-napkin.
  • Girls, give all your gentlemen friends an even break, even if you have to break them in the attempt.
  • For a long time I was ashamed of the way I lived. Did I reform, you ask? No. I’m not ashamed anymore.
  • Love is like a booger, you pick and pick at it. Then when you get it you wonder how to get rid of it.
  • You may admire a girl’s curves on the first introduction, but the second meeting shows up new angles.
  • How tall are you big boy? Six foot nine inches! Let’s go up to my place and talk about the nine inches!
  • Love thy neighbor – and if he happens to be tall, debonair and devastating, it will be that much easier.
  • I’ve been in ‘Who’s Who’ and I know what’s what, but it’ll be the first time I ever made the dictionary.
  • I always did like a man in uniform. And that one fits you grand. Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?
  • Reason was nowhere, time was an immovable object nailed high on the wall, except where the world kept shop.
  • Well, the end of another busy day. I can’t wait till I get back to bed. If that don’t work I’ll try to sleep.
  • Sometimes it seems to me I’ve known so many men that the FBI ought to come to me first to compare fingerprints.
  • Everything’s in the mind. That’s where it all starts. Knowing what you want is the first step toward getting it.
  • Marriage? I ain’t got time for a husband or child. All my life I’ve looked after myself as if I was my own child.
  • Everyone has the right to run his own life- even if you’re heading for a crash. What I’m against is blind flying.
  • It isn’t what I do, but how I do it. It isn’t what I say, but how I say it, and how I look when I do it and say it.
  • Money is of value for what it buys, and in love it buys time, place, intimacy, comfort, and a private corner alone.
  • Good women are no fun… The only good woman I can recall in history was Betsy Ross. And all she ever made was a flag.
  • I’ve no time for broads who want to rule the world alone. Without men, who’d do up the zipper on the back of your dress?
  • Why don’t you come up sometime ‘n see me? I’m home every evening. . . . Come up. I’ll tell your fortune. . . . Ah, you can be had.
  • Dress gives one the outward sign from which people in general can, and often do, judge upon the inward state of mind and feelings.
  • all pleasures should be taken in great leisure and are worth going into in detail; love is not like eating a quick lunch with one’s hat on.
  • what’s life good fer anyhow? The minute you crawl into the world for no good reason of yer own, it’s got you licked four ways from the ace.
  • Dates in Calendar are Closer Than They Appear! Time is what keeps everything from happening at once. Keep a diary, and someday it’ll keep you.
  • Positive thoughts generate positive feelings and attract positive life experiences. You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
  • Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is.
  • I believe that one day the world will judge the witch hunt against homosexuals just as harshly as it judges the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust.
  • The bite of existence did not cut into one in Hollywood … Life elsewhere was real and slippery and struggled in the arms like a big fish dying in air.
  • [On the metaphysical:] … I knew in some marvelous way I had touched the hem of the unknown. And being me, I wanted to lift that hemline a little bit more.
  • I never needed Panavision and stereophonic sound to woo the world. I did it in black and white on a screen the size of a postage stamp. Honey, that’s talent.
  • I freely chose the kind of life I led because I was convinced that a woman has as much right as a man to live the way she does if she does no actual harm to society.
  • You may think you’re in love when the passions of sex get hold of you, but if you didn’t love the man before, you won’t love him after. Like him, maybe, but not love him.
  • Never ask a man where’s he’s been. If he’s out on legitimate business, he doesn’t need an alibi. And, girls, if he has been out on illegitimate business, it’s your own fault.
  • I have never been able to sleep with anyone. I require a full-size bed so that I can lie in the middle of it and extend my arms spreadeagle on both sides without being obstructed.
  • Dennis Thatcher, husband of Margaret Thatcher, when asked who wore the pants in his house, said “I do, and I also wash and iron them.” I only like two kinds of men; domestic and foreign.
  • Right now I think censorship is necessary; the things they’re doing and saying in films right now just shouldn’t be allowed. There’s no dignity anymore and I think that’s very important.
  • My advice to those who think they have to take off their clothes to be a star is, once you’re boned, what’s left to create the illusion? Let em wonder. I never believed in giving them too much of me.
  • Tira begins to sing “I’m No Angel” to him as the screen fades: Baby, I can warm you with this love of mine. I’m No Angel. Aw, let me feel my fingers running through your hair, I can give you kisses. . . .
  • Is that a pistol in your pocket or are you just glad to see me? (She made this remark in February 1936, at the railway station in Los Angeles upon her return from Chicago, when a Los Angeles police officer was assigned to escort her home)
  • Men? Sure, I’ve known lots of them. But I never found one I liked well enough to marry. Besides, I’ve always been busy with my work. Marriage is a career in itself and to make a success of it you’ve got to keep working at it. So until I can give the.
  • I saw what a mess a lot of people could make of their lives when they’re smitten. Some of them go temporarily insane. They find a person who they think holds the key to their happiness-the only key to their happiness… My work has always been my greatest happiness
  • More people saw me than saw Napoleon, Lincoln and Cleopatra. I was better known than Einstein and Picasso. … I changed the fashion of two continents. The style of the Gay Nineties became the rage … women were trying to walk and talk like me. Women became more sex-conscious – sex was out in the open and fun.
  • Too many Broadway actors in motion pictures lost their grip on success–had a feeling that none of it had ever happened on that sun-drenched coast, that the coast itself did not exist, there was no California. It had dropped away like a hasty dream and nothing could ever have been like the things they thought they remembered.
  • Tira: Whatever you’re thinkin’ you’re wrong. I only like him like a brother. You ain’t got nothin’ to worry about. . . . Say listen you. A better dame than you once called me a liar and they had to sew her up in twelve different places. You’re lucky I’m a little more refined than I used to be. And if you was as much a lady as I am, you’d get out of here before I get real sore. Alicia: You haven’t a streak of decency in you. Tira: I don’t show my good points to strangers. I’ll trouble you to scram.

 

 

Douglas Adams (quotes)

/in , /by
  • Space is unimaginably big.
  • And so the Universe ended.
  • Conceited little mega-puppy.
  • Life is wasted on the living.
  • Who is this god person anyway?
  • Anything that happens, happens.
  • Space is really big-REALLY big.
  • Reality is hopelessly inaccurate.
  • Life! Don’t talk to me about life!
  • How many roads must a man walk down?
  • So long, and thanks for all the fish.
  • One is never alone with a rubber duck.
  • Ha, but my life is a box of wormgears.
  • A cup of tea would restore my normality.
  • Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
  • I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.
  • I come in peace…Take me to your lizard.
  • I think the idea of art kills creativity.
  • You live and learn. At any rate, you live.
  • I’d far rather be happy than right any day.
  • In an infinite Universe anything can happen.
  • He turned slowly like a fridge door opening.
  • .. you’re turning into a penguin. Stop it.
  • I don’t go to mythical places with strange men.
  • Assumptions are what we don’t know we are making
  • The future of computer power is pure simplicity.
  • What is this? Some sort of galactic hyperhearse?
  • What I need… is a strong drink and a peer group.
  • It takes an awful lot of time to not write a book.
  • Please call me Eddie if it will help you to relax.
  • The complexities of cause and effect defy analysis.
  • I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed.
  • I’m so great even I get tongue-tied talking to myself.
  • Assumptions are the things we don’t know we’re making.
  • Time doesn’t necessarily happen in chronological order.
  • and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks.
  • I can see we’re in for a fabulous evening’s apocalypse.
  • To boldly split infinitives that no man had split before.
  • We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
  • The single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood.
  • The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.
  • He has personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts.
  • In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.
  • A beach house isn’t just real estate. It’s a state of mind.
  • Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food.
  • People who need to bully you are the easiest to push around.
  • I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my life-style
  • My universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.
  • To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
  • We can’t win against obsession. They care, we don’t. They win.
  • He had got himself a life. Now he had to find a purpose in it.
  • …and the Universe, … will explode later for your pleasure.
  • A mobile phone needs a manual in the way that a teacup doesn’t
  • Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much.
  • This must be Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
  • In the stillness, a fly would not have dared clear it’s throat.
  • Would you like me to go and stick my head in a bucket of water?
  • Flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
  • I don’t believe it. Prove it to me and I still won’t believe it.
  • Democracy is all about not electing the wrong man-eating lizard.
  • The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.
  • You can’t dodge your responsibilities by saying they don’t exist!
  • The Ultimate Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything is…42!
  • “I think we have different value systems.” “Well, mine’s better.”
  • High on a rocky promontory sat an Electric Monk on a bored horse.
  • “What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?” “Ask a glass of water.”
  • It’s not the fall that kills you; it’s the sudden stop at the end.
  • “What’s up?” “I don’t know,” said Marvin, “I’ve never been there.”
  • Even a manically depressed robot is better to talk to than nobody.
  • Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?
  • The dew has fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning.
  • Shee, you guys are so unhip it’s a wonder your bums don’t fall off.
  • I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
  • Technology is a word that describes something that doesn’t work yet.
  • I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe
  • I love deadlines. I like the whooshing noise they make as they go by.
  • Deep in the fundamental heart of mind and Universe there is a reason.
  • Technology is the name we give to stuff that doesn’t work properly yet
  • The little waiter’s eyebrows wandered about his forehead in confusion.
  • There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world.
  • The more Susan waited, the more the doorbell didn’t ring. Or the phone.
  • I am a private detective. I am paid to be inquisitive and presumptuous.
  • The lights went out in his eyes for absolutely the very last time ever.
  • 42 is a nice number that you can take home and introduce to your family.
  • Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.
  • How do you know you’re having fun if there’s no one watching you have it?
  • Presidents don’t have power. Their job is to draw attention away from it.
  • Moving from radio to television, you can take most of the words with you.
  • God’s Final Message to His Creation: ‘We apologize for the inconvenience.
  • Marvin started his ironical humming again. Zaphod hit him and he shut up.
  • Only by counting could humans demonstrate their independence of computers.
  • Here, for whatever reason, is the world. And here it stays. With me on it.
  • He felt like an old sponge steeped in paraffin and left in the sun to dry.
  • Cyberspace is – or can be – a good, friendly and egalitarian place to meet.
  • I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that I don’t know the answer
  • Driving a Porsche in London is like bringing a Ming vase to a football game.
  • Nobody likes a whistler, particularly not the divinity that shapes our ends.
  • It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
  • The Macintosh may only have 10% of the market, but it is clearly the top 10%.
  • I am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer.
  • I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?
  • We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.
  • The most misleading assumptions are the ones you don’t even know you’re making.
  • The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.
  • Life, said Marvin dolefully, loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.
  • Ahenny (adj.) – The way people stand when examining other people’s bookshelves.
  • Beppu (n.) The triumphant slamming shut of a book after reading the final page.
  • I am terribly proud of-I was born in Cambridge in 1952 and my initials are DNA!
  • You can tune a guitar, but you can’t tuna fish. Unless of course, you play bass.
  • Let the past hold on to itself and let the present move forward into the future.
  • A nerd is someone who uses a telephone to talk to other people about telephones.
  • Earthmen are not proud of their ancestors and never invite them round to dinner.
  • You can’t possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you’re a fool.
  • If we see you smoking we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action.
  • I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.
  • The hardest assumption to challenge is the one you don’t even know you are making.
  • He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but it was equally uncomfortable on each.
  • If they don’t keep exercising their lips, he thought, their brains start working.
  • We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying.
  • Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things
  • Alltami (n.) The ancient art of being able to balance the hot and cold shower taps.
  • Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is.
  • I wanted to be John Cleese. It took me some time to realise that the job was taken.
  • I was created to fulfill a function and I failed in it. I negated my own existence.
  • Funny, how just when you think life can’t possibly get any worse it suddenly does.
  • If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.
  • Six pints of bitter, said Ford Prefect. And quickly please, the world’s about to end.
  • There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler’s mind.
  • Obviously somebody had been appallingly incompetent and he hoped to God it wasn’t him.
  • Put away your worries, the world is a good and perfect place. It is in fact very easy.
  • Don’t spin your wheels and stress. Take a deep breath, center yourself and make a plan.
  • Time travel, by its very nature, was invented in all periods of history simultaneously.
  • The Presidents job, is not to wield power himself, but to lead attention away from it.
  • For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen.
  • I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it’s art while it’s being created.
  • The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination.
  • Don’t believe anything you read on the net. Except this. Well, including this, I suppose.
  • Dirk was, for one of the few times in a life of exuberantly prolific loquacity, wordless.
  • I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere I needed to be.
  • Oh dear,’ says God, ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
  • Ballycumber (ba-li-KUM-ber) n. One of the six half-read books lying somewhere in your bed.
  • I find that writing is a constant battle with exactly the same problems you’ve always had.
  • I think all cats are wild. They only act tame if there¬¥s a saucer of milk in it for them.
  • ‘Totally mad,’ he said, ‘utter nonsense. But we’ll do it because it’s brilliant nonsense.’
  • The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.
  • I say what it occurs to me to say when I think I hear people say things. More I cannot say.
  • In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny subliminal signal.
  • They live in perpetual fear of the time they call “The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief
  • Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word ‘safe’ that I wasn’t previously aware of.
  • Let us be dreamers, thinkers, speculative philosophers, or as our spouses would have it: Idiots
  • I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
  • There is no point in using the word ‘impossible’ to describe something that has clearly happened.
  • Do you find coming to terms with the mindless tedium of it all presents an interesting challenge?
  • The mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.
  • Capital Letters Were Always The Best Way Of Dealing With Things You Didn’t Have A Good Answer To.
  • He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher… or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
  • If you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else.
  • A life that is burdened with expectations is a heavy life. Its fruit is sorrow and disappointment.
  • It’s part of the shape of the Universe. I only have to talk to somebody and they begin to hate me.
  • Very deep. You should send that in to the Reader’s Digest. They’ve got a page for people like you.
  • He didn’t know why he had become president of the galaxy, except that it seemed a fun thing to be.
  • If God allows proof that he exists he robs people of faith and without faith what is God?
  • He actually caught himself saying things like “Yippee,” as he pranced ridiculously round the house.
  • He inched his way up the corridor as if he would rather be yarding his way down it, which was true.
  • Very strange people, physicists – in my experience the ones who aren’t dead are in some way very ill.
  • I’m 48, which is a bit of a shock to me. Why only last year I thought I was a precocious young thing!
  • It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else’s point of view without the proper training.
  • One always overcompensates for disabilities. I’m thinking of having my entire body surgically removed.
  • For as long as he could remember, he’d suffered from a vague nagging feeling of being not all there.
  • Aberystwyth (n.) A nostalgic yearning which is in itself more pleasant than the thing being yearned for.
  • How do you feel?” he asked him. “Like a military academy,” said Arthur. “Bits of me keep on passing out.
  • A learning experience is one of those things that says, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.
  • Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
  • In cases of major discrepancy its always reality thats got it wrong … reality is frequently inaccurate.
  • My capacity for happiness,” he added, “you could fit into a matchbox without taking out the matches first
  • I don’t say that I don’t believe in God because that implies that there is a God for me not to believe in.
  • There is no problem so complicated that you can’t find a very simple answer to it if you look at it right.
  • I teleported home last night with Ron and Sid and Meg Ron stole Meggy’s heart away and I got Sidney’s leg.
  • Nobleness was one word for making a fuss about the trivial inevitabilities of life, but there were others.
  • I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is.
  • When people you greatly admire appear to be thinking deep thoughts, they probably are thinking about lunch.
  • Why should I want to make anything up? Life’s bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.
  • What god would be hanging around Terminal Two of Heathrow Airport trying to catch the 15:37 flight to Oslo?
  • The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome.
  • Anything that thinks logically can be fooled by something else that thinks at least as logically as it does.
  • If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there?
  • Well the hours are good…’ … ‘but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.
  • Will you stop counting!’ snarled Zaphod. ‘Yes,’ said Ford Prefect, ‘in three minutes and thirty-five seconds.
  • Fifteen years was a long time to be stranded anywhere, particularly somewhere as mind-boggingly dull as Earth.
  • The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.
  • There was a terribly ghastly silence. There was a terribly ghastly noise. There was a terribly ghastly silence.
  • If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.
  • If you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language.
  • Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple.’ Ah, well, I’m not sure I believe that.
  • We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.
  • Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity‚ distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless
  • Being offended by things is the world’s big hobby at the moment. It’s almost taken over from wearing goatee beards.
  • Time affords us the ability to blame past errors on others while whole heartedly pronouncing our futures successes.
  • Exactly!” said Deep Thought. “So once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.
  • It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airport.
  • I like the cover,” he said. “Don’t Panic. It’s the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody’s said to me all day.
  • Sir,’ I said to the universe, ‘I exist.’ ‘That,’ said the universe, ‘creates no sense of obligation in me whatsoever.
  • Gordon Way’s astonishment at being suddenly shot dead was nothing compared to his astonishment at what happened next.
  • Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn’t just jump over and have done with it.
  • You just come along with me and have a good time. The Galaxy’s a fun place. You’ll need to have this fish in your ear.
  • How do I know the past is not a fiction conceived to reconcile the difference between my state of mind and the present.
  • Pardon me for breathing, which I never do any way so I don’t know why I bother to say it, oh God, I’m so depressed.
  • Why are people born? Why do they die? Why do they want to spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?
  • Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.
  • I didn’t notice I was being set upon by a pickpocket, which I am glad of, because I like to work only with professionals.
  • Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
  • Listen, three eyes,” he said, “don’t you try to outweird me, I get stranger things than you free with my breakfast cereal.
  • Who should play the lead role in a film about me? Dunno. Danny De Vito? Jeff Goldblum? Meryl Streep? Someone of that kind.
  • In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
  • Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
  • If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.
  • What does it matter? Science has achieved some wonderful things, of course, but I’d far rather be happy than right any day.
  • He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.
  • The story goes that I first had the idea for The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy while lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck.
  • Siamese Cats have a way of staring at you. Those who have walked in on the Queen cleaning her teeth will know the expression.
  • The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.
  • In the center lay the exploded carcass of a lonely sperm whale that hadn’t lived long enough to be disappointed with its lot.
  • The Hitch Hiker’s Guide has not been an opera. It has however been a tapestry, if you count a woven bath towel as a tapestry.
  • The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than what it’s short for.
  • 2,000 years ago one man got nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be if everyone was nice to each other for a change.
  • .. is like a grapefruit. It’s orange and squishy, and has a few pips in it, and some folks have half a one for breakfast.
  • To give real service you must add something which cannot be bought or measured with money, and that is sincerity and integrity.
  • I only know as much about myself as my mind can work out under its current conditions. And its current conditions are not good.
  • And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
  • Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through.
  • Did I do anything wrong today,” he said, “or has the world always been like this and I’ve been too wrapped up in myself to notice?
  • “Does God know he [exists]?” “Of course he does. Otherwise, you could not have asked the question, and I could not have answered.”
  • He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left.
  • One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us.’
  • I wrote an ad for Apple Computer: “Macintosh – We might not get everything right, but at least we knew the century was going to end”.
  • SHOEBURYNESS (abs.n.) The vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat which is still warm from somebody else’s bottom.
  • WOKING (vb.) To enter the kitchen with the precise determination to perform something only to forget what it is just before you do it.
  • All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.
  • I find the whole business of religion profoundly interesting. But it does mystify me that otherwise intelligent people take it seriously.
  • See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that.
  • Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow pizza.
  • Don’t blame you,” said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.
  • A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
  • The argument goes something like this: “I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.
  • The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in.
  • God is no longer an explanation of anything, but has instead become something that would itself need an insurmountable amount of explaining.
  • It’s good to leave your room super-messy when you’re away. Whoever tries to break into your room will thought it has already been ransacked.
  • I have terrible periods of lack of confidence. I just don’t believe I can do it and no evidence to the contrary will sway me from that view.
  • He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
  • It was one of those pictures that children are supposed to like but don’t. Full of endearing little animals doing endearing things, you know?
  • This planet has ‚ or rather had ‚ a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time.
  • If there’s any real truth, it’s that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.
  • I think media are at their most interesting before anybody’s thought of calling them art, when people still think they’re just a load of junk.
  • The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.
  • Imagine” he said, “never even thinking, ‘We are alone,’ simply because it has never occurred to you to think that there’s any other way to be.
  • The light was only just visible – except of course that there was no one to see, no witnesses, not this time, but it was nevertheless a light.
  • Grown men, he told himself, in flat contradiction of centuries of accumulated evidence about the way grown men behave, do not behave like this.
  • Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, then everything else becomes eerily easy.
  • The Answer to the Great Question… Of Life, the Universe and Everything… Is… Forty-two,’ said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm.
  • The bowler approached the wicket at a lope, a trot, and then a run. He suddenly exploded in a flurry of arms and legs, out of which flew a ball.
  • ABOYNE (vb.) To beat an expert at a game of skill by playing so appallingly that none of his clever tactics or strategies are of any use to him.
  • Stotting is jumping upward with all four legs simultaneously. My advice: do not die until you’ve seen a large black poodle stotting in the snow.
  • Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast.
  • There’s nothing worse than sitting down to write a novel and saying, “Well, okay, I’m going to do something of high artistic worth.” It’s funny.
  • Let us think the unthinkable, let us do the undoable, let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
  • Most of the time spent wrestling with technologies that don’t quite work yet is just not worth it for end users, however much fun it is for nerds.
  • Being virtually killed by a virtual laser in a virtual space is just as effective as the real thing, because you are as dead as you think you are.
  • Ford Prefect suppressed a little giggle of evil satisfaction, realized that he had no reason to suppress it, and laughed out loud, a wicked laugh.
  • The Guide says there is an art to flying”, said Ford, “or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
  • The only thing nicer than a phone that didn’t ring all the time (or indeed at all) was six phones that didn’t ring all the time (or indeed at all).
  • If you ever find you need help again, you know, if you’re in trouble, need a hand out of a corner…” “Yeah?” “Please don’t hesitate to get lost.
  • So what do we do if we get bitten by something deadly?’ I asked. He looked at me as if I were stupid. ‘You die, of course. That’s what deadly means.
  • Goosnargh,” said Ford Prefect, which was a special Betelgeusian word he used when he knew he should say something but didn’t know what it should be.
  • Nobody got murdered before lunch. But nobody. People weren’t up to it. You needed a good lunch to get both the blood-sugar and blood-lust levels up.
  • Even light, which travels so fast it takes most races thousands of years to realize that it travels at all, takes time to journey between the stars.
  • Beethoven tells you what it’s like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it’s like to be human. Bach tells you what it’s like to be the universe.
  • And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before–and thus was the Empire forged.
  • Being literate as a writer is good craft, is knowing your job, is knowing how to use your tools properly and not to damage the tools as you use them.
  • That was it. That was really it. She knew that she had told herself that that was it only seconds earlier, but this was now the final real ulimate it.
  • I don’t want to die now!” he yelled. “I’ve still got a headache! I don’t want to go to heaven with a headache, I’d be all cross and wouldn’t enjoy it!
  • I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I’ve thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing.
  • There are two things you should remember when dealing with parallel universes. One, they’re not really parallel, and two, they’re not really universes
  • My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre and that I am therefore excused from saving universes.
  • It is folly to say you know what is happening to other people. Only they know, if they exist. They have their own Universes of their own eyes and ears.
  • It’s guff. It doesn’t advance the action. It makes for nice fat books such as the American market thrives on, but it doesn’t actually get you anywhere.
  • The difference between us and a computer is that, the computer is blindingly stupid, but it is capable of being stupid many, many million times a second.
  • If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ’em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.
  • That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting.
  • There was one planet off in the seventh dimension that got used as a ball in a game of intergalactic bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole.
  • I’m up to here with cool, okay? I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis.
  • Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was. “Is there any tea on this spaceship?” he asked.
  • The great thing about being the only species that makes a distinction between right and wrong is that we can make up the rules for ourselves as we go along.
  • He hoped and prayed that there wasn’t an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn’t an afterlife.
  • ‘These things will become clear to you,’ said the old man gently, ‘at least,’ he added with slight doubt in his voice, ‘clearer than they are at the moment.’
  • and we’ll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere ¶ and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.
  • One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious.
  • A computer chatted to itself in alarm as it noticed an airlock open and close itself for no apparent reason. This was because Reason was in fact out to lunch.
  • Please relax,” said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines one of which is on fire, “you are perfectly safe.
  • A theory of the universe that states: If anyone finds out what the universe is for, it will disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely inexplicable.
  • The light works,” he said, indicating the window, “the gravity works,” he said, dropping a pencil on the floor. “Anything else we have to take our chances with.
  • We notice things that don’t work. We don’t notice things that do. We notice computers, we don’t notice pennies. We notice e-book readers, we don’t notice books.
  • Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
  • I don’t know what I’m looking for. What not? Because ‚¶ because ‚¶ I think it might be because if I knew I wouldn’t be able to look for them.
  • …they discovered only a small asteroid inhabited by a solitary old man who claimed repeatedly that nothing was true, though he was later discovered to be lying.
  • If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
  • How can I tell,” said the man, “that the past isn’t a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?
  • Solutions nearly always come from the direction you least expect, which means there’s no point trying to look in that direction because it won’t be coming from there.
  • If I were not an atheist, I think I would have to be a Catholic because if it wasn’t the forces of natural selection that designed fish, It must have been an Italian.
  • There is a feeling which persists in England that making a sandwich interesting, attractive, or in any way pleasant to eat is something sinful that only foreigners do.
  • Beauty doesn’t have to be about anything. What’s a vase about? What’s a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart’s Twenty-third Piano Concerto about?
  • Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor, at least no one worth speaking of.
  • Structural linguistics is a bitterly divided and unhappy profession, and a large number of its practitioners spend many nights drowning their sorrows in Ouisghian Zodahs.
  • I am rarely happier than when spending entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand.
  • Mc Donalds he thought. There’s no longer any such thing as a Mc Donalds hamburger. He passed out. When he came around seconds later he found he was sobbing for his mother.
  • Could be. I’m a pretty dangerous dude when I’m cornered. Yeah, said the voice from under the table, you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel.
  • Trillian had come to suspect that the main reason [Zaphood] had had such a wild and successful life was that he never really understood the significance of anything he did.
  • Rather than arriving five hours late and flustered, it would be better all around if he were to arrive five hours and a few extra minutes late, but triumphantly in command.
  • Even the evil-looking bird perched on a rod in the bar had stopped screeching out the names and addresses of local contract killers, which was a service it provided for free.
  • No games. He wanted her and didn’t care who knew it. He definitely and absolutely wanted her, longed for her, wanted to do more things than there were names for with her.
  • It’s reassuring to realize that everybody is as stupid as you are and that all we are doing when we are standing in the kitchen wondering what we came in here for is “woking.
  • The air was stifling, but he liked it because it was stifling city air, full of excitingly unpleasant smells, dangerous music, and the distant sound of warring police tribes.
  • These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings.
  • When the idea comes, I often can’t remember where it came from. I remember very little about writing the first series of Hitchhiker’s. It’s almost as if someone else wrote it.
  • Their minds sang with the ecstatic knowledge that either what they were doing was completely and utterly and totally impossible or that physics had a lot of catching up to do.
  • What do you get if you multiply six by nine?” “Six by nine. Forty two.” “That’s it. That’s all there is.” “I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe
  • The only moral it is possible to draw from this story is that one should never throw the Q letter into a privet bush, but unfortunately there are times when it is unavoidable.
  • Dennis Hutch had stepped up into the top seat when its founder had died of a lethal overdose of brick wall, taken while under the influence of a Ferrari and a bottle of tequila.
  • There are two things in particular that it [the computer industry] failed to foresee: one was the coming of the Internet(…); the other was the fact that the century would end.
  • We are stuck with technology when all we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognize something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
  • Time is the worst place, so to speak, to get lost in, as Arthur Dent could testify, having been lost in both time and space a good deal. At least being lost in space kept you busy.
  • The point is, you see,” said Ford, “that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later.
  • Everything you see or hear or experience in any way at all is specific to you. You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you.
  • My absolute favourite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.
  • I think a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to other people about telephones. And a computer nerd therefore is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer.
  • Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy, Canada is like an intelligent, 35 year old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson.
  • This man is the bee’s knees, Arthur, he is the wasp’s nipples. He is, I would go so far as to say, the entire set of erogenous zones of every major flying insect of the Western world.
  • There are some people you like immediately, some whom you think you might learn to like in the fullness of time, and some that you simply want to push away from you with a sharp stick.
  • Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terrible bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.
  • Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
  • The reason why so many sects hang around airports looking for converts: they know that people there are at their most vulnerable and perplexed, and ready to accept any kind of guidance.
  • For millions of years, on average, one species became extinct every century…. We are now heaving more than a thousand different species of animals and plants off the planet every year.
  • A computer terminal is not some clunky old television with a typewriter in front of it. It is an interface where the mind and body can connect with the universe and move bits of it about.
  • The system of life on this planet is so astoundingly complex that it was a long time before man even realized that it was a system at all and that it wasn’t something that was just there.
  • We are now cruising at a level of two to the power of twenty-five thousand to one against and falling, and we will be restoring normality just as soon as we are sure what is normal anyway.
  • Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying “Blood…blood…blood…blood…
  • She had what it took: great hair, a profound understanding of strategic lip gloss, the intelligence to understand the world and a tiny secret interior deadness which meant she didn’t care.
  • Believe me, it is a great deal better to find cast-iron proof that you’re innocent than to languish in a cell hoping that the police—who already think you’re guilty—will find it for you.
  • Why’ is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it. The alphabet does not go ‘A B C D What? When? How?’ but it does go ‘V W X Why? Z.
  • There is a piece of me that likes to fondly imagine my maverick and rebellious nature, but, more accurately, I like to have a nice and cosy institution that I can rub up against a little bit.
  • Much to his annoyance, a thought popped into his mind. It was very clear and very distinct, and he had now come to recognize these thoughts for what they were. His instinct was to resist them.
  • He learned to communicate with birds and discovered their conversation was fantastically boring. It was all to do with windspeed, wingspans, power-to-weight ratios and a fair bit about berries.
  • And for all the richest and most successful merchants life inevitably became rather dull and niggly, and they began to imagine that this was therefore the fault of the worlds they’d settled on.
  • Many respectable physicists said that they weren’t going to stand for this — partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn’t get invited to those sort of parties.
  • But what about the End of the Universe? We’ll miss the big moment.” I’ve seen it. It’s rubbish,” said Zaphod,”nothing but a gnab gib.” A what?” Opposite of a big bang. Come on, let’s get zappy.
  • We all like to congregate at boundary conditions. Where land meets water. Where earth meets air. Where bodies meet mind. Where space meets time. We like to be on one side, and look at the other.
  • Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
  • In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
  • Zaphod did not want to tangle with them and, deciding that just as discretion is the better part of valor, so was cowardice is the better part of discretion, he valiantly hid himself in a closet.
  • Arthur Dent: What happens if I press this button? Ford Prefect: I wouldn’t- Arthur Dent: Oh. Ford Prefect: What happened? Arthur Dent: A sign lit up, saying ‘Please do not press this button again.
  • Some say that the universe is made so that when we are about to understand it it changes into something even more incomprehensible. And then there are those who say that this has already happened.
  • The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying ‘And another thing…’ twenty minutes after admitting he’d lost the argument.
  • Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.
  • He stood up straight and looked the world squarely in the fields and hills. To add weight to his words he stuck the rabbit bone in his hair. He spread his arm out wide. “I will go mad!” he annouced.
  • .. is like a grapefruit. Well, it’s sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It’s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.
  • Alone of all the races on earth, they seem to be free from the ‘Grass is Greener on the other side of the fence’ syndrome, and roundly proclaim that Australia is, in fact, the other side of that fence.
  • We live in strange times. We also live in strange places, each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universe are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own.
  • And then, just when you think that you have experienced all the wonders that this world has to offer, you round a peak and suddenly think you’re doing the whole thing over again, but this time on drugs.
  • I really didn’t foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course–the computer industry didn’t even foresee that the century was going to end.
  • There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound.
  • Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.
  • If there was one thing life had taught her it was that there are times when you do not go back for your bag and times when you do. It had yet to teach her to distinguish between the two types of occasion.
  • For a moment he felt good about this. A moment or two later he felt bad about feeling good about it. Then he felt good about feeling bad about feeling good about it and satisfied, drove on into the night.
  • But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we’re driving
  • Radio did not kill books and television did not kill radio or movies – what television did kill was cinema newsreel. TV does it much better because it can deliver it instantly. Who wants last week’s news?
  • It all sounds rather naive and sentimental to be talking about children laughing and dancing and singing together when we all know perfectly well that what children do in real life is snarl and take drugs.
  • The film project has been twenty years of constipation, and he likens the Hollywood process to trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it.
  • All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it’s pretty damn complicated in the first place.
  • The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.
  • You come to me for advice, but you can’t cope with anything you don’t recognize. Hmmm. So we’ll have to tell you something you already know but make it sound like news, eh Well, business as usual , I suppose.
  • The seat received him in a loose and distant kind of way, like an aunt who disapproves of the last fifteen years of your life and will therefore furnish you with a basic sherry, but refuses to catch your eye.
  • My own strategy is to find a car, or the nearest equivalent, which looks as if it knows where it’s going and follow it. I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but often I end up somewhere I needed to be.
  • The books people are writing today, they’re too long. You get a little bit of plot, and then pages and pages of Creative Writing. They teach classes in how to do this. They should teach classes in how to stop!
  • A fragrant breeze wandered up from the quiet sea, trailed along the beach, and drifted back to the sea again, wondering where to go next. On a mad impulse it went up to the beach again. It drifted back to sea.
  • He sniggered. He didn’t like to think of himself as the sort of person who giggled or sniggered, but he had to admit that he had been giggling and sniggering almost continuously for well over half an hour now.
  • The teacher usually learns more than the pupils. Isn’t that true? “It would be hard to learn much less than my pupils,” came a low growl from somewhere on the table, “without undergoing a pre-frontal lobotomy.”
  • The first ten million years were the worst,” said Marvin, “and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn’t enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.
  • Perhaps I’m old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.
  • …and the renewed shock had nearly made him spill his drink. He drained it quickly before anything serious happened to it. He then had another quick one to follow the first one down and check that it was all right.
  • Yes, it is true that sometimes unusually intelligent and sensitive children can appear to be stupid. But stupid children can sometimes appear to be stupid as well. I think that’s something you might have to consider.
  • The idea was fantastically, wildly improbable. But like most fantastically, wildly improbable ideas it was at least as worthy of consideration as a more mundane one to which the facts had been strenuously bent to fit.
  • Ok,” he said, “I don’t like to disturb you at what I know must be a difficult and distressing time for you, but I need to know first of all if you actually realize that this is a difficult and distressing time for you.
  • So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight – the locals wouldn’t stand a chance.
  • Unfortunately this Electric Monk had developed a fault, and had started to believe all kinds of things, more or less at random. It was even beginning to believe things they’d have difficulty believing in Salt Lake City.
  • The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.
  • The Saab seethed off into the night. Arthur watched it go, as stunned as a man might be who, having believed himself to be totally blind for five years, suddenly discovers that he had merely been wearing too large a hat.
  • I tend not to read or watch Science Fiction, particularly not comedy Science Fiction. The point is that if it’s less good than what I do, there’s no point in reading it, if it’s better than what I do it makes me depressed
  • It was his subconscious which told him this – that infuriating part of a person’s brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.
  • When the girl sitting at the next table looked away from a moment, Dirk leaned over and took her coffee. He knew that he was perfectly safe doing this because she would simply not be able to believe that this had happened.
  • It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
  • He was a man who was charged with the work he did in life because he was not one to ask questions ‚ not so much on account of any natural quality of discretion as because he simply could never think of any questions to ask.
  • So the hours are pretty good then?’ he resumed. The Vogon stared down at him as sluggish thoughts moiled around in the murky depths. Yeah,’ he said, ‘but now you come to mention it, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy.
  • Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won’t engulf my head, I can see by infrared, How I hate the night. Now I lay me down to sleep, Try to count electric sheep, Sweet dream wishes you can keep, How I hate the night. -Marvin
  • The waiter approached. ‘Would you like to see the menu?’ he said. ‘Or would you like to meet the Dish of the Day?’ ‘Huh?’ said Ford. ‘Huh?’ said Arthur. ‘Huh?’ said Trillian. ‘That’s cool,’ said Zaphod. ‘We’ll meet the meat.
  • In the old days, writers used to sit in front of a typewriter and stare out of the window. Nowadays, because of the marvels of convergent technology, the thing you type on and the window you stare out of are now the same thing.
  • Here’s what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about alcohol. It says that alcohol is a colourless volatile liquid formed by the fermentation of sugars and also notes its intoxicating effect on certain carbon-based life forms.
  • Don’t you understand that we need to be childish in order to understand? Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn’t developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don’t expect to see.
  • But for a moment Dirk had a sense of inifinite loss and sadness that somewhere among the frenzy of information noise that daily rattled the lives of men he thought he might have heard a few notes that denoted the movements of gods.
  • The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any signs of leaving. Somebody did once look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago now, and there has been no follow up.
  • “Would you like to see the menu?” he said. “Or would you like to meet the Dish of the Day?” […] “Good evening,” it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, “I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in parts of my body?”
  • If somebody votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like. … But on the other hand, if somebody says, ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday,’ you say, ‘Fine, I respect that.’
  • For seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty-two – and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was.
  • As a result of all this hardship, dirt, thirst, and wombats, you would expect Australians to be a dour lot. Instead, they are genial, jolly, cheerful, and always willing to share a kind word with a stranger, unless they are an American.
  • He felt a spasm of excitement because he knew instinctively who it was, or at least knew who it was he wanted it to be, and once you know what it is you want to be true, instinct is a very useful device for enabling you to know that it is.
  • Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons.
  • What was the self-sacrifice?” I jettisoned half of a much-loved and I think irreplaceable pair of shoes.” Why was that self-sacrifice?” Because they were mine!” said Ford, crossly. I think we have different value systems.” Well mine’s better.
  • One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can’t cope with.
  • It seemed to me,’ said Wonko the Sane, ‘that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.
  • Numbers written on restaurant bills within the confines of restaurants do not follow the same mathematical laws as numbers written on any other pieces of paper in any other parts of the Universe. This single fact took the scientific world by storm.
  • On the delivery plate of the Nutri-Matic Drink Synthesizer was a small tray, on which say three bone china cups and saucers, a bone china jug of milk, a silver teapot full of the best tea Arthur had ever tasted and a small printed note saying “Wait.
  • It is a rare mind indeed that can render the hitherto non-existent blindingly obvious. The cry ‘I could have thought of that’ is a very popular and misleading one, for the fact is that they didn’t, and a very significant and revealing fact it is too.
  • I have always been absurdly, ridiculously tall. To give you an idea- when we went on school trips to Interesting and Improving Places, the form-master wouldn’t say “Meet under the clock tower,” or “Meet under the War Memorial,” but “Meet under Adams.
  • The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.
  • The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also mentions alcohol. It says that the best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the effect of which is like having your brains smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.
  • What is the point? We assume that every time we do anything we know what the consequences will be, i.e., more or less what we intend them to be. This is not only not always correct. It is wildly, crazily, stupidly, cross-eyed-blithering-insectly wrong!
  • Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ” This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in; fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well! It must have been made to have me in it!
  • Plenty of people did not care for him much, but then there is a huge difference between disliking somebody – maybe even disliking them a lot – and actually shooting them, strangling them, dragging them through the fields and setting their house on fire.
  • The switch had two settings. You could either turn it to AUTO, in which case the awning lowered itself whenever the sun came out, or you could set it to MANUEL [sic], in which case, we assumed, a small, incompetent Spanish waiter came and did it for you.
  • The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the ‘Star Spangled Banner’, but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish.

 

  • Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.
  • And wow! Hey! What’s this thing coming towards me very fast? Very very fast. So big and flat and round, it needs a big wide sounding word like… ow… ound… round… ground! That’s it! That’s a good name – ground! I wonder if it will be friends with me?
  • Mark Carwardine’s role, essentially, was to be the one who knew what he was talking about. My role, and one for which I was entirely qualified, was to be an extremely ignorant non-zoologist to whom everything that happened would come as a complete surprise.
  • So, the world is fine. We don’t have to save the world‚the world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about, is whether or not the world we live in, will be capable of sustaining us in it. That’s what we need to think about.
  • The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder… Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.
  • It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute’s Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn’t stand was a smart-ass.
  • Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now here he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth.
  • I have detected disturbances in the wash.’ ‘The wash?’ ‘The space-time wash.’ ‘Are we talking about some sort of Vogon laundromat, or what are we talking about?’ ‘Eddies in the space-time continuum.’ ‘Ah…is he. Is he.’ ‘What?’ ‘Er, who is Eddy, then, exactly?
  • Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again. It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though.
  • It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion on them. On the other hand, it is perfectly possible to sit all day, every day, on top of another creature and not have the slightest thought about them whatsoever.
  • The kakapo is a bird out of time. If you look one in its large, round, greeny-brown face, it has a look of serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it that everything will be all right, thought you know that it probably will not be.
  • First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII ‚ and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.
  • The moment at which two people, approaching from opposite ends of a long passageway, recognize each other and immediately pretend they haven t. This is to avoid the ghastly embarrassment of having to continue recognizing each other the whole length of the corridor.
  • To Trin Tragula’s horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.
  • The more I think about our species the more I think we just do stuff and make up explanations later when asked. But it’s not true that I would rather write than read. I would rather read than write. To be honest I would rather hang upside down in a bucket than write.
  • I’ve never understood all this fuss people make about the dawn. I’ve seen a few and they’re never as good as the photographs, which have the additional advantage of being things you can look at when you’re in the right frame of mind, which is usually around lunchtime.
  • … The truth of the matter is, that most English people don’t know how to make tea anymore either, and most people drink cheap instant coffee instead, which is a pity, and gives Americans the impression that the English are just generally clueless about hot stimulants.
  • Ford looked at him severely. And no sneaky knocking down Mr Dent’s house whilst he’s away, alright?” he said. The mere thought,” growled Mr Prosser, “hadn’t even begun to speculate,” he continued, settling himself back, “about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.
  • All through my life I’ve had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was.” “No,” said the old man, “that’s just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that.
  • There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
  • Arthur shook his head and sat down. He looked up. I thought you must be dead‚¶ he said simply. So did I for a while, said Ford, and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks. I kept myself amused all that time jumping in and out of a gin and tonic.
  • The big corporations are suddenly taking notice of the web, and their reactions have been slow. Even the computer industry failed to see the importance of the Internet, but that’s not saying much. Let’s face it, the computer industry failed to see that the century would end.
  • The idea that Bill Gates (one of the founders of Microsoft) has appeared like a knight in shining armour to lead all customers out of a mire of technological chaos neatly ignores the fact that it was he, by peddling second rate technology, led them into it in the first place…
  • There’s always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it’s with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it’s one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.
  • Generally, old media don’t die. They just have to grow old gracefully. Guess what, we still have stone masons. They haven’t been the primary purveyors of the written word for a while now of course, but they still have a role because you wouldn’t want a TV screen on your headstone.
  • Hey, this is terrific!” he said. “Someone down there is trying to kill us!” “Terrific,” said Arthur. “But don’t you see what this means?” “Yes. We are going to die.” “Yes, but apart from that.” “Apart from that?!” “It means we must be on to something!” “How soon can we get off it?
  • The Somebody Else’s Problem field is much simpler and more effective, and what’s more can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people’s natural disposition not to see anything they don’t want to, weren’t expecting, or can’t explain.
  • Can’t stand all these poisonous creatures, all these snakes and insects and fish and things. Wretched things, biting everybody. And then people expect me to tell them what to do about it. I’ll tell them what to do. Don’t get bitten in the first place. (quoting Dr. Struan Sutherland)
  • He had extracted himself from the Cambridge one-way system by the usual method, which involved going round and round it faster and faster until he achieved a sort of escape velocity and flew off at a tangent in a random direction, which he was now trying to identify and correct for.
  • You turn the computer into the storyteller and the player into the audience, like in the old days when the storyteller would actually respond to the audience, rather than just having the audience respond to the storyteller. I had an enormous amount of fun, actually, working on that.
  • Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.
  • The gorillas are not yet sufficiently advanced in evolutionary terms to have discovered the benefits of passports, currency-declaration forms, and official bribery, and therefore tend to wander backward and forward across the border as and when their beastly, primitive whim takes them.
  • Anything invented before your fifteenth birthday is the order of nature. That’s how it should be. Anything invented between your th and th birthday is new and exciting, and you might get a career there. Anything invented after that day, however, is against nature and should be prohibited.
  • ‘The difficulty with this conversation,’ said Arthur after a sort of pondering look had crawled slowly across his face like a mountaineer negotiating a tricky outcrop, ‘is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.’
  • After a while he played with the pencil and the paper again and was delighted when he discovered how to make a mark with the one on the other. Various noises continued outside, but he didn’t know whether they were real or not. He then talked to his table for a week to see how it would react.
  • He would have felt safe if alongside the Dentrassis’ underwear, the piles of Sqornshellous mattresses and the man from Betelgeuse holding up a small yellow fish and offering to put it in his ear he had been able to see just a small packet of cornflakes. But he couldn’t, and he didn’t feel safe.
  • Fiordland, a vast tract of mountainous terrain that occupies the south-west corner of South Island, New Zealand, is one of the most astounding pieces of land anywhere on God’s earth, and one’s first impulse, standing on a cliff top surveying it all, is simply to burst into spontaneous applause.
  • If I want to read something that’s really giving me something serious and fundamental to think about, about the human condition, if you like, or what we’re all doing here, or what’s going on, then I’d rather read something by a scientist in the life sciences, like Richard Dawkins, for instance.
  • You know,” said Arthur, “it’s at times like this, when I’m trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space that I really wish I’d listened to what my mother told me when I was young.” “Why, what did she tell you?” “I don’t know, I didn’t listen.
  • Dirk turned on the car wipers, which grumbled because they didn’t have quite enough rain to wipe away, so he turned them off again. Rain quickly speckled the windscreen. He turned on the wipers again, but they still refused to feel that the exercise was worthwhile, and scraped and squeaked in protest.
  • They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
  • Yes it is,’ said the Professor. ‘Wait‚’ he motioned to Richard, who was about to go out again and investigate‚ ‘let it be. It won’t be long.’ Richard stared in disbelief. ‘You say there’s a horse in your bathroom, and all you can do is stand there naming Beatles songs?’ The Professor looked blankly at him.
  • It was none the less a perfectly ordinary horse, such as convergent evolution has produced in many of the places that life is to be found. They have always understood a great deal more than they let on. It is difficult to be sat on all day, every day, by some other creature, without forming an opinion about them.
  • Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen. […] Lord, lord, lord. Protect me from the consequences of the above prayer.
  • When you walk through the storm, hold your head high And don’t be afraid of the dark! At the end of the storm is a golden sky And the sweet song of the lark. Walk on through the wind Walk on through the rain Though your dreams be tossed & blown Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart And you’ll never walk alone!
  • I got very bored and depressed, so I went and plugged myself in to its external computer feed. I talked to the computer at great length and explained my view of the Universe to it,” said Marvin. “And what happened?” pressed Ford. “It committed suicide,” said Marvin and stalked off back to the Heart of Gold.
  • “I refuse to prove that I exist” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.” “Oh,” says man, “but the Babel Fish is a dead give-away, isn’t it?  It proves You exist, and so therefore You don’t.  E.D.”  “Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” says God, who promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
  • One of the problems of taking things apart and seeing how they work – supposing you’re trying to find out how a cat works–you take that cat apart to see how it works, what you’ve got in your hands is a non-working cat. The cat wasn’t a sort of clunky mechanism that was susceptible to our available tools of analysis.
  • You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number. Er, five, said the mattress. Wrong, said Marvin. You see?
  • Marvin trudged on down the corridor, still moaning. “…and then of course I’ve got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left hand side…” “No?” said Arthur grimly as he walked along beside him. “Really?” “Oh yes,” said Marvin, “I mean I’ve asked for them to be replaced but no one ever listens.” “I can imagine.
  • People always make this totally artificial distinction between what is commercial and what is good. They quote that maxim “Nobody ever lost money underestimating the public’s taste” and I think that’s very wrongheaded. I like to believe the audience is actually intelligent, because it’s made up of other people like yourself.
  • And as he drove on, the rainclouds dragged down the sky after him, for, though he did not know it, Rob McKenna was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him, and to water him.
  • Was there a reason behind it? There would be no point in asking Zaphod, he never appeared to have a reason for anything he did at all: he had turned unfathomability into an art form. He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which.
  • So this is it,” said Arthur, “We are going to die.” “Yes,” said Ford, “except… no! Wait a minute!” He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur’s line of vision. “What’s this switch?” he cried. “What? Where?” cried Arthur, twisting round. “No, I was only fooling,” said Ford, “we are going to die after all.
  • Really, the moment you have any idea, the second thought that enters your mind after the original idea is, “What is this? Is it a book, is it a movie, is it a this, is it a that, is it a short story, is it a breakfast cereal?” Really, from that moment, your decision about what kind of thing it is then determines how it develops.
  • What a wonderfully exciting cough,’ said the little man, quite startled by it, ‘do you mind if I join you?’ And with that he launched into the most extraordinary and spectacular fit of coughing which caught Arthur so much by surprise that he started to choke violently, discovered he was already doing it and got thoroughly confused.
  • The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it which the merely improbable lacks. How often have you been presented with an apparently rational explanation of something that works in all respects other than one, which is just that it is hopelessly improbable? Your instinct is to say, ‘Yes, but he or she simply wouldn’t do that.
  • No one really knows what mattresses are meant to gain from their lives either. They are large, friendly, pocket-sprung creatures that live quiet private lives in the marshes of Sqornshellous Zeta. Many of them get caught, slaughtered, dried out, shipped out and slept on. None of them seems to mind this and all of them are called Zem.
  • The technology involved in making anything invisible is so infinitely complex that nine hundred and ninety-nine billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a trillion it is much simpler and more effective just to take the thing away and do without it.
  • But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting.
  • Science fiction that’s just about people wandering around in space ships shooting each other with ray guns is very dull. I like it when it enables you to do fairly radical reinterpretations of human experience, just to show all the different interpretations that can be put on apparently fairly simple and commonplace events. That I find fun.
  • You ARE Zaphod Beeblebrox?’ ‘Yeah,’ said Zaphod, ‘but don’t shout it out or they’ll all want one.’ ‘THE Zaphod Beeblebrox?’ ‘No, just A Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn’t you hear I come in six packs?’ ‘But sir,’ it squealed, ‘I just heard on the sub-ether radio report. It said you were dead…’ ‘Yeah, that’s right, I just haven’t stopped moving yet.
  • One nonabsolute number is the given time of arrival, which is now known to be one of the most bizarre of mathematical concepts, a number whose existence can only be defined as being anything other than itself. In other words, the given time of arrival is the one moment of time at which it is impossible that any member of the party will arrive.
  • But nowadays everybody’s a comedian, even the weather girls and continuity announcers. We laugh at everything. Not intelligently anymore, not with sudden shock, astonishment, or revelation, just relentlessly and meaninglessly. No more rain showers in the desert, just mud and drizzle everywhere, occasionally illuminated by the flash of paparazzi.
  • And the most interesting natural structure? A giant, two-thousand-mile-long fish in orbit around Jupiter, according to a reliable report in the Weekly World News. The photograph was very convincing, and I’m only surprised that more-reputable journals like New Scientist, or even just The Sun, haven’t followed up with more details. We should be told.
  • He had a tremendous propensity for getting lost when driving. This was largely because of his method of Zen navigation, which was simply to find any car that looked as if it knew where it was going and follow it. The results were more often surprising than successful, but he felt it was worth it for the sake of the few occasions when it was both.
  • Douglas Adams did not enjoy writing, and he enjoyed it less as time went on. He was a bestselling, acclaimed, and much-loved novelist who had not set out to be a novelist, and who took little joy in the process of crafting novels. He loved talking to audiences. He liked writing screenplays. He liked being at the cutting edge of technology and inventing
  • I don’t really have any advice, other than to say it’s the most appallingly difficult thing I’ve ever tried to do and I wish I had a better idea of how to do it. In my experience what you end up with is the by-product of your failure to achieve what you set out to do. It may turn out OK, but it wasn’t what you meant and you’ve no idea how you got there.
  • The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any signs of leaving. The problem of when the drink is going to run out is, however, going to have to be faced one day. The planet over which they are floating is no longer the planet it was when they first started floating over it. It is in bad shape
  • It {Darwin’s theory of evolution] was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.
  • You barbarians!’ he yelled. ‘I’ll sue the council for every penny it’s got! I’ll have you hung, drawn and quartered! And whipped! And boiled…until…until…until…until you’ve had enough.’ Ford was running after him. Very very fast. ‘And then I will do it again!’ yelled Arthur, ‘And when I’ve finished I will take all the little bits, and I will jump on them!
  • One day old Thrashbarg said that Almighty Bob had declared that he, Thrashbarg, was to have first pick of the sandwiches. The villagers asked him when this had happened, exactly, and Thrashbarg said it had happened yesterday, when they weren’t looking. ‘Have faith,’ Old Thrashbarg said, ‘or burn!’ They let him have first pick of the sandwiches. It seemed easiest.
  • Insofar as she recognized at all that she was dreaming, she realized that she must be exploring her subconscious mind. She had heard it said that humans are supposed only to use about a tenth of their brains, and that no one was really clear what the other nine tenths were for, but she had certainly never heard it suggested that they were used for storing penguins.
  • This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
  • Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
  • Why?’ is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you ‘What’s the time?’ or ‘When was the battle of 1066?’ or ‘How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?’ The answers are easy and are, respectively, ‘Seven-thirty in the evening,’ ‘Ten-fifteen in the morning,’ and ‘Don’t ask stupid questions.
  • In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running around inside wheels and conduction frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures’ plans.
  • The problem is, or rather one of the problems, for there are many, a sizeable proportion of which are continually clogging up the civil, commercial, and criminal courts in all areas of the Galaxy, and especially, where possible, the more corrupt ones, this. The previous sentence makes sense. That is not the problem. This is: Change. Read it through again and you’ll get it.
  • What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can’t move, with no hope of rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn’t been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won’t be troubling you much longer.
  • When you’re cruising down the road in the fast lane and you lazily sail past a few hard-driving cars and are feeling pretty pleased with yourself and then accidently change down from fourth to first instead of third thus making your engine leap out of your hood in a rather ugly mess, it tends to throw you off stride in much the same way that this remark threw Ford Prefect off his.
  • For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much‚the wheel, New York, wars and so on‚whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man‚for precisely the same reasons.
  • My favorite piece of information is that Branwell Bront√´, brother of Emily and Charlotte, died standing up leaning against a mantelpiece, in order to prove it could be done. This is not quite true, in fact. My absolute favorite piece of information is the fact that young sloths are so inept that they frequently grab their own arms and legs instead of tree limbs, and fall out of trees.
  • The party and the Krikkit warship looked, in their writhings, a little like two ducks, one of which is trying to make a third duck inside the second duck, whilst the second duck is trying very hard to explain that it doesn’t feel ready for a third duck right now, is uncertain that it would want any putative third duck anyway, and certainly not whilst it, the second duck, was busy flying.
  • The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question ‘How can we eat?’ the second by the question ‘Why do we eat?’ and the third by the question ‘Where shall we have lunch?
  • Bistromathics itself is simply a revolutionary new way of understanding the behavior of numbers. Just as Einstein observed that space was not an absolute but depended on the observer’s movement in space, and that time was not an absolute, but depended on the observer’s movement in time, so it is now realized that numbers are not absolute, but depend on the observer’s movement in restaurants.
  • Despite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn’t think twice about buying something oven-ready become much more upset about a chicken that they’ve been on a boat with, so there is probably buried in the Western psyche a deep taboo about eating anything you’ve been introduced to socially.
  • The Heart of Gold fled on silently through the night of space, now on conventional photon drive. Its crew of four were ill as ease knowing that they had been brought together not of their own volition or by simple coincidence, but by some curious perversion of physics- as if relationships between people were susceptible to the same laws that governed the relationships between atoms and molecules
  • From another direction he felt the sensation of being a sheep startled by a flying saucer, but it was virtually indistinguishable from the feeling of being a sheep startled by anything else it ever encountered, for they were creatures who learned very little on their journey through life, and would be startled to see the sun rising in the morning, and astonished by all the green stuff in the fields.
  • It is most gratifying,” it said, “that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and so we would like to assure you that the guided missiles currently converging with your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most enthusiastic clients, and the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to your custom in future lives … thank you.
  • If you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn’t exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar.
  • I am fascinated by religion. (That’s a completely different thing from believing in it!) It has had such an incalculably huge effect on human affairs. What is it? What does it represent? Why have we invented it? How does it keep going? What will become of it? I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I’ve thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing.
  • Stomp stomp. Whirr. Pleased to be of service. Shut up. Thank you. Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp. Whirr. Thank you for making a simple door very happy. Hope your diodes rot. Thank you. Have a nice day. Stomp stomp stomp stomp. Whirr. It is my pleasure to open for you… Zark off. …and my satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done. I said zark off. Thank you for listening to this message.
  • Time, we know, is relative. You can travel light years through the stars and back, and if you do it at the speed of light then, when you return, you may have aged mere seconds while your twin brother or sister will have aged twenty, thirty, forty or however many years it is, depending on how far you traveled. This will come to you as a profound shock, particularly if you didn’t know you had a twin brother or sister.
  • He spent a lot of time flying. He learnt to communicate with birds and discovered that their conversation was fantastically boring. It was all to do with wind speed, wing spans, power-to-weight ratios and a fair bit about berries. Unfortunately, he discovered, once you have learnt birdspeak you quickly come to realize that the air is full of it the whole time, just inane bird chatter. There is no getting away from it.
  • The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as “Your Plastic Pal Who’s Fun to Be With. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing devision of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation as “a bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
  • If on the other hand he went to pay his respects to The Door and it wasn’t there . . . what then? The answer, of course, was very simple. He had a whole board of circuits for dealing with exactly this problem, in fact this was the very heart of his function. He would continue to believe in it whatever the facts turned out to be, what else was the meaning of Belief? The Door would still be there, even if the Door was not.
  • The available worlds looked pretty grim. They had little to offer him because he had little to offer them. He had been extremely chastened to realize that although he originally came from a world which had cars and computers and ballet and Armagnac, he didn’t, by himself, know how any of it worked. He couldn’t do it. Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.
  • Many words and expressions which only a matter of decades ago were considered so distastefully explicit that, were they merely to be breathed in public, the perpetrator would be shunned, barred from polite society, and in extreme cases shot through the lungs, are now thought to be very healthy and proper, and their use in everyday speech and writing is evidence of a well-adjusted, relaxed and totally un****ed-up personality.
  • You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself.” “Hang on, can I write this down?” said Arthur, excitedly fumbling in his pocket for a pencil.
  • In fact, a very similar phrase was invented to account for the sudden transition of wood, metal, plastic and concrete into an explosive condition, which was “nonlinear, catastrophic structural exasperation,” or to put it another way–as a junior cabinet minister did on television the following night in a phrase which was to haunt the rest of his career–the check-in desk had just got “fundamentally fed up with being where it was.
  • I’ve come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.
  • It takes a long time before we really get to grips with this [Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’] and begin to understand it, because not only does it seem incredible and thoroughly demeaning to us, but it’s yet another shock to our system to discover that not only are we not the centre of the Universe and we’re not made by anything, but we started out as some kind of slime and got to where we are via being a monkey. It just doesn’t read well.
  • I begged her, ‘Please don’t leave me stranded in the middle of some primitive zarking forest with no medical help and a head injury. I could be in serious trouble and so could she.'” “What did she say?” “She hit me on the head with the rock again,” Ford responded curtly. “I think i can confirm that was my daughter.” “Sweet kid.” “You have to get to know her,” said Arthur. “She eases up, does she?” “No, but you get a better sense of when to duck.
  • And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small caf√© in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
  • The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy offers this definition of the word “Infinite”. Infinite: Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some. Much bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning size, “wow, that’s big”, time. Infinity is just so big that by comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy. Gigantic multiplied by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept we’re trying to get across here.
  • David Attenborough has said that Bali is the most beautiful place in the world, but he must have been there longer than we were, and seen different bits, because most of what we saw in the couple of days we were there sorting out our travel arrangements was awful. It was just the tourist area, i.e. that part of Bali which has been made almost exactly the same as everywhere else in the world for the sake of people who have come all this way to see Bali.
  • One of the problems, and it’s one which is obviously going to get worse, is that all the people at the party are either the children or the grandchildren or the great-grandchildren of the people who wouldn’t leave in the first place, and because of all the business about selective breeding and regressive genes and so on, it means that all the people now at the party are either absolutely fanatical partygoers, or gibbering idiots, or, more and more frequently, both.
  • Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I’m afraid where you begin to suspect that the entire multidimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending yet another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise.
  • The invention of the scientific method and science is, I’m sure we’ll all agree, the most powerful intellectual idea, the most powerful framework for thinking and investigating and understanding and challenging the world around us that there is, and it rests on the premise that any idea is there to be attacked. If it withstands the attack then it lives to fight another day and if it doesn’t withstand the attack then down it goes. Religion doesn’t seem to work like that.
  • R is a velocity of measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental well-being, and not being more than, say, five minutes late. It is therefore clearly as almost infinite variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquility, this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers, and even death.
  • But the plans were on display‚¶ On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them. That’s the display department. With a flashlight. Ah, well, the lights had probably gone. So had the stairs. But look, you found the notice, didn’t you? Yes, said Arthur, yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying‚ Beware of the Leopard.
  • A hole had just appeared in the Galaxy. It was exactly a nothingth of a second long, a nothingth of an inch wide, and quite a lot of million light years from end to end. As it closed up […] Two hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs fell out of it…materializing in a large woobly heap on the famine-struck land of Poghril in the Pansel system. The whole Poghril tribe had died out from famine except for one last man who died of cholesterol poisoning some weeks later.
  • Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like, guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting “Gotcha”. It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end.
  • The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened ‘ it’s just wonderful. And . . . the opportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned.
  • People will then often say, ‘But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?’ This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)
  • The usual people tried to claim responsibility. First the IRA , then the PLO and the Gas Board. Even British Nuclear Fuels rushed out a statement to the effect that the situation was completely under control, that it was a one in a million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all, and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic, before finally having to admit that it wasn’t actually anything to do with them at all.
  • If the Universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don’t. It’s like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don’t hurt it. Not even major surgery if it’s done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.
  • We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often “crash” when we tried to use them. Before long, computers will be as trivial and plentiful as chairs and we will cease to be aware of the things. In fact I’m sure we will look back on this last decade and wonder how we could ever have mistaken what we were doing with them for “productivity”
  • The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like. It wasn’t infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity‚distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very very big, so big that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself.
  • We’re not obsessed by anything, you see,” insisted Ford. “…” “And that’s the deciding factor. We can’t win against obsession. They care, we don’t. They win.” “I care about lots of things,” said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty. “Such as?” “Well,” said the old man, “life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords.” “Would you die for them?” “Fjords?” blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. “No.” “Well then.” “Wouldn’t see the point, to be honest.
  • [The Head of Radio Three] had been ensnared by the Music Director of the college and a Professor of Philosophy. These two were busy explaining to the harassed man that the phrase “too much Mozart” was, given any reasonable definition of those three words, an inherently self-contradictory expression, and that any sentence which contained such a phrase would be thereby rendered meaningless and could not, consequently, be advanced as part of an argument in favour of any given programme-scheduling strategy.
  • Come on, he droned, I’ve been ordered to take you down to the bridge. Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? ‘Cos I don’t. He turned and walked back to the hated door. Er, excuse me, said Ford following after him, which government owns this ship? Marvin ignored him. You watch this door, he muttered, it’s about to open again. I can tell by the intolerable air of smugness it suddenly generates.
  • In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2:55, when you know you’ve taken all the baths that you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o’clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.
  • Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what’s so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what’s so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.

 

  • Not unnaturally, many elevators imbued with intelligence and precognition became terribly frustrated with the mindless business of going up and down, up and down, experimented briefly with the notion of going sideways, as a sort of existential protest, demanded participation in the decision-making process and finally took to squatting in basements sulking. An impoverished hitch-hiker visiting any planets in the Sirius star system these days can pick up easy money working as a counsellor for neurotic elevators.
  • In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.
  • I don’t like the idea of missionaries. In fact, the whole business fills me with fear and alarm. I don’t believe in God, or at least not in the one we’ve invented for ourselves in England to fulfill our peculiarly English needs, and certainly not in the ones they’ve invented in America who supply their servants with toupees, television stations and, most importantly, toll-free telephone numbers. I wish that people who did believe in such things would keep them to themselves and not export them to the developing world.
  • The kakapo is an extremely fat bird. A good-sized adult will weigh about six or seven pounds, and its wings are just about good for waggling a bit if it thinks it’s about to trip over something – but flying is out of the question. Sadly, however, it seems that not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, but it has forgotten that it has forgotten how to fly. Apparently a seriously worried kakapo will sometimes run up a tree and jump out of it, whereupon it flies like a brick and lands in a graceless heap on the ground.
  • Religion … has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, ‘Here is an idea or a notion that you’re not allowed to say anything bad about; you’re just not. Why not? Because you’re just not. If someone votes for a party that you don’t agree with, you’re free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. … But on the other hand, if somebody says ‘I mustn’t move a light switch on a Saturday’, you say ‘I respect that’.
  • It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression “As pretty as an airport.” Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only exception of this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs.
  • I think that growing up in a crowded continent like Europe with an awful lot of competing claims, ideas, cultures, and systems of thought we have, perforce, developed a more sophisticated notion of what the word freedom means than I see much evidence of in America. To be frank, it sometimes seems that the American idea of freedom has more to do with my freedom to do what I want than your freedom to do what you want. I think that in Europe we’re probably better at understanding how to balance those competing claims, though not a lot.
  • I watched the gorilla’s eyes again, wise and knowing eyes, and wondered about this business of trying to teach apes language. Our language. Why? There are many members of our own species who live in and with the forest and know it and understand it. We don’t listen to them. What is there to suggest we would listen to anything an ape could tell us? Or that it would be able to tell us of its life in a language that hasn’t been born of that life? I thought, maybe it is not that they have yet to gain a language, it is that we have lost one.
  • What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that’s really the essence of programming. By the time you’ve sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you’ve learned something about it yourself… The teacher usually learns more than the pupils. Isn’t that true?
  • He almost danced to the fridge, found the three least hairy things in it, put them on a plate and watched them intently for two minutes. Since they made no attempt to move within that time he called them breakfast and ate them. Between them they killed a virulent space disease he’d picked up without knowing it in the Flargathon Gas Swamps a few days earlier, which otherwise would have killed off half the population of the Western Hemisphere, blinded the other half, and driven everyone else psychotic and sterile, so the Earth was lucky there.
  • They are the words that finally turned me into the hermit I have now become. It was quite sudden. I saw them, and I knew what I had to do.” The sign read: “Hold stick near center of its length. Moisten pointed end in mouth. Insert in tooth space, blunt end next to gum. Use gentle in-out motion.” “It seemed to me,” said Wonko the Sane, “that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.
  • Yes, I think I use the term radical rather loosely, just for emphasis. If you describe yourself as atheist some people will say, Don’t you mean agnostic? I have to reply that I really do mean atheist, I really do not believe that there is a god; in fact, I am convinced that there is not a god (a subtle difference). I see not a shred of evidence to suggest that there is one…etc., etc. It’s easier to say that I am a radical atheist, just to signal that I really mean it, have thought about it a great deal and that it’s an opinion I hold seriously.
  • Just supposing,” he said, “just supposing” –he didn’t know what was coming next, so he thought he’d just sit back and listen–“that there was some extraordinary way in which you were very important to me, and that, though you didn’t know it, I was very important to you, but it all went for nothing because we only had five miles and I was a stupid idiot at knowing how to say something very important to someone I’ve only just met and not crash into lorries a the same time, what would you say…” He paused, helplessly, and looked at her. “I should do.
  • We live in strange times. We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own. The people with whom we populate our universes are the shadows of whole other universes intersecting with our own. Being able to glance out into this bewildering complexity of infinite recursion and say things like, ‘Oh, hi, Ed! Nice tan. How’s Carol?’ involves a great deal of filtering skill for which all conscious entities have eventually to develop a capacity in order to protect themselves from the contemplation of the chaos through which they seethe and tumble.
  • We talked about how easy it was to make the mistake of anthropomorphizing animals, and projecting our own feelings and perceptions on to them, where they were inappropriate and didn’t fit. We simply had no idea what it was like being an extremely large lizard, and neither for that matter did the lizard, because it was not self-conscious about being an extremely large lizard, it just got on with the business of being one. To react with revulsion to its behavior was to make the mistake of applying criteria that are only appropriate to the business of being human.
  • Ghastly,” continued Marvin, “it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don’t even talk about it. Look at this door,” he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut in to his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the sales brochure. ” ‘All the doors in his spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.’ ” As the door closed behind them it became apparent that it did indeed have a satisfied sighlike quality to it. “Hummmmmmmyummmmmmmah!” it said.
  • Mr L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn’t know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr L Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats.
  • It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
  • In fact, Lig never formally resigned his editorship‚he merely left his office late one morning, and has never returned since. Though well over a century has now passed, many members of the Guide staff still retain the romantic notion that he has simply popped out for a sandwich and will yet return to put in a solid afternoon’s work. Strictly speaking, all editors since Lig Lury Jr., have therefore been designated acting editors, and Lig’s desk is still preserved the way he left it, with the addition of a small sign that says LIG LURY, JR., EDITOR, MISSING, PRESUMED FED.
  • It is worth repeating at this point the theories that Ford had come up with, on his first encounter with human beings, to account for their peculiar habit of continually stating and restating the very very obvious, as in “It’s a nice day,” or “You’re very tall,” or “So this is it, we’re going to die.” His first theory was that if human beings didn’t keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably shriveled up. After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this–“If human beings don’t keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.
  • It’s the story of my life. You see, the quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead. Now, as you look through this document you’ll see that I’ve underlined all the major decisions I ever made to make the stand out. They’re all indexed and cross-referenced. See? All I can suggest is that if you take decisions that are exactly opposite to the sort of decisions that I’ve taken, then maybe you won’t finish up at the end of your life” –she paused, and filled her lungs for a good should–“in a smelly old cave like this!
  • The lights were off so that his heads could avoid looking at each other because neither of them was currently a particular engaging sight, nor had they been since he had made the error of looking into his soul. It had indeed been an error. It had been late one night– of course. It had been a difficult day– of course. There had been soulful music playing on the ship’s sound system– of course. And he had, of course, been slightly drunk. In other words, all the usual conditions that bring on a bout of soul searching had applied, but it had, nevertheless, clearly been an error.
  • He picked up the letter Q and hurled it into a distant privet bush where it hit a young rabbit. The rabbit hurtled off in terror and didn’t stop till it was set upon and eaten by a fox which choked on one of its bones and died on the bank of a stream which subsequently washed it away. During the following weeks Ford Perfect swallowed his pride and struck up a relationship with a girl who had been a personnel officer on Golgafrincham, and he was terribly upset when she suddenly passed away as a result of drinking water from a pool that had been polluted by the body of a dead fox.
  • There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now… What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.

 

Erma Bombeck (quotes)

/in /by
  • Housework can kill you if done right.
  • Never accept a drink from a urologist.
  • The term ‘working mother’ is redundant.
  • When humor go’s, there go’s civilization.
  • I am not a glutton – I am an explorer of food
  • Housework, if you do it right, will kill you.
  • Never order food in excess of your body weight.
  • No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.
  • If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.
  • Written on her tombstone: “I told you I was sick.
  • When the going gets tough, the tough make cookies.
  • Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.
  • Never have more children than you have car windows.
  • How come anything you buy will go on sale next week?
  • There is so much to teach, and the time goes so fast.
  • A child needs your love most when he deserves it least
  • My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
  • Housework, if it is done properly, can cause brain damage.
  • I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.
  • Kids need love the most when they’re acting most unlovable.
  • Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.
  • When you look like your passport photo, it’s time to go home.
  • It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.
  • I don’t think women outlive men, Doctor. It only seems longer.
  • It would have been a wonderful wedding – had it not been mine.
  • A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween.
  • It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line.
  • I didn’t fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.
  • Mother’s words of wisdom: Answer me! Don’t talk with food in your mouth!
  • Grandparenthood is one of life’s rewards for surviving your own children.
  • Don’t worry about who doesn’t like you, who has more, or who’s doing what.
  • The Rose Bowl is the only bowl I’ve ever seen that I didn’t have to clean.
  • Don’t confuse fame with success. Madonna is one; Helen Keller is the other.
  • I’ve exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.
  • I do not participate in any sport with ambulances at the bottom of the hill.
  • With boys, you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane.
  • Sometimes I can’t figure designers out. It’s as if they flunked human anatomy.
  • Pregnancy is the only time in a woman’s life she can help God work a miracle.
  • I worry about scientists discovering that lettuce has been fattening all along.
  • If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
  • When children reach the age of sixteen, they discover the meaning of life: car keys.
  • The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.
  • No self-respecting mother would run out of intimidations on the eve of a major holiday.
  • There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.
  • Cleaning the house while the children are home is like shoveling while it’s still snowing.
  • There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.
  • Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.
  • In two decades I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet.
  • Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.
  • Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the ‘Titanic’ who waved off the dessert cart.
  • It is my theory you can’t get rid of fat. All you can do is move it around, like furniture.
  • Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.
  • Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?
  • For years, my husband and I have advocated separate vacations. But the kids keep finding us.
  • What’s with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?
  • One never realizes how different a husband and wife can be until they begin to pack for a trip.
  • Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.
  • Once you see the drivers in Indonesia you understand why religion plays such a part in their lives.
  • When my kids become wild and unruly, I use a nice, safe playpen. When they’re finished, I climb out.
  • It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.
  • Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity.
  • It’s frightening to wake up one morning and discover that while you were asleep you went out of style.
  • It hangs heavy for the bored, eludes the busy, flies by the for young, and runs out for the aged.
  • No baby shall at any time be quartered in a house where there are no soft laps, no laughter, or no love.
  • A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn’t charge more after midnight – or anything before midnight.
  • My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.
  • I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night.
  • I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: ‘Checkout Time is 18 years.’
  • If I had my life to live over I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.
  • The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.
  • Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.
  • On Being Blonde: Wit and Wisdom from the World’s Most Infamous Blondes. Book by Paula Munier, p. 67, September 1, 2004.
  • Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It’s too controversial.
  • One certainty when you travel is the moment you arrive in a foreign country, the American dollar will fall like a stone.
  • My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.
  • When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he’s doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.
  • Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It’s unbridled, its unplanned, it’s full of suprises.
  • All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.
  • A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in any hurry for you to grow up.
  • I have seen my kid struggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle.
  • What makes people laugh? . . . It’s a happy marriage between a person who needs to laugh and someone who’s got one to give.
  • People usually survive their illnesses, but the paper work eventually does them in. Filing a claim for insurance is terminal.
  • There’s something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she’s only measured water in it.
  • As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her.
  • It seemed rather incongruous that in a society of super sophisticated communication, we often suffer from a shortage of listeners.
  • I have a friend who lives by a three-word philosophy: Seize the Moment. Just possibly, she may be the wisest woman on this planet.
  • . . . but mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute – look at it and really see it – live it – and never give it back.
  • The hippopotamus is a vegetarian and looks like a wall. Lions who eat only red meat are sleek and slim. Are nutritionists on the wrong track?
  • Women are never what they seem to be. There is the woman you see and there is the woman who is hidden. Buy the gift for the woman who is hidden.
  • Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.
  • I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.
  • When you leave them in the morning, they stick their nose in the door crack and stand there like a portrait until you turn the key eight hours later.
  • When your mother asks, ‘Do you want a piece of advice?’ it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.
  • My theory on housework is, if the item doesn’t multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?
  • Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.
  • When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me’.
  • I haven’t trusted polls since I read that 62% of women had affairs during their lunch hour. I’ve never met a woman in my life who would give up lunch for sex.
  • Have you any idea how many children it takes to turn off one light in the kitchen Three. It takes one to say What light and two more to say I didn’t turn it on.
  • On vacations: We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies, and the sand out of our belongings.
  • I didn’t fear old age. I was just becoming increasingly aware of the fact that the only people who said old age was beautiful were usually twenty-three years old.
  • Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect this nation’s compassion, unselfish caring, patience, and just plain love for one another.
  • What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?
  • I just clipped 2 articles from a current magazine. One is a diet guaranteed to drop 5 pounds off my body in a weekend. The other is a recipe for a 6 minute pecan pie.
  • Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.
  • One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is.
  • Once you get a spice in your home, you have it forever. Women never throw out spices. The Egyptians were buried with their spices. I know which one I’m taking with me when I go.
  • Motherhood isn’t just a series of contractions; it’s a state of mind. From the moment we know life is inside us, we feel a responsibility to protect and defend that human being.
  • Some emotions don’t make a lot of noise. It’s hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint – like a heartbeat. And pure love – why, some days it’s so quiet, you don’t even know it’s there.
  • I firmly believe kids don’t want your understanding. They want your trust, your compassion, your blinding love and your car keys, but you try to understand them and you’re in big trouble.
  • Cleanliness is not next to godliness. It isn’t even in the same neighborhood. No one has ever gotten a religious experience out of removing burned-on cheese from the grill of the toaster oven.
  • Those magazine dieting stories always have the testimonial of a woman who wore a dress that could slipcover New Jersey in one photo and thirty days later looked like a well-dressed thermometer.
  • For the first two years of a child’s life, we spend every waking hour tryibg to get the child to communicate. Then we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out how we can reverse the process.
  • Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted. Every evening they disappear. Most parents never imagine how hard they try to please us, and how miserable they feel when they think they have failed.
  • It is ludicrous to read the microwave direction on the boxes of food you buy, as each one will have a disclaimer: THIS WILL VARY WITH YOUR MICROWAVE. Loosely translated, this means, You’re on your own, Bernice.
  • Friends are “annuals” that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a “perennial” that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There’s a place in the garden for both of them.
  • If I had my life to live over, instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I’d have cherished ever moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle.
  • I read one psychologist’s theory that said, “Never strike a child in your anger.” When could I strike him? When he is kissing me on my birthday? When he’s recuperating from measles? Do I slap the Bible out of his hand on Sunday?
  • There is nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child. … Time, self-pity, apathy, bitterness, and exhaustion can take the Christmas out of the child, but you cannot take the child out of Christmas.
  • People are always asking couples whose marriage has endured at least a quarter of a century for their secret for success. Actually, it is no secret at all. I am a forgiving woman. Long ago, I forgave my husband for not being Paul Newman.
  • With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It’s all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.
  • Motherhood is the second oldest profession in the world. It never questions age, height, religious preference, health, political affiliation, citizenship, morality, ethnic background, marital status, economic level, convenience, or previous experience.
  • I remember thinking how often we look, but never see … we listen, but never hear … we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.
  • For years my wedding ring has done its job. It has led me not into temptation. It has reminded my husband numerous times at parties that it’s time to go home. It has been a source of relief to a dinner companion. It has been a status symbol in the maternity ward.
  • Enter my first neighbor – a woman who spoke in complete, coherent sentences, who ate with a knife and fork and who only cried at weddings. I couldn’t help myself. In a dramatic gesture, I bolted the door and threw my body across it to prevent her exit. She understood.
  • Everyone is guilty at one time or another of throwing out questions that beg to be ignored, but mothers seem to have a market on the supply. “Do you want a spanking or do you want to go to bed?” Don’t you want to save some of the pizza for your brother?” Wasn’t there any change?
  • It’s the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have…One pair that see through closed doors. Another in the back of her head…and, of course, the ones in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and reflect ‘I understand and I love you’ without so much as uttering a word.
  • The family. We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms. . . and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together.
  • I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you’re both breathless. They crash . . . you add a longer tail . . . you patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they’ll fly.
  • Making coffee has become the great compromise of the decade. It’s the only thing “real” men do that doesn’t seem to threaten their masculinity. To women, it’s on the same domestic entry level as putting the spring back into the toilet-tissue holder or taking a chicken out of the freezer to thaw.
  • Most mothers entering the labor market outside the home are naive. They stagger home each evening, holding mail in their teeth, the cleaning over their arm, a lamb chop defrosting under each armpit, balancing two gallons of frozen milk between their knees, and expect one of the kids to get the door.
  • Given another shot at life, I would seize every minute…look at it and really see it… live it…and never give it back. Stop sweating the small stuff. Don’t worry about who doesn’t like you, who has more, or who’s doing what. Instead, let’s cherish the relationships we have with those who do love us.
  • Kids have little computer bodies with disks that store information. They remember who had to do the dishes the last time you had spaghetti, who lost the knob off the TV set six years ago, who got punished for teasing the dog when he wasn’t teasing the dog and who had to wear girls boots the last time it snowed.
  • Kids are without a doubt the most suspicious diners in the world. They will eat mud (raw or baked) rocks, paste, crayons, ball-point pens, moving goldfish, cigarette butts, and cat food. Try to coax a little beef stew into their mouths and they look at you like a puppy when you stand over him with the Sunday paper rolled up.
  • I love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing…. Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, “I told you so.
  • You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.
  • Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins.
  • I was a closet pacifier advocate. So were most of my friends. Unknown to our mothers, we owned thirty or forty of those little suckers that were placed strategically around the house so a cry could be silenced in less than thirty seconds. Even though bottles were boiled, rooms disinfected, and germs fought one on one, no one seemed to care where the pacifier had been.
  • When mothers talk about the depression of the empty nest, they’re not mourning the passing of all those wet towels on the floor, or the music that numbs your teeth, or even the bottle of capless shampoo dribbling down the shower drain. They’re upset because they’ve gone from supervisor of a child’s life to a spectator. It’s like being the vice president of the United States.
  • Adults are always telling young people, ‘These are the best years of your life.’ Are they? I don’t know. Sometimes when adults say this to children I look into their faces. They look like someone on the top seat of the Ferris wheel who has had too much cotton candy and barbecue. They’d like to get off and be sick but everyone keeps telling them what a good time they’re having.
  • If I had my life to live over again, I would have waxed less and listened more. … I would have cried and laughed less while watching television … and more while watching real life. … But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute of it … look at it and really see it … try it on … live it … exhaust it … and never give the minute back until there was nothing left of it.
  • He opened the jar of pickles when no one else could. He was the only one in the house who wasn’t afraid to go into the basement by himself. He cut himself shaving, but no one kissed it or got excited about it. It was understood when it rained, he got the car and brought it around to the door. When anyone was sick, he went out to get the prescription filled. He took lots of pictures… but he was never in them.
  • There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, ‘Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course I’ve got dreams.’ Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yep, they’re still there. These are great dreams, but they never even get out of the box. It takes an uncommon amount of guts to put your dreams on the line, to hold them up and say, ‘How good or how bad am I?’ That’s where courage comes in.
  • I am always behind the shopper at the grocery store who has stitched her coupons in the lining of her coat and wants to talk about a ‘strong’ chicken she bought two weeks ago. The register tape also runs out just before her sub-total. In the public restroom, I always stand behind the teen-ager who is changing into her band uniform for a parade and doesn’t emerge until she has combed the tassels on her boots, shaved her legs, and recovered her contact lens from the commode.
  • Someday, when my children are old enough to understand the logic that motivates a mother, I’ll tell them: I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going, with whom and what time you would get home. … I loved you enough to be silent and let you discover your friend was a creep. I loved you enough to make you return a Milky Way with a bite out of it to a drugstore and confess, ‘I stole this.’ … But most of all I loved you enough to say no when you hated me for it. That was the hardest part of all.

 

Steven Wright (quotes)

/in , /by
  • I washed mud off of mud.
  • I just lost a buttonhole.
  • Sometimes I… No, I don’t.
  • I’m a peripheral visionary.
  • I had amnesia once or twice.
  • A metaphor is like a simile.
  • I had my coat hangers spayed.
  • I was skydiving horizontally.
  • Hermits have no peer pressure.
  • Plan to be spontaneous tomorrow.
  • Do fish get cramps after eating?
  • OK, so what’s the speed of dark?
  • I was an only child, eventually.
  • I can’t stop thinking like this.
  • I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
  • What a nice night for an evening.
  • Tinsel is really snakes’ mirrors.
  • Even snakes are afraid of snakes.
  • How young can you die of old age?
  • What’s another word for Thesaurus?
  • How can there be self-help groups?
  • Do you have any toy train schedules?
  • Yesterday, Eyeglasses, Prescriptions
  • How do you get off a non-stop flight?
  • Is it possible to be totally partial?
  • It’s a fine night to have an evening.
  • Country, Phones, Questions And Answers
  • Is it weird in here, or is it just me?
  • I used to be a narrator for bad mimes.
  • I was arrested for lip-syncing karaoke.
  • I invented the cordless extension cord.
  • Do Lipton employees take coffee breaks?
  • A fool and his money are soon partying.
  • Imagination, My Friends, My Imagination
  • I eat Swiss cheese from the inside out.
  • Four years ago… no, it was yesterday.
  • 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.
  • Thinking, Trying Something New, Creating
  • I have a fax machine with “fax waiting”.
  • I thought I would be a guy on the radio.
  • How come abbreviated is such a long word?
  • If God dropped acid, would he see people?
  • I was once arrested for resisting arrest.
  • Last week I forgot how to ride a bicycle.
  • I intend to live forever. So far, so good.
  • Smoking cures weight problems, eventually.
  • I’m writing an unauthorized autobiography.
  • My father was a small claims court jester.
  • At one point he decided enough was enough.
  • Because I don’t believe everything I read.
  • Inferiority, Very Good, Inferiority Complex
  • Half the people you know are below average.
  • Do Roman paramedics refer to IV’s as ‘4’s’?
  • If I ever had twins, I’d use one for parts.
  • I’m so hyper. (said with a very dull voice>
  • The speed of time is one second per second.
  • Always try to be modest, and be proud of it!
  • Why are there interstate highways in Hawaii?
  • Why is a carrot more orange than an orange?
  • The other day I … no wait, that wasn’t me.
  • Yesterday, my eyeglass prescription ran out.
  • Why isn’t the number 11 pronounced onety one?
  • No one is listening until you make a mistake.
  • I like to reminisce with people I don’t know.
  • Laughing stock: cattle with a sense of humor.
  • If its tourist season, why cant we shoot them
  • Do radioactive cats have eighteen half-lives?
  • If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?
  • I Xeroxed my watch. Now I have time to spare.
  • The doctor says he has to amputate all of me.
  • I like to skate on the other side of the ice.
  • Consciousness: That annoying time between naps
  • Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
  • Whatever happened to preparations A through G?
  • I saw a man with a wooden leg and a real foot.
  • My socks DO match. They’re the same thickness.
  • On the other hand, you have different fingers.
  • Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
  • If a cow laughed, would milk come out her nose?
  • I poured spot remover on my dog. Now he’s gone.
  • Can you buy an entire chess set in a pawn shop?
  • I drive way too fast to worry about cholesterol.
  • Why do we wait until a pig is dead to “cure” it?
  • I’m not afraid of heights. I’m afraid of widths.
  • Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your life.
  • Shin: a device for finding furniture in the dark.
  • How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?
  • I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.
  • Why don’t they just make mouse-flavored cat food?
  • I went to San Francisco. I found someone’s heart.
  • You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?
  • If I melt dry ice, can I swim without getting wet?
  • .. can’t live with ’em…… can’t shoot ’em
  • My theory of evolution is that Darwin was adopted.
  • always remember your unique, just like everone else
  • If you are killing time, are you damaging eternity?
  • What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
  • If heat rises, then heaven must be hotter than hell
  • The sky is falling. No, I’m tipping over backwards.
  • I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.
  • When I die, I’m leaving my body to science fiction.
  • If you shoot a Mime, do you need to use a silencer?
  • I bought a million lottery tickets. I won a dollar.
  • Five out of four people have trouble with fractions.
  • Why do they sterilize needles for lethal injections?
  • When I erase a word with a pencil, where does it go?
  • I put hardwood floors on top of wall-to-wall carpet.
  • When the Leaves Blow Away. Documentary, Comedy, 2006.
  • Isn’t Disney World a people trap operated by a mouse?
  • I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.
  • Is boneless chicken considered to be an invertebrate?
  • I saw a tree fall in the woods, and I didn’t hear it.
  • Why isn’t the word “phonetically” spelled with an “f”?
  • I am writing a book. So far I have the pages numbered.
  • The severity of the itch is proportional to the reach.
  • Did you sleep well?” “No, I made a couple of mistakes.
  • I got a garage door opener. It can’t close. Just open.
  • If you can’t hear me, it’s because I’m in parentheses.
  • Why is the third hand on a watch called a second hand?
  • Snakes have no arms. That’s why they don’t wear vests.
  • My secret to staying young… Having no sense of time.
  • I Xeroxed a mirror. Now I have an extra Xerox machine.
  • A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
  • I took a lie detector test the other day. No, I didn’t.
  • All those who believe in psychokinesis – raise my hand.
  • Why, in a country of free speech, are there phone bills?
  • I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.
  • Why are there five syllables in the word “monosyllabic”?
  • 7 per cent of all statistics are made up on the spot.
  • I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.
  • My neighbor has a circular driveway… he can’t get out.
  • If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat
  • You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
  • I got this powdered water – now I don’t know what to add.
  • Imagine Oshkosh straitjackets for little insane children.
  • I’m moving to Mars next week, so if you have any boxes…
  • I couldn’t find the remote control to the remote control.
  • I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.
  • Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect.
  • Black holes result from God dividing the universe by zero.
  • I got food poisoning today. I don’t know when I’ll use it.
  • I’ve never seen electricity, that’s why I don’t pay for it
  • It’s like the Wild West, the Internet. There are no rules.
  • How many people does it take to change a searchlight bulb?
  • Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.
  • I have not lost my mind – it’s backed up on disk somewhere.
  • I’m a psychic amnesiac. I know in advance what I’ll forget.
  • Why buy a product that it takes 2000 flushes to get rid of?
  • I used to have an open mind but my brains kept falling out.
  • I bought some powdered water, but I don’t know what to add.
  • I have an inferiority complex, but it’s not a very good one.
  • If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
  • When everything’s coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.
  • Isn’t the best way to save face to keep the lower part shut?
  • If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?
  • It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it.
  • Support bacteria – they’re the only culture some people have.
  • Cross country skiing is great if you live in a small country.
  • What do little birdies see when they get knocked unconscious?
  • Why do we wash bath towels? Aren’t we clean when we use them?
  • I wear my heart on my sleeve. I wear my liver on my pant leg.
  • Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.
  • Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
  • What would a chair look like if your knees bent the other way?
  • Everyone has a photographic Memory, some just don’t have film.
  • Drugs may lead to nowhere, but at least it’s the scenic route.
  • I have a paper cut from writing my suicide note. It’s a start.
  • I don’t have to walk my dog anymore. I walked him all at once.
  • For my sister’s 50th birthday, I sent her a singing mammogram.
  • I’m addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn’t matter.
  • If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?
  • Should you trust a stockbroker who’s married to a travel agent?
  • I tried to hang myself with a bungee cord. I kept almost dying.
  • Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
  • I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
  • I saw a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second.
  • Do the people in Australia call the rest of the world ‘Up Over’?
  • I had to stop driving my car for a while… the tires got dizzy.
  • Why don’t they make the whole plane out of that black box stuff.
  • Why doesn’t the fattest man in the world become a hockey goalie?
  • If you melt dry ice in a pool and go swimming, will you get wet?
  • Everything is within walking distance, as long as you have time.
  • I’m so tired… I was up all night trying to round off infinity.
  • How much deeper would the ocean be if sponges didn’t live there?
  • Whose cruel idea was it for the word “lisp” to have an “s” in it?
  • I think it’s wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.
  • If a mute kid swears, should his mother wash his hands with soap?
  • The sign said “eight items or less”. So I changed my name to Les.
  • The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese
  • If you are sending someone some Styrofoam, what do you pack it in?
  • Yesterday I told a chicken to cross the road. It said, “What for?”
  • Why do scientists call it research when looking for something new?
  • Why are they called a-part-ments, when they’re all stuck together?
  • A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
  • CNN Live Today with Daryn Kagan, edition.cnn.com. April 19, 2006.
  • I spent all my money on a FAX machine. Now I can only FAX collect.
  • If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
  • Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.
  • I broke my arm trying to fold a bed. It wasn’t the kind that folds.
  • If you had a million Shakespeares, could they write like a monkey?
  • I brought a mirror to Lovers’ Lane. I told everybody I’m Narcissus.
  • Is it true that cannibals don’t eat clowns because they taste funny?
  • A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me, I’m afraid of widths.
  • Why do we put suits in a garment bag and put garments in a suitcase?
  • I bought a cheap piece of land… It was on someone else’s property.
  • If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?
  • I named my dog Stay, so I can say, ‘Come here, Stay! Come here, Stay!
  • I have an existential map. It has ‘You are here’ written all over it.
  • Ever wonder what the speed of lightning would be if it didn’t zigzag?
  • I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.
  • They say the universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic.
  • If one synchronised swimmer drowns, do all the rest have to drown too?
  • I eat swiss cheese. But I only nibble on it. I make the holes bigger.
  • I have a quantum car. Every time I look at the speedometer I get lost.
  • If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.
  • I look like a casual, laid-back guy, but it’s like a circus in my head.
  • I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.
  • I went to a garage sale. ‘How much for the garage’ ‘It’s not for sale.’
  • I just got this new camera. It’s very advanced – you don’t even need it.
  • You know the old joke, I went to the fights and a hockey game broke out.
  • I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.
  • Ever notice how irons have a setting for permanent press? I don’t get it.
  • I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter.
  • The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
  • I went to a general store but they wouldn’t let me buy anything specific.
  • I think God’s going to come down and pull civilization over for speeding.
  • I bought some instant water one time but I didn’t know what to add to it.
  • The Stones, I love the Stones. I watch them whenever I can. Fred, Barney.
  • I bought a house on a one-way dead-end road. I don’t know how I got there.
  • I saw a bank that said ’24 Hour Banking,’ but I don’t have that much time.
  • Your honor, why would anyone in their right mind park in the passing lane?
  • The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
  • If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?
  • I finally got around to reading the dictionary. Turns out the Zebra did it.
  • I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don’t know what to feed it.
  • If man evolved from monkeys and apes, why do we still have monkeys and apes?
  • I just have a relationship with my imagination. It’s like my friend, almost.
  • My friend Sam has one leg. I went to his house. I couldn’t go up the stairs.
  • Last night I played a blank tape at full blast. The mime next door went nuts.
  • Why do you press harder on a remote-control when you know the battery’s dead?
  • Imagine how weird phones would look if your mouth was nowhere near your ears.
  • To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
  • They say you’re not supposed to put metal in a microwave oven. They’re right.
  • Do married people live longer than single people or does it just SEEM longer?
  • If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before.
  • I washed a sock. Then I put it in the dryer. When I took it out, it was gone.
  • I took a course in speed waiting. Now I can wait an hour in only ten minutes.
  • My school colors were clear. We used to say, ‘I’m not naked, I’m in the band.
  • It doesn’t matter what temperature the room is, it’s always room temperature.
  • I live at the end of a dead end one way street. I don’t know how I got there.
  • If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
  • I forgot and left the lighthouse on all night. Next day the sun wouldn’t rise.
  • I had just received my degree in Calcium Anthropology… the study of milkmen.
  • I rented a lottery ticket. I won a million dollars. But I had to give it back.
  • My act is an exaggeration of a part of me. I’m much more expressive off stage.
  • I was thinking that women should put pictures of missing husbands on beer cans.
  • Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.
  • I bought an ant farm. I don’t know where I am going to get a tractor that small!
  • Don’t you hate when your hand falls asleep and you know it will be up all night.
  • I live on a one-way street that’s also a dead end. I’m not sure how I got there.
  • There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.
  • The Secret of All Art by James Altucher, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 3, 2015.
  • I had a dream that all the babies prevented by the pill showed up. They were mad.
  • After eating, do amphibians need to wait an hour before getting out of the water?
  • I don’t get up, get dressed, go out, and think, ‘Okay, I gotta find eight jokes.’
  • Why is it, when a door is open it’s ajar, but when a jar is open, it’s not a door?
  • What do you do when you see an endangered animal that eats only endangered plants?
  • When I was ten, my pa told me never to talk to strangers. We haven’t spoken since.
  • I saw a vegetarian wearing a furry coat. so I looked closer. it was made of grass.
  • My roommate got a pet elephant. Then it got lost. It’s in the apartment somewhere.
  • Babies don’t need a vacation. But I still see them at the beach. It pisses me off.
  • One day a guy tried to rob me on the street, and I had no money. So I charged him.
  • I installed a skylight in my apartment… the people who live above me are furious!
  • I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side.
  • They say we’re 98% water. We’re that close to drowning. I like to live on the edge.
  • If people from Poland are called Poles, why aren’t people from Holland called Holes?
  • Why doesn’t Tarzan have a beard? Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the bottle?
  • Happy Birthday to You by Don Meyer, Ph.D., www.huffingtonpost.com. October 1, 2013.
  • I went to a 7-11 and asked for a 2×4 and a box of 3×5’s. The clerk said, “ten-four.”
  • I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn’t park anywhere near the place.
  • I just got out of the hospital. I was in a speed-reading accident. I hit a bookmark.
  • If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?
  • Day 1 — Still tired from the move. Day 2 — Everybody talks to me like I’m an idiot.
  • I hate it when my leg falls asleep. I know that means it’s going to be up all night.
  • I once locked my keys out of my car. I had to break out of my car with a coat hanger.
  • I parked in the tow-away zone, and when I got back, the entire neighborhood was gone.
  • The Simpsons, TV Series (1989– ). “The Last Temptation of Krust”, www.imdb.com. 1998.
  • Like other kids wanted to become firemen or astronauts, I wanted to make people laugh.
  • To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It’s commenting or observing or twisting life.
  • Only one in four jokes ever works, and I still can’t predict what people will laugh at.
  • If all those psychics know the winning lottery numbers, why are they all still working?
  • I busted a mirror and got seven years bad luck. But my lawyer thinks he can get me five.
  • I saw a sign: “Rest Area 25 Miles”. That’s pretty big. Some people must be really tired.
  • I went to the hardware store and bought some used paint. It was in the shape of a house.
  • The Things I Wish They’d Told Me. As I Was Growing Up. Book by David Rankin, p. 97, 2010.
  • I got a new shadow. I had to get rid of the other one – it wasn’t doing what I was doing.
  • George is a radio announcer, and when he walks under a bridge… you can’t hear him talk.
  • Last night I fell asleep in a satellite dish. My dreams were broadcast all over the world.
  • I used to work at a health food store. I got fired for drinking straight Bosco on the job.
  • I had some eyeglasses. I was walking down the street when suddenly the prescription ran out.
  • I remember when the candle shop burned down. Everyone stood around singing ‘Happy Birthday.’
  • Officer, I know I was going faster than 55MPH, but I wasn’t going to be on the road an hour.
  • The sun got confused about daylight savings time. It rose twice. Everything had two shadows.
  • Yesterday I parked my car in a tow-away zone…when I came back the entire area was missing.
  • How come you don’t ever hear about gruntled employees? And who has been dis-ing them anyhow?
  • If you take an Oriental person and spin him around several times, does he become disoriented?
  • Why are they called buildings when they’re already finished? Shouldn’t they be called builts?
  • I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.
  • I woke up one morning, and all of my stuff had been stolen and replaced by exact duplicates”.
  • I was always making my friends laugh but I never wanted the attention of the whole classroom.
  • Right now I’m having amnesia and déjà vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.
  • If Dracula can’t see his reflection in a mirror, how come his hair is always so neatly combed?
  • Why do they call it the Department of Interior when they are in charge of everything outdoors?
  • My friend Winnie is a procrastinator. He didn’t get his birth mark til he was eight years old.
  • Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he just whipped out a quarter?
  • When I was a kid, I went to the store and asked the guy, Do you have any toy train schedules?
  • I plugged my phone in where the blender used to be. I called someone. They went “Aaaaahhhh…”
  • Why do banks charge you a “non-sufficient funds fee” on money they already know you don’t have?
  • The Bermuda Triangle got tired of warm weather. It moved to Alaska. Now Santa Claus is missing.
  • I like to go to art museums and name the untitled paintings… Boy With Pail… Kitten On Fire.
  • I have a map of the united states …. it’s original size … it says one mile equals one mile.
  • If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to see it, do the other trees make fun of it?
  • Winny would spend all of his time practicing limbo. He got pretty good. He could go under a rug.
  • I replaced the headlights in my car with strobe lights, so it looks like I’m the only one moving.
  • My friend has a baby. I’m recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.
  • I was hitchhiking the other day and a hearse stopped. I said, ‘No thanks, I’m not going that far.
  • I used to own an ant farm but had to give it up. I couldn’t find tractors small enough to fit it.
  • I was in the first submarine. Instead of a periscope, they had a kaleidoscope. “We’re surrounded.”
  • I put tape on the mirrors in my house so I don’t accidentally walk through into another dimension.
  • Sometimes I talk to myself in languages I’m unfamiliar with… just to screw with my subconscious.
  • In my house on the ceilings I have paintings of the rooms above… so I never have to go upstairs.
  • Yesterday I saw a chicken crossing the road. I asked it why. It told me it was none of my business.
  • I got a chain letter by fax. It’s very simple. You just fax a dollar bill to everybody on the list.
  • Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died.
  • Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish.
  • It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.
  • I didn’t want to be selling insurance at 40, wondering what would it have been like to do stand-up.
  • I told her I knew when I was going to die because my birth certificate had an expiration date on it.
  • When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child… eventually.
  • Imagine if birds were tickled by feathers. You’d see a flock of birds come by, laughing hysterically!
  • I was once walking through the forest alone. A tree fell right in front of me – and I didn’t hear it.
  • [Referring to a glass of water:] I mixed this myself. Two parts H, one part O. I don’t trust anybody!
  • I watched the Indy 500, and I was thinking that if they left earlier they wouldn’t have to go so fast.
  • I went for a walk last night and she asked me how long I was going to be gone. I said, ‘The whole time.
  • How come Superman could stop bullets with his chest, but always ducked when someone threw a gun at him?
  • I kept a diary right after I was born. Day 1: Tired from the move. Day 2: Everyone thinks I’m an idiot.
  • There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators.
  • The sun never sets on the British Empire. But it rises every morning. The sky must get awfully crowded.
  • The other night I was lying in bed, looking up at the stars, and I wondered, ‘Where the hell is my roof?
  • Someone asked me, if I were stranded on a desert island what book would I bring… ‘How to Build a Boat.’
  • Why is it lemon juice contains mostly artificial ingredients but dishwashing liquid contains real lemons?
  • I met this wonderful girl at Macy’s. She was buying clothes and I was putting Slinkies on the escalator.
  • I took my dog for a walk… all the way from New York to Florida… I said to him “There now you’re done.”
  • I went to the hardware store to buy some batteries, but they weren’t included, so I had to buy them again.
  • All of the people in my building are insane. The guy above me designs synthetic hairballs for ceramic cats.
  • I saw a want ad. “light housekeeping.” They said “Here, change this bulb.” I said “I’ll need some friends.”
  • If the universe is everything, and scientists say that the universe is expanding, what is it expanding into?
  • I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast at any time’. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.
  • I got a new dog. He’s a paranoid retriever. He brings back everything because he’s not sure what I threw him.
  • If you got into a taxi and the driver started driving backward, would the taxi driver end up owing you money?
  • I have an answering machine in my car. It says, I’m home now. But leave a message and I’ll call when I’m out.
  • When I woke up this morning my girlfriend asked me, ‘Did you sleep good?’ I said ‘No, I made a few mistakes.’
  • If it’s zero degrees outside today and it’s supposed to be twice as cold tomorrow, how cold is it going to be?
  • I like to fill my tub up with water, then turn the shower on and act like I’m in a submarine that’s been hit .
  • In school, every period ends with a bell. Every sentence ends with a period. Every crime ends with a sentence.
  • I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.
  • In hindsight, I realized I could see into the future. Which is kind of like having premonitions of flashbacks.
  • My aunt gave me a walkie-talkie for my birthday. She says if I’m good, she’ll give me the other one next year.
  • .. my mind was wandering… one time it went all the way to Venus and ordered a meal I couldn’t pay for.
  • Why is a person who plays the piano called a pianist but a person who drives a racing car not called a racist?
  • I don’t like politicians, and I don’t like politics. I definitely don’t want to be associated with any of them.
  • I was sad because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet. So I said, “Got any shoes you’re not using?
  • For my birthday I got a humidifier and a de-humidifier… I put them in the same room and let them fight it out.
  • I have a large sea shell collection which I keep scattered on beaches all over the world. Maybe you’ve seen it.
  • I worked in a health food store once. A guy asked me, ‘If I melt dry ice, can I take a bath without getting wet?
  • I play the harmonica. The only way I can play is if I get my car going really fast, and stick it out the window.
  • If it’s a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny.
  • Sponges grow in the ocean. That just kills me. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn’t happen.
  • All the plants in my house are dead – I shot them last night. I was teasing them by watering them with ice cubes.
  • I hooked up my accelerator pedal in my car to my brake lights. I hit the gas, people behind me stop, and I’m gone.
  • My girlfriend does her nails with white-out. When she’s asleep, I go over there and write misspelled words on them.
  • In Vegas, I got into a long argument with the man at the roulette wheel over what I considered to be an odd number.
  • The older you get, the more you learn to see what you’ve been taught to see. When you’re a kid, you see what’s there.
  • When I was in boy scouts, I slipped on the ice and hurt my ankle. A little old lady had to help me across the street.
  • I went to the bank and asked to borrow a cup of money. They said, ‘What for?’ I said, ‘I’m going to buy some sugar.’
  • You know what scares me? When you have to be nice to some paranoid schizophrenic, just because she lives in your head.
  • It was the first time I was ever in love, and I learned a lot. Before that I’d never even thought about killing myself.
  • When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, ‘Well, what do you need?’
  • Doing stand-up is like running across a frozen pond with the ice breaking behind you. I love it because it’s dangerous.
  • I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.
  • If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?
  • Tell a man that there are 400 billion stars and he’ll believe you. Tell him a bench has wet paint and he has to touch it.
  • Some friends of mine got me a sweater for my birthday. I’d have preferred a moaner or a screamer, but the sweater was OK.
  • I have the world’s largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world… perhaps you’ve seen it.
  • The other day I went to a tourist information booth and asked, ‘Tell me about some of the people who were here last year.
  • It’s a good thing we have gravity or else when birds died they’d just stay right up there. Hunters would be all confused.
  • I laugh all the time – at things, people, stuff, whatever. But, I don’t laugh onstage because then it’s serious business.
  • You know, the New Testament is pretty old. I think they should call them the Old Testament and the Most Recent Testament.
  • Believe the hype: Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez might be the real deal by DJ Gallo, www.theguardian.com. September 1, 2016.
  • I got a dog and named him ‘Stay’. Now, I go ‘Come here, Stay!’ After a while, the dog went insane and wouldn’t move at all.
  • Real life? Well, I just hope mine isn’t investigated. They might find that I don’t really exist – that I’m just a hologram.
  • I took a course in speed reading. Then I got Reader’s Digest on microfilm. By the time I got the machine set up, I was done.
  • When I was in school the teachers told me practice makes perfect; then they told me nobody’s perfect so I stopped practicing.
  • There’s a pizza place near where I live that sells only slices. In the back, you can see a guy tossing a triangle in the air.
  • I was in the supermarket the other day, and I met a lady in the aisle where they keep the generic brands. Her name was ‘woman.
  • My friend Sally is a nudist. I went to her house. The closets have no doors. The walls are covered with see-through wallpaper.
  • Very rarely do I talk off the top of my head on stage. I’m not an improv guy. I’m a writer-guy who presents what he’s written.
  • I moved into an all-electric house. I forgot and left the porch light on all day. When I got home the front door wouldn’t open.
  • My doctor told me I shouldn’t work out until I’m in better shape. I told him, ‘All right; don’t send me a bill until I pay you.’
  • I was born by Caesarian section . . . but not so you’d notice. It’s just that when I leave a house, I go out through the window.
  • When I was a kid I had a friend who worked in a radio station. Whenever we walked under a bridge, you couldn’t hear what he said.
  • I need one of those baby monitors from my subconscious to my consciousness so I can know what the hell I’m really thinking about.
  • Last year we drove across the country…We had one cassette tape to listen to on the entire trip… I don’t remember what it was.
  • I like George Carlin’s jokes. I like his humor. He’s one of my heroes, and I like what he did with talking about everyday things.
  • I put contact lenses in my dog’s eyes. They had little pictures of cats on them. Then I took one out and he ran around in circles.
  • When I was 16… I worked in a pet store. And they fired me because… they had three snakes in there, and one day I braided them.
  • I put a new engine in my car, but forgot to take the old one out. Now my car goes 500 miles per hour. The harmonica sounds amazing.
  • The other day when I was walking through the woods, I saw a rabbit standing in front of a candle making shadows of people on a tree.
  • It seems like we wake up and it’s a race until you get to bed. It gets to you after a while and you think, ‘What the hell am I doing?’
  • Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.
  • I was in a grocery store. I saw a sign that said ‘pet supplies.’ So I did. Then I went outside and saw a sign that said, ‘Compact cars.
  • My nephew has HDADHD. High Definition Attention Deficit Disorder. He can barely pay attention, but when he does it’s unbelievably clear.
  • The best kind of friend is the kind you sit with, never say a word and walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you ever had.
  • A beautiful woman moved in next door. So I went over and returned a cup of sugar. She said, “You didn’t borrow this.” I said, ” I will!”
  • What I like about the jokes, to me it’s a lot of logic, no matter how crazy they are. It has to make absolute sense, or it won’t be funny.
  • I’m kinda tired. I was up all night trying to round off infinity. Then I got bored and went out and painted passing lines on curved roads.
  • Having sex with her is incredible. It’s just like a concert. We throw Frisbees around the room. And when she wants more she lights a match.
  • The other day, I was walking my dog around my building . . . on the ledge. Some people are afraid of heights. Not me, I’m afraid of widths.
  • I got an answering machine for my phone. . . . Now, when I’m not home and somebody calls me up . . . they hear a recording of a busy signal.
  • If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?
  • I saw a small bottle of cologne and asked if it was for sale. She said, “It’s free with purchase.” I asked her if anyone bought anything toda
  • I was born. When I was 23 I started telling jokes. Then I started going on television and doing films. That’s still what I am doing. The end.
  • When I turned two I was really anxious, because I’d doubled my age in a year. I thought, if this keeps up, by the time I’m six I’ll be ninety.
  • When I get real bored, I like to drive downtown and get a great parking spot, then sit in my car and count how many people ask if I’m leaving.
  • You know how it is when you’re walking up the stairs, and you get to the top, and you think there’s one more step? I’m like that all the time.
  • I like to talk about lint and coasters, the expansion of the universe and maybe McDonald’s. I’m completely turned off by the idea of politics.
  • A friend of mine once sent me a post card with a picture of the entire planet Earth taken from space. On the back it said, ‘Wish you were here.
  • I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights instead! Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is standing still.
  • I went camping and borrowed a circus tent by mistake. I didn’t notice until I got it set up. People complained because they couldn’t see the lake.
  • So I got off the plane and I forget to take off my seat-belt and I’m dragging the plane through the terminal… The wings are knocking people over.
  • I used to be an airline pilot. I got fired because I kept locking the keys in the plane. They caught me on an 80 foot stepladder with a coat hanger.
  • A friend of mine is into Voodoo Acupuncture. You don’t have to go. You’ll just be walking down the street and . . . ooooohhhhhh, that’s much better.
  • I’d like to sing you a song now about my old girlfriend. It’s called “They’ll Find Her When the Leaves Blow Away ‘Cause I’m Not Raking ‘Til Spring.”
  • One time a cop pulled me over for running a stop sign. He said, “Didn’t you see the stop sign?” I said, “Yeah, but I don’t believe everything I read”
  • I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.
  • I got pulled over by a cop, and he said, ‘do you know the speed limit here is 55 miles per hour?’. So I said, ‘oh, that’s OK, I’m not going that far.’
  • I bought a self learning record to learn Spanish. I turned it on and went to sleep; the record got stuck. The next day I could only stutter in Spanish.
  • When I was a fetus, I used to sneak out at night when my mother was sleeping. I figured I should start stealing stuff while I still had no fingerprints.
  • I heard that in relativity theory, space and time are the same thing. Einstein discovered this when he kept showing up three miles late for his meetings.
  • When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, ‘Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.’
  • Last night somebody broke into my apartment and replaced everything with exact duplicates… When I pointed it out to my roommate, he said, “Do I know you?
  • People think my friend George is weird because he wears sideburns…behind his ears. I think he’s weird because he wears false teeth…with braces on them.
  • I collect rare photographs… I have two… One of Houdini locking his keys in his car… the other is a rare picture of Norman Rockwell beating up a child.
  • Nobody can really compare a relationship in which the victim is 15 years old to one where she’s 6. While both criminal, they’re very different circumstances.
  • For a while I didn’t have a car . . . I had a helicopter . . . no place to park it, so I just tied it to a lamp post and left it running. [slow glance upward]
  • My grandfather gave me a watch. It doesn’t have any hands or numbers. He says it’s very accurate. I asked him what time it was. You can guess what he told me.
  • I have two pairs of reading glasses. One pair is for reading fiction, the other for non-fiction. I’ve read the Bible twice wearing each pair, and it’s the same.
  • When I was five years old I was on a merry go round. There was a gunshot nearby. The horses stampeded. There I was running down the street on a purple wooden horse.
  • My girlfriend’s weird. One day she asked me, ‘If you could know how and when you were going to die, would you want to know?’ I said, ‘No.’ She said, ‘Okay, forget it.
  • While I was gone, somebody rearranged on the furniture in my bedroom. They put it in exactly the same place it was. When I told my roommate, he said: “Do I know you?”
  • I always thought Johnny Carson was just brilliant, and I used to watch him and all the comics that would be on the show every night – and I’d dream about it being me.
  • My house is made out of balsa wood, so when I want to scare the neighborhood kids I lift it over my head and tell them to get out of my yard or I’ll throw it at them.
  • I wrote a song, but I can’t read music so I don’t know what it is. Every once in a while I’ll be listening to the radio and I say, “I think I might have written that.”
  • I turned my air conditioner the other way around and it got cold out. The weatherman said ‘I don’t understand it. It was supposed to be 80 degrees out today.’ I said, oops
  • Childhood was very nice. The only thing wrong was that I was so introverted, everything became a big deal… ‘Oh, no, here comes the bus. Where am I gonna sit on the bus?’
  • You know how it is when you’re reading a book and falling asleep, you’re reading, reading… and all of a sudden you notice your eyes are closed? I’m like that all the time.
  • I bought a dog the other day. . . . I named him Stay. It’s fun to call him. . . . “Come here, Stay! Come here, Stay!” He went insane. Now he just ignores me and keeps typing.
  • I made a chocolate cake with white chocolate. Then I took it to a potluck. I stood in line for some cake. They said, “Do you want white cake or chocolate cake?” I said, “yes.”
  • Comedians are sociologists. We’re pointing out stuff that the general public doesn’t even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.
  • The lady across the hall tried to rob a department store . . . with a pricing gun. She said, “Give me all of the money in the vault, or I’m marking down everything in the store.”
  • You know how it is when you go to be the subject of a psychology experiment and nobody else shows up and you think maybe that’s part of the experiment? I’m like that all the time.
  • I bought my brother some gift-wrap for Christmas. I took it to the gift wrap department and told them to wrap it, but in a different print so he would know when to stop unwrapping.
  • My favorite book is anything by Kurt Vonnegut – he’s my literary hero. I got to meet him several times, which was a great thrill for me. I don’t really remember what we talked about.
  • My dental hygienist is cute. Every time I visit, I eat a whole package of Oreo cookies while waiting in the lobby. Sometimes she has to cancel the rest of the afternoon’s appointments.
  • I recently went to the hardware store and I bought some used paint… it was in a shape of a house. I also bought some batteries, but they weren’t included. So I had to buy them again.
  • I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, ‘Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.’ He said, ‘Yes, but not in a row.’
  • You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.
  • I have a map of the United States… Actual size. It says, ‘Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile.’ I spent last summer folding it. I hardly ever unroll it. People ask me where I live, and I say, ‘E6.
  • I’m used to seeing it, but it’s weird having an Academy Award. You usually only see one of them on the TV show when they give them out, so it’s kind of surreal to have one in your house.
  • I wear a hat on stage so that people won’t be blinded by the reflection from my head. Also, if I don’t wear a hat, there’s no way that the hat can be at that level by itself on the stage.
  • Babies don’t need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach… it pisses me off! I’ll go over to a little baby and say ‘What are you doing here? You haven’t worked a day in your life!’
  • I didn’t tell any of my friends that I wanted to be a comedian, because I was superstitious. I thought if I told people, it wouldn’t happen. So I kept it all in my head for years and years.
  • I love eating chocolate cake and ice cream after a show. I almost justify it in my mind as, ‘You were a good boy onstage and you did your show, so now you can have some cake and ice cream.’
  • I paint; I draw and paint – I’ve been doing that since I was in third grade, drawing realistically and then changing to abstract art. That was my first creative thing before guitar or comedy.
  • In my house there’s this light switch that doesn’t do anything. Every so often, I would flick it on and off just to check. Yesterday, I got a call from a woman in Germany. She said ‘cut it out’
  • Today I dialed a wrong number… The other person said, “Hello?” and I said, “Hello, could I speak to Joey?”… They said, “Uh… I don’t think so… he’s only 2 months old.” I said, “I’ll wait.”
  • Winny and I lived in a house that ran on static electricity. If you wanted to run the blender, you had to rub balloons on your head. If you wanted to cook, you had to pull off a sweater real quick
  • I went to this restaurant last night that was set up like a big buffet in the shape of an Ouija board. You’d think about what kind of food you want, and the table would move across the floor to it.
  • I got my driver’s license photo taken out of focus on purpose. Now when I get pulled over, the cop looks at it [moving it nearer and farther, trying to see it clearly], and says, “Here, you can go”
  • When I have a kid, I want to buy one of those strollers for twins. Then put the kid in and run around, looking frantic. When he gets older, I’d tell him he used to have a brother, but he didn’t obey.
  • Doing a little work around the house. I put fake brick wallpaper over a real brick wall, just so I’d be the only one who knew. People come over and I’m gonna say, “Go ahead, touch it… it feels real.”
  • To the audience, it’s like I’m changing the subject every five seconds, but to me, my show’s almost like a 90-minute song that I know exactly. I wrote every note, and I know exactly where everything is.
  • You know when you’re sitting on a chair and you lean back so you’re just on two legs and you lean too far so you almost fall over but at the last second you catch yourself? I feel like that all the time.
  • I don’t go off and sit down and try to write material, because then it’s contrived and forced. I just live my life, and I see things in a word or a situation or a concept, and it will create a joke for me.
  • If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, doesn’t it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed?
  • People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.
  • I saw a sign at a gas station. It said ‘help wanted’. There was another sign below it that said ‘self service’. So I hired myself. Then I made myself the boss. I gave myself a raise. I paid myself. Then I quit.
  • One time the power went out in my house and I had to use the flash on my camera to see my way around. I made a sandwich and took fifty pictures of my face. The neighbors thought there was lightning in my house.
  • Why do they put pictures of criminals up in the Post Office? What are we supposed to do, write to them? Why don’t they just put their pictures on the postage stamps so the postmen can look for them while they deliver the mail?
  • I was watching the Superbowl with my 92 year old grandfather. The team scored a touchdown. They showed the instant replay. He thought they scored another one. I was gonna tell him, but I figured the game HE was watching was better.
  • I’ve been doing comedy longer than I haven’t been doing comedy, as I was performing for three years before I even got on ‘The Tonight Show.’ There’s truly nothing like it; it’s intense and exhilarating, even though it looks so casual.
  • I feel very lucky to make a living from my imagination; I’m very grateful for that. I like that what I do is create. I’m feeling very lucky to have had the career I had. It’s gone much longer and bigger than I ever thought it would be.
  • The other night I came home late, and tried to unlock my house with my car keys. I started the house up. So, I drove it around for a while. I was speeding, and a cop pulled me over. He asked where I lived. I said, “Right here, officer.”
  • I’m standing behind a wall of jokes. You don’t know about my personal life, my girlfriends, or what I do when I’m not on the road. There’s this guy, this comedian, and this is how he thinks, but people really don’t know anything about me.
  • In a lot of ways, success is much harder than I thought it would be. I figured that you’d get here and then everything would be happily ever after. But, it’s hard work, almost harder once you’re successful because you’ve got to maintain it.
  • I once tried to commit suicide by jumping off a building…I changed my mind at the last minute, so I just flipped over and landed on my feet. Two little kittens nearby saw what happened and one turns to the other and says, “See, that’s how it’s done.”
  • George Carlin’s album, ‘Class Clown,’ came out when I was in high school. I memorized a lot of that album. I’d come home from school, put it on, and listen over and over. I started memorizing it. I don’t even know why. I loved it so much I memorized it.
  • Honestly, I just go to restaurants to eat so I won’t die. If there was a pill I could take in January and then I wouldn’t have to eat again for the rest of the year, I would take it. Of course, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my chocolate cake and ice cream.

 

  • I don’t feel that I’m explaining the world or teaching people anything. And I’m not trying to be a mirror, showing them what’s really going on the world. All I’m trying to do is think of stuff that’s funny, just like when I’m kidding around with my friends.
  • I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‘Boston Phoenix,’ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‘deadpan.’
  • I saw a close friend of mine the other day. . . . He said, “Stephen, why haven’t you called me?” I said, “I can’t call everyone I want. My new phone has no five on it.” He said, “How long have you had it?” I said, “I don’t know . . . my calendar has no sevens on it.”
  • I don’t like the sound of my phone ringing so I put my phone inside my fish tank. I can’t hear it, but every time I get a call I see the fish go like this <<<>>><<>><<<<. I go down to the pet store and said, “Give me another ten guppies, I got a lot of calls yesterday.”
  • My mother is from another time – the funniest person to her is Lucille Ball; that’s what she loves. A lot of times she tells me she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I know if I wasn’t her son and she was flipping through the TV and saw me, she would just keep going.
  • It’s very interesting, the joke comes first and then the wording comes within five seconds, maybe ten seconds. My thing is to get the joke across in as few words as possible. However, sometimes a word that’s not really needed does help the rhythm of it. It’s a gut feeling.
  • The things I talk about and explain couldn’t happen – yet, they don’t seem impossible – you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane – and it’s trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is.
  • There’s something about being in front of a live audience that’s fun. It’s a really interesting, very electric, very alive, and intense experience, and you can’t get it anywhere else. And I’ve been doing it since I was 23, so it’s part of my being – it’s part of my fabric as a person.
  • A cop stopped me for speeding/ He said, ‘Why were you going so fast?’ I said, ‘See this thing my foot is on? It’s called an accelerator. When you push down on it, it sends more gas to the engine. The whole car just takes right off. And see this thing [mimes steering wheel]? This steers it’
  • When I was on TV in the ’80s, I wasn’t thinking, ‘There’s a 10-year-old kid watching this and in 15 years, he’s gonna be doing stuff that was influenced by me.’ I was trying to get my five minutes together. So now that those people are comedians and they’re influenced by me – it’s bizarre.
  • I was in a job interview and I opened a book and started reading. Then I said to the guy ‘Let me ask you a question. If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?’ He said ‘I don’t know’. I said ‘I don’t want your job’.
  • I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.
  • When I’m on stage, it’s really intense. My mind is going a million miles an hour, trying to remember my act, trying to say it all the right way. It’s funny how different it looks and how it’s happening. There are three Fellini circuses in my head, and outwardly it looks like I’m going to get a bagel.
  • I liked school, but I used to dread those moments when the teacher would call me up to give an oral report. I forced myself to deal with it and not dwell on the class in front of me – to keep a straight face, give the report and concentrate on getting it right. That’s normally how I perform. That’s how I am.
  • It’s very intense to be in front of a live audience. It’s just an amazing experience. It’s dangerous. Everything out there is heightened. The bad stuff is extra-worse. The silences are extra-silent. The good stuff is amazing. It’s electric when you walk out there. For 90 minutes, you’re on this other planet.
  • Two babies were born on the same day at the same hospital. They lay there and looked at each other. Their families came and took them away. Eighty years later, by a bizarre coincidence, they lay in the same hospital, on their deathbeds, next to each other. One of them looked at the other and said, ‘So, what did you think?
  • I’ve always had to conquer fear when I’m on stage. Basically, I was and still am a very shy person. It’s absolutely in conflict with what I do. But once I deliver the first joke I’m okay. It’s like I’m out there all by myself just delivering my lines to nobody in particular without ever trying to notice the audience in front of me.
  • One day, when I came home from work, I accidentally put my car key in the door of my apartment building. I turned it, and the whole building started up. So I drove it around. A policeman stopped me for going too fast. He said, “Where do you live?” I said, “Right here!” Then I drove my building onto the middle of a highway, and I ran outside, and told all of the cars to get the hell out of my driveway.

 

 

Rodney Dangerfield (quotes)

/in , /by
  • Life is just a bowl of pits.
  • My wife gives good headache.
  • Man, who don’t like spaghetti?
  • I have three kids, one of each.
  • Hey, did somebody step on a duck?
  • Life’s a short trip. You’ll find out.
  • At my age I’m envious of a stiff wind.
  • Comedy is a camouflage for depression.
  • My mom took me to a dog show and I won!!
  • Hey everybody, we’re all gonna get laid!
  • My only thrill is self inflicted hickies.
  • A hooker once told me she had a headache.
  • I was a poster child… for birth control!
  • Time and tide and hookers wait for no man.
  • I don’t get no respect, no respect at all!
  • Me and my dad used to play tag, he’d drive!
  • I’m a bisexual; I get it maybe twice a year.
  • People seldom live up to their baby pictures.
  • I bought a perfect second car… a tow truck.
  • It’s not a word. It’s a sentence.
  • My sex life is like shooting pool with a rope!
  • School is a place were you go to eat your lunch
  • I went to a massage parlor, it was self service.
  • My mother had morning sickness after I was born.
  • My wife’s so dumb, she got a nail in the spare!!
  • What a dog I got, his favorite bone is in my arm.
  • She was so fat that her bathtub has stretch marks.
  • Comedy is in my blood. Too bad it’s not in my act.
  • My mother used to rock me – and she used big rocks.
  • My wife and I were happy for 20 years. Then we met.
  • my wifes cooking is so bad the flys fix our screens
  • She was so fat that her belly button makes an echo.
  • She was so ugly that her face could stop a sundial.
  • Boy what a hotel that was, why they stole my towel.
  • It’s great to have gray hair. Ask anyone who’s bald.
  • What a dog I got. His favorite bone is in my arm.
  • He who laughs last didn’t get it in the first place.
  • I figured out I’m bisexual. I have sex twice a year.
  • At certain times I like sex – like after a cigarette.
  • I met the surgeon general – he offered me a cigarette.
  • I told my doctor I wonna stop aging, he gave me a gun!
  • I went to a freak show and they let me in for nothing.
  • Last year my birthday cake looked like a prairie fire.
  • My wife and I have Olympic sex. Once every four years.
  • I looked up my family tree and found out I was the sap.
  • I’m a bad lover. Once I caught a peeping tom booing me.
  • Last time I saw a mouth like that, it had a hook in it.
  • My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met!
  • If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is ugliness.
  • If sex is a pain in the ass, then you’re doing it wrong.
  • It’s lonely on the top when there’s no one on the bottom.
  • Men who do things without being told draw the most wages.
  • My wife’s cooking is so bad the flies fix our screens.
  • I was so ugly my mother used to feed me with a sling shot.
  • I’m sitting on top of the world, and I’ve got hemorrhoids.
  • If it wasn’t for pick-pockets I’d have no sex life at all.
  • Look out for number one and try not to step in number two.
  • When I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.
  • Cars and women are a lot alike. They lie about the milage.
  • If you could learn to make love, I could fire the chauffer.
  • My wife has teeth like the stars… they come out at night.
  • Steak and sex, my favorite pair. I get them both very rare.
  • We want five thousand dollars or you’ll see your kid again.
  • When I was born I was so ugly the doctor slapped my mother.
  • I don’t know kid, there are so many places they could hide.
  • I stuck my head out the window and got arrested for mooning.
  • One year they asked me to be poster boy – for birth control.
  • The shape I’m in, I could donate my body to science fiction.
  • There’s only one thing wrong with my wife’s face – it shows.
  • They change the sheets every day… from one bed to another.
  • I was so ugly my mother used to feed me with a sling shot.
  • When I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up.
  • My wife made me join a bridge club… I jump off next Tuesday.
  • On Halloween, the parents sent their kids out looking like me.
  • One year they wanted to make me poster boy – for birth control
  • You take care and I hope I’ll run into you – when I’m driving.
  • I have good looking kids. Thank goodness my wife cheats on me.
  • I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out.
  • I’m a downer. I’ve been depressed my whole life. Figure it out.
  • I’m so ugly – My mother had morning sickness – After I was born
  • The other night a mugger took off his mask and made me wear it.
  • When I was born, I was so ugly the doctor slapped my mother.
  • I’m getting so old my insurance company sends me 1/2 a calendar!
  • She was so fat that her clothes are made by Omar the tent maker.
  • You can name your own salary in this business. I call mine Fred.
  • I worked in a pet store and people would ask how big I would get.
  • Sure I smoked pot in hospital. My wife won’t let me toke at home.
  • When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them.
  • When I was born I brought no joy, my father said he wanted a boy!
  • Don’t talk about yourself so much…we’ll do that when you leave.
  • For two hours, some guy followed me around with a pooper scooper.
  • My dog learned how to beg by watching me through the bedroom door.
  • She was old too, when she went to school they didn’t have history.
  • I drink too much, way too much; my doctor drew blood he ran a tab!
  • I saved a girl from being attacked last night. I controlled myself.
  • I’m not a hypochondriac, but my gynaecologist firmly believes I am.
  • My wife wants sex in the back of the car and she wants me to drive.
  • What a dog I got, he found out we look alike, so he killed himself.
  • His breath is so bad why every time he smokes he blows onion rings.
  • I knew a girl so ugly, she had a face like a saint-a Saint Bernard!
  • My mother never breast-fed me. She told me she liked me as a friend.
  • My wife has to be the worst cook. In my house, we pray after we eat.
  • He found a new way to cover up his bad breath. He holds up his arms.
  • I’ve never been lucky. The day my ship came in, I was at the airport.
  • When my old man wanted sex, my mother would show him a picture of me.
  • I asked my wife, ‘Is there somebody else?’ She said, ‘There MUST be.’
  • I haven’t spoken to my wife in years. I didn’t want to interrupt her.
  • I knew a girl so ugly, they use her in prisons to cure sex offenders.
  • She was so ugly that I took her to a dog show and she won first prize.
  • I found there was only one way to look thin: hang out with fat people.
  • My ex-wife is a water sign and I’m an earth sign. Together we made mud.
  • I am the world’s oldest teenager. I’ve never lost my youthful attitude.
  • My daughters been picked up so many times she’s starting to grow handles
  • My old man never liked me. He gave me my allowance in traveler’s checks.
  • I went to look for a used car and found my wife’s dress in the back seat.
  • I’d like to get some new clothes, but I can’t find a Big and Short store.
  • My doctor told me to watch my drinking. Now I drink in front of a mirror.
  • My father carries around the picture of the kid who came with his wallet.
  • My golf game is getting real good. Last week, I got through the windmill.
  • My mother never breast fed me, she told me she only liked me as a friend.
  • She was so fat that her bikini is made out of two bed sheets (king-size).
  • With girls I get no respect. A belly dancer told me I turned her stomach.
  • A travel agent told I could spend 7 nights in HAWAII no days just nights.
  • Last week my tie caught on fire, some guy tried to put it out with an axe.
  • My kids scotch tape worms to the sidewalk and watch the birds get hernias.
  • My problem is that I appeal to everyone that can do me absolutely no good.
  • When it comes to sex, at my age I like threesomes. In case one of us dies.
  • I could tell my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.
  • I know I’m not sexy. In high school I was voted Most Likely to Masturbate.
  • My wife she’s fat. Why, if she lost a few pounds, she’d be perfectly round.
  • When I was a kid I got no respect. My mother breast fed me through a straw.
  • I told my dentist my teeth are going yellow. he told me to wear a brown tie.
  • I’m so ugly – I worked in a pet shop, and people kept asking how big I’d get
  • My cousins gay, he went to London only to find out that Big Ben was a clock.
  • I asked him “Who said you could fool around with my wife” he said everybody.
  • I drink too much. The last time I gave a urine sample it had an olive in it.
  • I was so poor growing up…if I wasn’t a boy…I’d have nothing to play with.
  • I’ll tell you one thing, I know how to satisfy my wife in bed, yeah, I leave.
  • My wife is so fat that the last time I saw something that big it was grazing.
  • My wife only has sex with me for a purpose. Last night it was to time an egg.
  • I get no respect… I tell you, when I was born, the doctor smacked my mother
  • I say ‘no’ to drugs. Whenever someone asks me for some of my drugs I say, ‘no.
  • I told my doctor I think my wife has VD. He gave himself a shot of penicillin.
  • My uncle’s dying wish – he wanted me on his lap. He was in the electric chair.
  • Never tell your wife she’s bad in bed. She’ll go out and get a second opinion.
  • What a childhood I had, why, when I took my first step, my old man tripped me!
  • Also read these hilarious Steven Wright quotes that will bust your sides open.
  • At Christmas time we couldn’t afford tinsel, so we’d wait till grandpa sneezed.
  • I told my doctor I got water on my knee, he gave me a sponge and raised his fee!
  • I used to date a girl from Buffalo. Why can’t I meet a girl with normal parents?
  • I was making love to my wife the other night, I looked up. She was on the phone.
  • I was so poor growing up – if I wasn’t a boy – I’d have had nothing to play with
  • Life is full of temporary situations, ultimately ending in a permanent solution.
  • My uncle’s dying wish: He wanted me on his lap. He was in the electric chair.
  • To me, Viagra is the same as Disneyland. You wait an hour for a two-minute ride.
  • What a childhood I had – I was ten years old when I found out Alpo was dog food.
  • I tell ya I got a stupid son. That’s one load that shoulda been shot on the wall.
  • I’m taking Viagra and drinking prune juice – I don’t know if I’m coming or going.
  • My wife and I keep fighting about sex and money. I think she charges me too much.
  • Some dog I got too. We call him Egypt. Because in every room he leaves a pyramid.
  • I don’t care how rich and successful a man is. He’s nothing without an education.
  • I feel sorry for short people, you know. When it rains, they’re the last to know.
  • I had a date with an inflatable girl. Now I got an inflatable guy looking for me.
  • I was such an ugly kid – When I played in the sandbox, the cat kept covering me up
  • I’m not a sexy guy. I went to a hooker. I dropped my pants. She dropped her price.
  • It’s nice to be the best, but not when being the best brings out the worst in you.
  • My marriage is on the rocks again, yeah, my wife just broke up with her boyfriend.
  • My son’s an idiot. He sprained his ankle playing golf. He fell off the ballwasher.
  • My wife has to be the worst cook. I don’t believe meatloaf should glow in the dark
  • My wife has to be the worst cook. I’ve got the only dog who begs for alka-seltzer.
  • One night I asked a cabbie to take me where the action is, he took me to my house.
  • One time my whole family played hide and seek. They found my mother in Pittsburgh!
  • I tell ya when I was a kid, all I knew was rejection. My yo-yo, it never came back.
  • I was an ugly kid; when I was born, after the doctor cut the cord, he hung himself.
  • I’m tellin’ ya I get no respect. When I was in Switzerland, I got an obscene yodel.
  • They say love thy neighbor as thy self , what am I supposed to do jerk him off too?
  • When I told my wife she was lousy in bed – she went out – she got a second opinion.
  • Group sex, are you kidding, I had group sex – my wife screwed in front of the jury.
  • I don’t get no respect. I called Suicide Prevention. They tried to talk me into it.
  • I once met a beautiful, proper English girl. I bid her adieu…. she bid me a don’t.
  • I’m so ugly – My father carries around a picture of the kid who came with his wallet
  • Dad told me to stop running in circles, I couldn’t, so he nailed down my other foot!
  • Do ya remember the first time you had sex? I do, and boy, was I scared! I was alone!
  • Every time I get in an elevator, the operator says the same thing to me: `Basement?’
  • My car broke down just the other day, I called triple A, they came and towed me away!
  • My marriage is on the rocks again. Yeah. My wife just broke up with her boyfriend.
  • One time I went to a hotel. I asked the bellhop to handle my bag. He felt up my wife!
  • Remember to also read these funny John Mulaney quotes that will make your day better.
  • We were poor. we were so poor, in my neighborhood the rainbow was in black-and-white.
  • With my wife I get no respect. I fell asleep with a cigarette in my hand. She lit it.
  • Some dog I got too. We call him Egypt. Because in every room he leaves a pyramid.
  • I come from a stupid family. During the civil war my great uncle fought for the west.
  • I tell ya, my wife’s a lousy cook. After dinner, I don’t brush my teeth. I count them.
  • In high school, when I played football I got no respect. I shared a locker with a mop.
  • When we got married my wife told me I was one in a million. I found out she was right.
  • I get no respect. The way my luck is running, if I was a politician I would be honest.
  • I have nothing but troubles with my car. Every Sunday I take my family out for a push.
  • I once had a problem … so I tried group sex. Now I have a new problem – who to thank.
  • My cousin is gay, I always tell him that in our family tree, he’s in the fruit section.
  • My wife can’t cook at all. She made chocolate mousse. An antler got stuck in my throat.
  • Better to keep quiet and let people think you’re an idiot than speak up and confirm it.
  • I come from a stupid family. My father worked in a bank. They caught him stealing pens.
  • I live in a tough neighborhood. They got a children’s zoo. Last week, four kids escaped.
  • I told my dentist I want a tooth to match the others. He gave my one with four cavities.
  • I told my wife a man is like wine, he gets better with age. She locked me in the cellar.
  • My cousin is gay, in school while other kids were dissecting frog, he was opening flies.
  • Oh, I was an ugly kid. My old man took me to the zoo. They thanked him for returning me.
  • I like southern girls. They talk so slow that by the time they say no, I made it already.
  • I like to date schoolteachers. If you do something wrong, they make you do it over again.
  • I told my kids, “Someday, you’ll have kids of your own.” One of them said, “So will you.”
  • Never guess your wife’s size. Just buy anything marked petite and hold on to the receipt.
  • When I go to a nude beach, I always take a ruler, just in case I have to prove something.
  • My parents didn’t like me. For bathtub toys they gave me a blender and a transistor radio.
  • My wife was afraid of the dark… then she saw me naked and now she’s afraid of the light.
  • One night she told me to put out the garbage. I told her “you cooked it, you take it out”.
  • When I was a kid I got no respect. I played hide-and-seek. They wouldn’t even look for me.
  • When my parents got divorced, there was a custody fight over me. … and no one showed up.
  • You live with life’s disappointments and learn from them. At seventy-eight, I know it all.
  • At Christmas time I sat on Santa’s lap. His fly was open ! Boy what a present he gave me !
  • I asked my wife if she enjoys a cigarette after sex and she said “No, one drag is enough”.
  • I came from a real tough neighborhood. I put my hand in some cement and felt another hand.
  • I tell ya, with my wife, I got no sex life. Her favorite position is facing Bloomingdale’s.
  • I went to a gay bar, they wanted proof of sex so I showed them, they said it wasn’t enough.
  • If every man was as true to his country as he was to his wife, we’d be in a lot of trouble.
  • If I could have dinner with anyone who lived in history, it would depend on the restaurant.
  • Oh, when I was a kid in show business I was poor. I used to go to orgies to eat the grapes.
  • My father gave me a bat for Christmas. The first time I tried to play with it, it flew away.
  • What a dog I got. Last night he went on the paper four times – three while I was reading it.
  • When I was born the doctor took one look at my face, turned me over and said, “Look, twins!”
  • You know you’re ugly when you go to the proctologist and he sticks his finger in your mouth.
  • I walked in on my wife and the milkman, the first thing she says is “don’t tell the butcher”!
  • If you can’t write your own material, you have very little chance of making it as a comedian.
  • I bought a new book, ‘100 new ways to make love’. I ended up in traction – it was a misprint.
  • It was the same thing in the army, no respect. They gave me a uniform that glowed in the dark.
  • When I was 3 years old, my parents got a dog. I was jealous of the dog, so they got rid of me.
  • I came from a real tough neighborhood. On my street, the kids take hubcaps – from moving cars.
  • I got myself good this morning too. I did my pushups in the nude, I didn’t see the mouse trap.
  • I was so ugly my parents had to hang a pork chop around my neck to get the dog to play with me.
  • I’m at the age where I want two girls. In case I fall asleep they will have someone to talk to.
  • This morning when I put on my underwear I could hear the fruit-of-the-loom guys laughing at me.
  • My wife had her drivers’ test the other day. She got 8 out of 10. The other 2 guys jumped clear.
  • My wife has cut our lovemaking down to once a month, but I know two guys she’s cut out entirely.
  • My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss in the kitchen the roaches hang themselves.
  • Oh, this your wife, huh? A lovely lady. Hey baby, you must’ve been something before electricity.
  • To give you an idea how well I was doing at the time I quit, I was the only one who knew I quit.
  • Yeah, I know I’m ugly… I said to a bartender, ‘Make me a zombie.’ He said ‘God beat me to it.’
  • I asked my old man if I could go ice-skating on the lake. He told me, “Wait til it gets warmer.”
  • I bought a new Japanese car, I turned on the radio … I don’t understand a word they’re saying.
  • I told my wife ‘hey honey come on, let’s make love like the old days.’ She asked me for 50 bucks.
  • It’s tough to stay married. My wife says no because she’s tired then stays up and reads her book.
  • The sign on the bar said: ‘girls- topless, bottomless’, I went inside and there was nobody there!
  • When I was born the doctor took one look at my face …. turned me over and said. Look … twins!
  • Yeah, I know I’m ugly. I said to a bartender, ‘Make me a zombie.’ He said ‘God beat me to it.’
  • And my girlfriend, she’s FAT! How fat? She’s so fat she wears two watches-one for each time zone!
  • I asked my wife if she would put out the garbage. she said why should I you never put out for me.
  • I tell ya, I know the best way to get girls. I hang out at women’s prisons, and wait for parolees.
  • It’s tough to stay married. My wife kisses the dog on the lips, yet she won’t drink from my glass.
  • My wife says 90% of sex occurs between the ears. But I need a girl who can blow more just my mind.
  • My wife’s not too smart. I told her our kids were spoiled. She said, ‘All kids smell that way.’
  • What a childhood I had. My parents sent me to a child psychiatrist. The kid didn’t help me at all.
  • It would be great if people never got angry at someone for doing something they’ve done themselves.
  • Last week I was walking by a cemetery, two guys came after me with shovels. It was all about money.
  • Once I pulled a job, I was so stupid. I picked a guy’s pocket on an airplane and made a run for it.
  • When I was a kid we were so poor, if I hadn’t been a boy I wouldn’t have had anything to play with.
  • I came from a real tough neighborhood. Why, every time I shut the window I hurt somebody’s fingers.
  • I once went out with this wild girl. She made French toast and got her tongue caught in the toaster.
  • I tell ya, it’s tough to save a buck. Right now I’m supporting two fighters. My wife and her mother.
  • With sex my wife thinks twice before she turns me down. Yeah, once in the morning and once at night.
  • It’s tough to stay married. My wife kisses the dog on the lips, yet she won’t drink from my glass.
  • My kid wants to be a prison warden when he grows up so he can put thumb tacks on the electric chairs.
  • When you walk up five flights of stairs at four in the morning, there’s definitely a hooker involved.
  • For Christmas one year I bought my son a BB gun. He bought me a t-shirt with a bulls eye on the back.
  • I once went out with this girl, she was no bargain either, she showed up with pigtails under her arms.
  • My psychiatrist told me I was crazy and I said I want a second opinion. He said okay, you’re ugly too.
  • People ask if I can get it up in the morning. I tell them are you kidding I’m envious of a stiff wind.
  • What a kid I got, I told him about the birds and the bee and he told me about the butcher and my wife.
  • During sex, my girlfriend always wants to talk to me. Just the other night she called me from a hotel.
  • I think my wife is cheating on me, the only thing the parrot knows how to say is, quick out the window.
  • My wife met me at the door the other night in a sexy negligee. Unfortunately, she was just coming home.
  • I once asked a policeman how far it was to the subway. he said, “I don’t know, no one has ever made it”.
  • My son’s an idiot. His teacher asked him to spell Mississippi. He asked which one? The river or the state?
  • When I was a kid, I never went to Disneyland. My ol’ man told me Mickey Mouse died in a cancer experiment.
  • With my old man I got no respect. He told me never take candy from a stranger unless he offered me a ride.
  • Everyone gets their rough day. No one gets a free ride. Today so far, I had a good day. I got a dial tone.
  • I shouldn’t tell jokes about my wife. she’s attached to a machine that keeps her alive… The refrigerator.
  • I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous – everyone hasn’t met me yet.
  • When I was kidnapped as a child my parents sent a letter to the hijackers me Pay 5,000 dollars or your back
  • girl phoned me the other day and said …. Come on over, there’s nobody home. I went over. Nobody was home.
  • I knew a girl so ugly, I took her to the top of the Empire State building and planes started to attack her.
  • When I was a kid I got no respect. I told my mother, I’m gonna run away from home. She said, On your mark…
  • I joined gamblers anon., they gave me 2 to 1 I wouldn’t make it! I joined AA, there was a two drink minimum!
  • My family was a bunch of drunks. When I was six I came up missing, they put my picture on a bottle of scotch.
  • When we got married, the first thing my wife did was put everything under both names – hers and her mother’s.
  • When I was a kid I got no respect. When I went on the roller coaster, my old man told me to stand up straight.
  • A girl phoned me the other day and said, ‘Come on over. There’s nobody home.’ I went over. Nobody was home.
  • You might also like these Richard Pryor quotes highlighting some of his funniest and most controversial moments.
  • I come from a stupid family. My uncle heard that most deaths occurs within ten miles of the house…so he moved.
  • In the school I went to, they asked a kid to prove the law of gravity and he threw the teacher out of the window.
  • My wife’s jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was.
  • With my old man I got no respect. I asked him, “How can I get my kite in the air?” He told me to run off a cliff.
  • I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.
  • She failed her drivers test. She couldn’t get used to the front seat. It took her four lessons to learn to sit up.
  • I once dated a girl that was wild. She was so wild that one night she gave her phone number to the mechanical bull.
  • I tell ya, I was an ugly kid. I was so ugly that my dad kept the kid’s picture that came with the wallet he bought.
  • I took my son to Coney island, I said “wanna go in the crazy house?”, he said “save your money we’ll be home soon”!
  • What a childhood I had. Once on my birthday my ol’ man gave me a bat. The first day I played with it, it flew away.
  • I tell ya, gambling never agreed with me. Last week I went to the track and they shot my horse with the opening gun.
  • I told my doctor, “I’ve swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills” and he told me to have a few drinks and get some rest.
  • I’m at an age where I think more about food than I do about sex. Last week I put a mirror over my dining room table.
  • Last week I told my psychiatrist, ‘I keep thinking about suicide’, and he told me from now I have to pay in advance.
  • My wife’s jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was.
  • I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.
  • If things go right, I’ll be there about a week, and if things don’t go right, I’ll be there about an hour and a half!
  • We learned sexual technique from our dog. He taught how to beg, and he taught my wife how to roll over and play dead.
  • With my dog I don’t get no respect. He keeps barking at the front door. He don’t want to go out. He wants me to leave.
  • With my doctor, I don’t get no respect. I told him I want a vasectomy. He said with a face like mine, I don’t need one.
  • You don’t know who to believe. Like Abraham Lincoln. He said all men were created equal. He never went to a nude beach.
  • I asked my wife, ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate me as a lover?’ She said, ‘You know I’m no good at fractions.’
  • I’ll tell ya, my wife and I, we don’t think alike. She donates money to the homeless, and I donate money to the topless!
  • My wife is so fat that when she lays on the beach the people feel sorry for her and try to roll her back into the water.
  • I had plenty of pimples as a kid. One day I fell asleep in the library. When I woke up, a blind man was reading my face.
  • Once, somebody stole our car. I asked my wife if she saw who it was. She said, ‘No, but I did get the license number.’
  • All my wife and I do is fight about sex. The other night, we really had it out. Well, I’ll put it this way – I had it out.
  • I’m at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I’ve just had a mirror put over my kitchen table.
  • One night I came home. I figured, let my wife come on. I’ll play it cool. Let her make the first move. She went to Florida.
  • A man in the crowd asks: Hey Rodney, how’d you get started? Rodney: I was 12 years old, alone in my room, and I got started!
  • When I was a kid I got no respect. I had no friends. I remember the see-saw. I had to keep runnin’ from one end to the other.
  • With me, nothing goes right. My psychiatrist said my wife and I should have sex every night. Now, we’ll never see each other!
  • With my wife I don’t get no respect. I made a toast on her birthday to ‘the best woman a man ever had.’ The waiter joined me.
  • A homeless guy came up to me on the street, said he hadn’t eaten in four days. I told him, “Man, I wish I had your willpower.
  • Once I opened up a fortune cookie and inside was the guy’s cheque next to me I said hey buddy I got your cheque he said thanks.
  • You know you’re old when your family talk about you in front of you. What are we going to do with Pop? We have company tonight.
  • I’ve been writing jokes since I’m fifteen. Not out of happiness, but to go to a different place, because reality wasn’t good to me.
  • I tell ya, my wife was never nice. On our first date, I asked her if I could give her a goodnight kiss on the cheek – she bent over!
  • Acting deals with very delicate emotions. It is not putting up a mask. Each time an actor acts he does not hide; he exposes himself.
  • I came from a real tough neighborhood. Once a guy pulled a knife on me. I knew he wasn’t a professional, the knife had butter on it.
  • Last time I tried to make love to my wife nothing happened, so I said to her, ‘What’s the matter, you can’t think of anybody either?’
  • You wanna have laughs? Do what I do. When I go through a tollbooth, I keep going. I tell the guy, The car behind me is paying for two.
  • I have tried a little kinky stuff. A woman called me and said, ‘I have mirrors all over my bedroom. Bring a bottle.’ I brought Windex.
  • I tell ya when I fly, I don’t get no respect. I took one of those cheap flights, no frills. I finished eatin’ and had to do the dishes.
  • I’ve learned to control everything. I don’t get angry at anything. Somebody can do me wrong. That’s life. What good is it to get angry?
  • Last Halloween a kid tried to rip my face off. He thought it was a mask. Now it’s different when I open the door the kids hand me candy.
  • …went to a bar for a few drinks. The bartender asked what I wanted. “Surprise me”, I said. So he showed me a naked picture of my wife.
  • I knew a girl so ugly that she was known as a two-bagger. That’s when you put a bag over your head in case the bag over her head breaks.
  • What a doctor I’ve got – he’s really mixed up. Last week, he grabbed my knee and told me to cough. Then hit me in the balls with a hammer.
  • We sleep in separate rooms, we have dinner apart, we take separate vacations – we’re doing everything we can to keep our marriage together.
  • My wife a great driver, she once hit a deer. It was in a zoo. There is a pair of shoes on the dashboard. They belong to the last guy she hit
  • They took a survey: Why do men get up in the middle of the night? Ten percent get up to go to the bathroom and 90 percent get up to go home.
  • I live in a bad neighborhood. Why, I saw two complete strangers share a taxi – yeah, one guy took the radio and the other guy took the tires.
  • My psychiatrist told me I’m going crazy. I told him …. If you don’t mind I’d like a second opinion. He said …. Alright…. you’re ugly too!
  • People say fish is good for a diet. But fish should never be cooked in butter. Fish should be cooked in its natural oils – Texaco, Mobil, Exxon .
  • I was making love to this girl and she started crying. I said, “Are you going to hate yourself in the morning?” She said, “No, I hate myself now.”
  • Last week I told my wife, If you would learn to cook, I could fire the chef. She said, If you could learn to make love, I could fire the chauffer.
  • At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he know he can’t.
  • I remember I was so depressed I was going to jump out a window on the tenth floor; they sent a priest up to talk to me and he said, ‘ On your mark…’
  • When I was born, the doctor came out to the waiting room and said to my father, ‘I’m very sorry. We did everything we could. But he pulled through.’
  • My sex life is terrible; my wife put a mirror over the dog’s bed. Actually she did put a mirror over our bed. She says she likes to watch herself laugh.
  • One day as I came home early, I saw a man jogging naked. I said to the guy, ‘Hey, buddy, why are you doing that?’ He said, ‘Because you came home early.’
  • I was an ugly child. I got lost on the beach. I asked a cop if he could find my parents. He said, ‘I don’t know. There’s lots of places for them to hide’.
  • Getting older is tough. I remember the last time I felt an erection. It was at the movies. The only trouble is, it belonged to the guy sitting next to me.
  • When I was born … the doctor came out to the waiting room and said to my father … I’m very sorry. We did everything we could … but he pulled through.
  • At twenty, a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy, he still wants to reform the world. But he knows he can’t.
  • With girls, I don’t think right. I had a date with one girl, she had mirrors all over her bedroom. She told me to come over and bring a bottle. I got Windex.
  • I said to a girl I’d been seeing, come home with me, honey, and I’ll show you where it’s at. She said, You’d better, because the last time I could’nt find it.
  • I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender.
  • My wife is always trying to get rid of me. The other day she told me to put the garbage out. I said to her I already did. She told me to go and keep an eye on it.
  • Guy goes into a bar with a duck under his arm. Bartender says, “Where’d you get the pig?” Guy says, “This is a duck.” Bartender says, “I was talking to the duck.”
  • Boy is my wife stupid. It takes her and hour and a half to watch 60 minutes. My daughters no bargain either. In public school she was voted most likely to conceive.
  • Everyone says that looks don’t matter, age doesn’t matter, money doesn’t matter. But i never met a girl yet who has fallen in love with an old ugly man who’s broke.
  • My wife is always trying to get rid of me. The other day she told me to put the garbage out. I said to her I already did. She told me to go and keep an eye on it.
  • My childhood was bad. No father. Mother was greedy and brought me up awful – never made me breakfast once. I don’t want to get started. One story is worse than another.
  • I tell ya, my wife, we get along good cause we have our own arrangement. I mean, one night a week I go out with the boys and one night a week, she goes out with the boys.
  • With my old man I got no respect. When he took me hunting he gave me a three minute head start. Then on the way home he tied me to the fender and put the deer in the car.
  • Oh, when I was a kid, I was poor. Christmas, I got no presents. Well, there was one Christmas, on our front lawn – Prancer and Dancer – they dropped off a little something.
  • Women my age just don’t turn me on. That’s another problem with getting older. I took out an older woman the other night, and I mean old. I told her, Act your age. She died.
  • I can’t figure women out. They put on makeup for three hours. They wear things that make them smaller. Things that make them bigger. Then they meet a man and they want truth.
  • When I was a kid I got no respect. The time I was kidnapped, and the kidnappers sent my parents a note they said, “We want five thousand dollars or you’ll see your kid again.”
  • I tell ya, sex is getting harder all the time. Me and my wife were trying to have sex for hours last night and I finally gave up. I asked her, “what, you can’t think of anybody either?”
  • When my wife drives, there’s always trouble. The other day she took the car. She came home. She told me, There’s water in the carburetor. I asked her, Where’s the car? She said, In a lake.
  • I come home from work early one day, and I see a guy jogging down the street in his underwear. I ask him, “Why are you jogging in your underwear?” He says, “You came home from work early”.
  • I went to see my doctor. ‘Doctor, every morning when I get up and look in the mirror… I feel like throwing up. What’s wrong with me?’ He said, ‘I don’t know but your eyesight is perfect.’
  • I tell ya, I knew my morning wasn’t going right. When I put on my shirt the button fell off, when I picked up my briefcase, the handle fell off, I tell ya, I was afraid to go to the bathroom.
  • Once when I was lost I asked a policeman to help me find my parents. I said to him, ‘Do you think we’ll ever find them?’ He answered, ‘I don’t know, kid. There are so many places they can hide.
  • Well with girls I don’t get no respect. I had a blind date. I waited two hours on the corner. A girl walked by. I said Are you Louise? She said, Are you Rodney? I said, Yeah. She said, I’m not Louise.
  • I got my first break and became a singing waiter at eighteen or nineteen. I couldn’t make a living at it. I quit. Then I got married and sold aluminum siding. My wife had problems physically. It was not good.
  • My wife isn’t very bright. The other day she was at the store, and just as she was heading for our car, someone stole it! I said, “Did you see the guy that did it?” She said, “No, but I got the license plate.”
  • I’ll tell ya, I don’t get no respect… The other day, I got back from a business trip. I got in a cab and said to the driver, “Hey! Take me to where the action is!” So ya know where he took me? He took me to my house!
  • I tell ya, I don’t get no respect … Last week, my wife told me that she was going to cut me down to twice a month. But I thought about it, and I figured that it wasn’t too bad. I know a couple of guys that she cut out completely.
  • I went to see my doctor… Doctor Vidi-boom-ba. Yeah…I told him once, “Doctor, every morning when I get up and look in the mirror I feel like throwing up. What’s wrong with me?” He said, “I don’t know, but your eyesight is perfect.”
  • I recently had double-bypass surgery. As they wheel you in, the doctor always gives you a last look. You know that look. That look of confidence to make you feel good. I always say to every doctor, If I don’t make it, I’ll never know it.
  • I tell ya, southern people, they always think you are hard-of-hearing. Every timr you leave they say to you, You come back, you hear? And southern people, they think you are horny too. You get directions, they say, Just up the road apiece.
  • We lived in a neighborhood that was too rich for us. When I was young, I had to deliver groceries to the homes of the kids I went to school with. I had to go to the back doors to make the deliveries. It was embarrassing. That was one thing out of a hundred.
  • A sense of humor is rare. It isn’t telling a joke about how there are three ways to get to heaven. It’s being in a restaurant and hearing someone say, Everyone’s got their tale of woe, and then turning around and saying, Unfortunately, in life, there’s more woe than tail.
  • When I was forty, I was getting divorced, living in a low-class, dirty hotel in New York. My mother was dying of cancer. I owed $20,000. That was about the lowest. I came back to show business, and I couldn’t get a job. I was turned down by every small-time agent in New York.
  • When I got back into show business in 1961, I felt – for obvious reasons – that nothing in my life went right, and I realized that millions of people felt the same way. So when I first came back my catch phrase was “nothing goes right.” Early on, that was my setup for a lot of jokes.
  • My boy is a mean kid. I came home the other day and saw him taping worms to the sidewalk, he sits there and watches the birds get hernias. Well, only last Christmas I gave him a B-B gun and he gave me a sweatshirt with a bulls-eye on the back. I told my kids, “Someday, you’ll have kids of your own.” One of them said, “So will you.”
  • After I got divorced, I said to myself, I will never, ever get married again. It was in cement. I went through a really rough twenty-five years, but it happened again. I fell in love. I told her, Baby, I don’t want a prenuptial agreement. This is it. Everyone told me I was nuts. Well, my new wife and I are married six years and we get along great. You can make anything work if you’re both givers.
  • My life is nothing but pressure. All pressure. This pressure is like a heaviness. It’s always on top of me, this heaviness. It’s always there since I’m a kid. Other people wake up in the morning, ‘A new day! Ah, up and at ’em!’ I wake up, the heaviness is waiting for me nice. Sometimes I even talk to it. I say [adopts cheerful voice] ‘Hi, heaviness!’ and the heaviness looks back at me, [in an ominous growl] ‘Today you’re gonna get it good. You’ll be drinking early today.’
  • I started over again with an image: Nothing goes right. Then when The Godfather came out, all I heard was, Show respect. With me, you show respect. So I changed the image to I don’t get no respect. I tried it out in Greenwich Village. I remember the first joke I told: Even as a kid, I’d play hide and seek and the other kids wouldn’t even look for me. The people laughed. After the show, they started saying to me, Me, too – I don’t get no respect. I figured, let’s try it again.

 

Phyllis Diller (quotes)

/in , /by
  • Comedy is tragedy revisited.
  • Self-pity is better than none.
  • All mothers are working mothers.
  • Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
  • You know what keeps me humble? Mirrors!
  • My idea of exercise is a good brisk sit.
  • I’m eighteen years behind in my ironing.
  • Never go to bed angry, stay up and fight.
  • His finest hour lasted a minute and a half.
  • I was so wrinkled I could screw my hats on.
  • Aim high, and you won’t shoot your foot off.
  • My father used to call me the laughing hyena.
  • Best way to get rid of kitchen odors: Eat out.
  • Every time I go near the stove, the dog howls.
  • Our dog died from licking our wedding picture.
  • I buried a lot of my ironing in the back yard.
  • If my jeans could talk, they’d plead for mercy.
  • Housework can’t kill you, but why take a chance?
  • The best contraceptive for old people is nudity.
  • Like all good ruins, I look better by moonlight.
  • A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.
  • I’m from such an old family, it’s been condemned.
  • Do I believe in Witchcraft? I’m the result of it.
  • You want to look younger… rent smaller children.
  • I’m at an age when my back goes out more than I do.
  • You know you’re old when your walker has an airbag.
  • Burt Reynolds once asked me out. I was in his room.
  • When I go to the beach, even the tide won’t come in.
  • Tennis is like marrying for money. Love means nothing.
  • Sex is identical to comedy in that it involves timing.
  • The only parts left of my original body are my elbows.
  • If you don’t have wrinkles, you haven’t laughed enough.
  • A bachelor is a guy who never made the same mistake once.
  • Old age is when the liver spots show through your gloves.
  • Becoming a comedienne was my way of adjusting to puberty.
  • My body’s in such bad shape I wear prescription underwear.
  • A terrible thing happened to me last night again‚Äînothing.
  • My own laugh is the real thing and I’ve had it all my life.
  • I still take the pill. I don’t want any more grandchildren.
  • It’s an ill will that blows when you leave the hairdresser.
  • I never made `Who’s Who,’ but I’m featured in `What’s That?’
  • My photographs don’t do me justice – they just look like me.
  • If it weren’t for my adam’s apple, I’d have no shape at all.
  • For Fang, getting out of bed in the morning is a career move.
  • [When to have a facelift:] If you’re tripping over your neck.
  • You know you’re old if they have discontinued your blood type.
  • Think of me as a sex symbol for the men who don’t give a damn.
  • I don’t like to cook. I can make a TV dinner taste like radio.
  • Never refer to your wedding night as the original amateur hour.
  • I’m looking for a perfume to overpower men – I’m sick of karate.
  • Life is a do-it-yourself kit, so do it yourself. Work. Practice.
  • It’s hard to find a negligee in my size. I wear a Junior Mister.
  • I became a stand-up comedienne because I had a sit-down husband.
  • Carry an oar when you drive. Three times I’ve ended up in water.
  • I like to serve chocolate cake, because it doesn’t show the dirt.
  • I got my first laugh when my mother entered me in a baby contest.
  • Some wives have model husbands, I got one that needed remodeling.
  • I have so many liver spots, I ought to come with a side of onions.
  • Tennis is like marrying for money. Love has nothing to do with it.
  • I will never give up. I am in my 14th year of a 10-day beauty plan.
  • My mother-in-law buys her coats in a carper shop. She wears a 9×12.
  • I have nothing against dogs. I just hate rugs that go squish-squish.
  • How do you know they’re growing up? Well, the bite marks are higher.
  • I finally had a ship tattooed to my chest. I wanted something on it.
  • My plastic surgeon … said my face looked like a bouquet of elbows.
  • Most people get an appointment at a beauty parlor… I was committed!
  • I spent seven hours in a beauty shop… and that was for the estimate.
  • Health – what my friends are always drinking to before they fall down.
  • I once wore a peekaboo blouse. People would peek and then they’d boo.
  • By far the most common craving of pregnant women is not to be pregnant.
  • My doctor is a family physician. He treats my family and I support his.
  • The last thing my kids ever did to earn money was lose their baby teeth.
  • You can say the nastiest things about yourself without offending anyone.
  • If I wore a peek-a-boo dress, it would be like turning in a false alarm.
  • All I ever learned at my mother’s knee was what a bony knee looked like.
  • He has so many muscles he has to make an appointment to move his fingers.
  • Next to gold and jewelry, health is the most important thing you can have.
  • Remember, only a policeman is allowed to express himself on an expressway.
  • I am descended from a very long line my mother once foolishly listened to.
  • My mother hated me. Once she took me to an orphanage and told me to mingle
  • I’d love to slit my mother-in-law’s corsets and watch her spread to death.
  • My eight-year-old bought a bicycle with the money he saved by not smoking.
  • I’m the woman who used to think that middle-age spread was a cocktail dip.
  • It took me three weeks to stuff the turkey. I stuffed it through the beak.
  • There’s so little money in my bank account, my scenic checks show a ghetto.
  • Nothing was happening in the bedroom. I nicknamed our waterbed the Dead Sea.
  • I admit, I have a tremendous sex drive. My boyfriend lives forty miles away.
  • Do not taste food while you’re cooking. You may lose your nerve to serve it.
  • Once Fang took pep pills and they worked – the only time he ever ran to bed.
  • I was the world’s ugliest baby. When I was born, the doctor slapped everybody.
  • Remarrying a husband you’ve divorced is like having your appendix put back in.
  • Actually, I comb my hair quite often. Of course, I use an electric toothbrush.
  • It’s a good thing that beauty is only skin deep, or I’d be rotten to the core.
  • I met my husband when a friend sent him over to my house to cure my hiccoughs.
  • I serve dinner in three phases: serve the food, clear the table, bury the dead.
  • When I was a kid and we used to play Post Office, I was the Dead Letter Office.
  • My sister-in-law is so skinny that she has a striped dress with only one stripe.
  • … if I invested in a mouthwash stock, bad breath would suddenly become popular.
  • My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor.
  • What I don’t like about office Christmas parties is looking for a job the next day.
  • My mother-in-law had a pain beneath her left breast. Turned out to be a trick knee.
  • This woman was so cross-eyed. She can go to a tennis match and never move her head.
  • My sister was so promiscuous she broke her ankle in the glove compartment of a car.
  • If it weren’t for baseball, many kids wouldn’t know what a millionaire looked like.
  • I’m the only woman who can walk in Central Park at night… and reduce the crime rate.
  • There’s such a buildup of crud in my oven, there’s only room to bake a single cupcake.
  • Absolutely nothing was happening in my marriage. I nicknamed my waterbed, Lake Placid!
  • It’s a certain kind of immortality, because those Disney films do go on and on and on.
  • The doctor looked my body over. I said: Is there any hope? He said: Yes. Reincarnation.
  • The only thing my husband and I have in common is that we were married on the same day.
  • Christmas is a time when everybody wants his past forgotten and his present remembered.
  • I asked the waiter, ‘Is this milk fresh?’ He said, ‘Lady, three hours ago it was grass.’
  • I realize it is normal to argue. I almost missed World War II watching my parents fight.
  • I’m beginning to have morning sickness. I’m not having a baby, I’m just sick of morning.
  • Tranquilizers work only if you follow the advice on the bottle – keep away from children.
  • Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.
  • My husband always felt that a marriage and career don’t mix. That’s why he’s never worked.
  • The only time I ever enjoyed ironing was the day I accidentally got gin in the steam iron.
  • Any time three New Yorkers get into a cab without an argument, a bank has just been robbed.
  • My timing is so precise, a heckler would have to make an appointment just to get a word in.
  • I’ve been asked to say a couple of words about my husband, Fang. How about short and cheap?
  • No matter what time your guests arrive, pretend they’re early, so naturally you’re not ready.
  • You know you’re old when someone compliments you on your alligator shoes, and you’re barefoot.
  • Doctors say it’s okay to have sex after a heart attack, provided you close the ambulance door.
  • I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.
  • Fang and I are always fighting. When we get up in the morning, we don’t kiss; we touch gloves.
  • I love to go to the doctor. Where else would a man look at me and say, ‘Take off your clothes’?
  • I asked my hairdresser what would look good on me. She says a Los Angeles Rams football helmet.
  • Fang can’t stand to see trash & garbage lying around the house. He can’t stand the competition.
  • Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age – as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.
  • The real reason your pro tells you to keep your head down is so you can’t see him laughing at you.
  • If your husband wants to lick the beaters on the mixer, shut them off before you give them to him.
  • Choose a checked or striped wall paper. People will be halfway home before they are able to focus.
  • Remember there is no way you can give the father custody of the children without getting a divorce.
  • Your husband drinks too much if he says he never drinks alone, but considers the goldfish somebody.
  • I’m eighteen years behind in my ironing. There’s no use doing it now, it doesn’t fit anybody I know.
  • [On plastic surgery:] When I die, God won’t know me. There are no two parts of my body the same age.
  • Your husband is lazy if coffee doesn’t keep him awake – even when it’s hot and being spilled on him.
  • When I go to bed at night, I’ve got so much grease on my body I wear snow chains to hold up my gown.
  • My house used to be haunted, but the ghosts haven’t been back since the night I tried on all my wigs.
  • I was in a beauty contest once. I not only came in last, I was hit in the mouth by Miss Congeniality.
  • The reason women don’t play football is because 11 of them would never wear the same outfit in public.
  • I wanted to become me, totally me. The more me, the better. I instinctively knew this and I was right.
  • My mother-in-law must be the probation officer I got for the crime I committed of marrying my husband.
  • My husband is so cheap. On Christmas Eve, he fires one shot and tells the kids Santa committed suicide.
  • … if they [your children] write their names in the dust on the furniture, don’t let them put the year.
  • They just elected me Mis Phonograph Record of 1966. They discovered my measurements were 33 1/2, 45, 78!
  • When I go to the beauty parlor, I always use the emergency entrance. Sometimes I just go for an estimate.
  • Just because I have rice on my clothes doesn’t mean I’ve been to a wedding. A Chinese man threw up on me.
  • Maybe it’s true that life begins at fifty. But everything else starts to wear out, fall out, or spread out.
  • We named all our children Kid. Well, they have different first names, like Hey Kid, You Kid, Dumb Kid . . .
  • Everybody knows how lazy he is. One day the neighbors saw Fang mow the lawn and I got three Get Well cards.
  • Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.
  • Most children threaten at times to run away from home. This is the only thing that keeps some parents going.
  • It’s true Fang and I fight, but we’ve never gone to bed mad. Of course, one year we were up for three months.
  • I hate smart sales clerks. I said to one, What do you have in lingerie? She says, More than you’ll ever have!
  • When buying a new house … Buy the house far enough away from school so your kids can’t come home for lunch.
  • I’ll never forget my first fur. It was a modest little stole. Modest? People thought I was wearing anchovies.
  • We Californians are constantly accused of not having seasons, but we do. We have fire, flood, mud, and drought.
  • I don’t know how you feel about old age… but in my case I didn’t even see it coming. It hit me from the rear.
  • Before you get married you should meet your fiance’s parents. It is not enough that you like his parole officer.
  • I honestly believe there is absolutely nothing like going to bed with a good #book; or a friend who’s #read one.
  • Have the man at the station put the air in the tires. I did it once myself. Have you ever seen a car with a limp?
  • A stand-up comic is judged by every line. Singers get applause at the end of their song no matter how bad they are.
  • The last thing I’d learn, well into my career, was how to get on, how to say hello, how to get in with the audience.
  • Comedy is tragedy revisited or hostility. It is mock hostility, of course, or it would be ugly; we would have a war.
  • Your husband is lazy if when he leaves the house, he finds out which way the wind is blowing and goes that direction.
  • When he proposed he said, “We’ll make such beautiful music together,” but in this duet, his part seems to be all rests.
  • I always wondered how I could tell when the right one came along – but it was easy. He was the only one that came along.
  • I remember once a vocational director said to Fang, “You must develop some mechanical skills – like getting out of bed.”
  • They always say to Californians that we don’t have seasons. Of course, that is not true. We have fire, flood, mud and drought.
  • get married with the feeling it is going to last. Not like the bride I know who doubled the wedding cake recipe and froze one.
  • If your house is really a mess and a stranger comes to the door greet him with, ‘Who could have done this? We have no enemies!’
  • A passport picture is a photo of a man that he can laugh at without realizing that it looks exactly the way his friends see him.
  • Religion is such a medieval idea. Don’t get me started. I have thought about every facet of religion, and I can’t buy any of it.
  • Just the other day I said to Fang, “Don’t you think we’ve got a storybook romance?” and he said, “Yes, and every page is ripped.
  • I should have suspected my husband was lazy. On our wedding day, his mother told me: “I’m not losing a son; I’m gaining a couch.”
  • The reason I’m not an alcoholic is I don’t like to drink in front of the kids . . . and when you’re away from them, who needs it?.
  • Everybody knows how much time Fang spends in bed. A local store that gives a 30 days’ trial on mattresses gives Fang only 15 days.
  • Your husband is lazy if the directions on his medicine say, “A teaspoon before going to bed,” and in one day he uses seven bottles.
  • I am constantly being asked about individuals. The only way to win is as a team. Football is not about one or two or three star players.
  • My husband is so useless that it’s hard for me to be romantic with him. I get down on the floor and say, If you love me, blink your eyes.
  • Fang took the entire family out for coffee and donuts the other night. The kids enjoyed it. It was the first time they’d ever given blood.
  • Would you believe that I once entered a beauty contest? I must have been out of my mind. I not only came in last, I got 361 get-well cards.
  • Keep at least one window pane clean to check the weather. Once when I didn’t do this I sent the kids off with umbrellas for six weeks straight.
  • We spend the first twelve months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.
  • Too many comics today ramble. By the time they get to the punch line, the audience has either gone to sleep, gone to the bathroom or gone to bed.
  • One [expert] said, ‘Always have a baby sitter who is acquainted with your children.’ If they were acquainted with my children, they wouldn’t sit!
  • This man I was going with asked me for my finger measurements. I thought he was going to buy me a ring for Christmas, but he gave me a bowling ball.
  • Women want men, careers, money, children, friends, luxury, comfort, independence, freedom, respect, love, and a three-dollar pantyhose that won’t run.
  • Mothers-in-law do not make good house pets. Once I had the most wonderful dream — I dreamed that mothers-in-law cost money and I couldn’t afford one.
  • I don’t want to sound like I’m on dope, but that hour is a high; it’s as good as you can feel. A wonderful, wonderful happiness, and great power.
  • Isn’t my fur stole pitiful? How unsuccessful can a girl look? People think I’m wearing anchovies. The worst of it is, I trapped these under my own sink.
  • I’ve tried Buddhism, Scientology, Numerology, Transcendental Meditation, Qabbala, t’ai chi, feng shui and Deepak Chopra but I find straight gin works best.
  • When I go to the beach, my grandchildren try to make words out of the veins in my legs. That’s why I still take the pill; I don’t want any more grandchildren.
  • In most states you can get a driver’s license when you’re sixteen years old, which made a lot of sense to me when I was sixteen years old but now seems insane.
  • When you play spin the bottle, if they don’t want to kiss you they have to give you a quarter. Well, hell, by the time I was twelve years old I owned my own home.
  • Have you ever known anyone who bought a fruitcake for himself? Of course not. They are purchased as Christmas gifts, mostly for people you don’t particularly like.
  • It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge.
  • Let me tell you, a discussion that starts, ‘I’ll tell you something you do that irritates me, if you tell me something I do that bothers you,’ never ends in a hug and a kiss.
  • Life began on this planet when the first amoeba split. Mankind will still be seeking God, not accepting that God is a spirit; can’t see it, touch it, only feel it. It’s called LOVE.
  • To get a roaster clean, send something like baked apples in it to a neighbor. Neighbors always return pans spotless, and you won’t have to use a blow torch on it like you usually do.
  • Once my husband said to me, ‘I’m going to have some coffee. Do you want me to put some hot water on for you?’ I thought that was the least he could do considering I was giving birth.
  • We have far too many kids. At one time in the playpen there was standing-room only. It looked like a bus stop for midgets. It used to get so damp in there, we’d have a rainbow above it.
  • My recipe for dealing with anger and frustration: set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes, cry, rant, and rave, and at the sound of the bell, simmer down and go about business as usual.
  • I was the world’s ugliest baby. I have photos of my folks leaving the hospital with sacks over their heads… I asked my mother how to turn off the electric fan. She said ‘Grab the blade!
  • Oh, that dog! Ever hear of a German Shepherd that bites its nails? Barks with a lisp? You say, “Attack!” And he has one. All he does is piddle. He’s nothing but a fur-covered kidney that barks.
  • This woman goes into a gun shop and says, ‘I want to buy a gun for my husband.’ The clerk says, ‘Did he tell you what kind of gun?’ ‘No,’ she replied. ‘He doesn’t even know I’m going to shoot him.
  • You’ve got to realize that when all goes well, and everything is beautiful, you have no comedy. It’s when somebody steps on the bride’s train, or belches during the ceremony that you’ve got comedy!
  • Right from the start my parents had left me to fend for myself. Apparently unaware that I was a kid, they invariably treated me like an adult, perhaps because they themselves were no spring chickens.
  • On the way to the delivery room, I almost changed my mind about having a baby. I wouldn’t have found it so hard to go ahead with it if I had realized that having a baby was the only way I could ever become a grandmother.
  • There isn’t any (afterlife), you dingbat! This is it, baby! Enjoy, carefully! Religion is such a medieval idea. Don’t get me started. I have thought about every facet of religion and I can’t buy any of it. So God made man in His own image? It’s just the other way around. Man made God in his own image. It’s all about money.
  • A friend told me the longer you keep Romano cheese, the better it gets. So, I kept it three years. And this thing turned mean. Now and then I’d open the refrigerator door and throw it some food. I’d have to walk it now and then. And then it grew this one leg. And it’s got this ugly fuzz all over it. And the dogs won’t run with it.
  • When you hire a person to plan your wedding, this does not include securing the groom. Plan to get married on Friday the 13th. In years to come this will make it much easier to explain why things turned out badly. To look beautiful at your wedding, take time to plan it. It took me a long time to find two ugly bridesmaids and a frumpy little flower girl.
  • The constants all through the centuries will be the same; wine, women and song. Other than that, life will be very different technologically. In the year 3000 the universe will be expanding as it will forever, infinitely. We will probe outer space but never find life as evolutionized as ours. We were not created by a deity. We created the deity in OUR image. Life began on this planet when the first amoeba split. Mankind will still be seeking God, not accepting that God is a spirit; can’t see it, touch it, only feel it. It’s called LOVE.

 

 

Ogden Nash (quotes)

/in /by
  • To love is an active verb.
  • Celery, raw, Develops the jaw
  • How Sunday into Monday melts!
  • A bit of talcum Is always walcum.
  • All that glitters is sold as gold.
  • Smallpox is natural; vaccine ain’t.
  • If called by a panther, don’t anther.
  • The old men know when an old man dies.
  • Too much Chablis can make you whablis.
  • Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.
  • A dog’s best friend is his illiteracy.
  • Don’t Cry Darling, It’s Blood All Right
  • In the world of mules there are no rules.
  • But all ladies think they weigh too much.
  • Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind.
  • The reason for much matrimony is patrimony.
  • When there are monsters there are miracles.
  • Women would rather be right than reasonable.
  • A lady is known by the product she endorses.
  • Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.
  • Where there is a monster, there is a miracle.
  • No man is greater than his respect for sleep.
  • One thing about the past. It’s likely to last.
  • Bankers are just like anybody else, only richer
  • Bankers are just like everyone else only richer.
  • One man’s remorse is another man’s reminiscence.
  • Here’s a good rule of thumb; too clever is dumb.
  • Bankers are just like anybody else, except richer
  • Middle-aged life is merry, and I love to lead it.
  • Wind is caused by the trees waving their branches.
  • In real life, it takes only one to make a quarrel.
  • I’d rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet.
  • Bankers are just like everybody else, except richer.
  • I was born a jackdaw; why should I try to be an owl?
  • Door: What a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
  • Man is a victim of dope in the incurable form of hope.
  • Commitments the voters don’t know about can’t hurt you.
  • How easy for those who do not bulge to not overindulge!
  • Time is like the ocean, always there, always different.
  • When you’re wrong admit it, when you’re right, shut up.
  • I claim there ain’t Another Saint As great as Valentine.
  • A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of.
  • Humor is the best means of surviving in a difficult world.
  • Malt does more than Hubbard did to help us look into the Id
  • You are much happier when you are happy than when you ain’t.
  • No, you never get any fun Out of the things you haven’t done.
  • I believe that people believe what they believe they believe.
  • The trouble with a kitten is that it eventually beomes a cat.
  • The trouble with a kitten is that eventually it becomes a cat.
  • The cow is of the bovine ilk: One end is moo, the other, milk.
  • Do you think my mind is maturing late, or simply rotted early?
  • I think in terms of rhyme, and have since I was six years old,
  • God in His wisdom made the fly And then forgot to tell us why.
  • When I ponder my mind I consistently find It is glued On food.
  • Some people’s money is merited and other people’s is inherited.
  • Life is sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
  • Behold the Zebra on the plains, And shudder at his mighty manes!
  • Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.
  • To Tom Carlson or his dog-depending on whose taste it best suits.
  • I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.
  • Progress may have been all right once, but it has gone on too long
  • When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window.
  • Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
  • Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long.
  • Only the gamefish swims upstream, But the sensible fish swims down.
  • At another year I would not boggle Except that when I jog I joggle.
  • He without benefit of scruples – His fun and money soon quadruples.
  • Progress might have been all right once, but it’s gone on too long.
  • My garden will never make me famous, I’m a horticultural ignoramus.
  • Poets aren’t very useful Because they aren’t consumeful or produceful
  • To be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is.
  • When a lady’s erotic life is vexed God knows what God is coming next.
  • Shake and shake The catsup bottle. None will come, And then a lot’ll.
  • Poets arent very usefulBecause they aren’t consumeful or produceful..
  • The trouble with a kitten is that when it grows up, it’s always a cat.
  • Neath tile or thatch That man is rich Who has a scratch For every itch.
  • Professional men, they have no cares; whatever happens, they get theirs.
  • You can take it as understood, That your luck changes only if it’s good.
  • Home is heaven and orgies are vile, But I like an orgy, once in a while.
  • I hope my tongue in prune juice smothers, If I belittle dogs and mothers.
  • One bliss for which There is no match Is when you itch To up and scratch.
  • Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
  • Indeed, everybody wants to be a wow, But not everybody knows exactly how.
  • The only people who should really sin are the people who can sin and grin.
  • Home is heaven and orgies are vile/ But you need an orgy, once in a while.
  • He is not drunk, who from the floor, can rise and stand and shout for more
  • Any kiddies in school can love like a fool,/ But hating, my boy, is an art.
  • People who work sitting down get paid more than people who work standing up.
  • Passivity can be a provoking modus operandi; Consider the Empire and Gandhi.
  • Never befriend the oppressed unless you are prepared to take on the oppressor.
  • Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
  • Beneath this slab/ John Brown is stowed./ He watched the ads,/ And not the road.
  • The burnt child, urged by rankling ire, Can hardly wait to get back at the fire.
  • The only way I can distinguish proper from improper fractions is by their actions
  • All husbands are alike, but they have different faces so you can tell them apart.
  • Some tortures are physical and some are mental, but the one that’s both is dental.
  • Nobody agrees with anybody else anyhow, but adults conceal it and infants show it.
  • Why did the Lord give use so much quickness unless it was to avoid responsibility?
  • It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin, That lays eggs under your skin.
  • I am a conscientious man, when I throw rocks at seabirds I leave no tern unstoned.
  • The only way I can distinguish proper from improper fractions/ Is by their actions.
  • Some tortures are physical And some are mental, But the one that is both Is dental.
  • Then blessings on thee, my afternoon torpor Thou makest a prince of a mental porpor.
  • The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.
  • Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave when they think that their children are naive.
  • Every new year is the direct descendant, isn’t it, of a long line of proven criminals?
  • Middle age ends and senescence begins, The day your descendants outnumber your friends
  • The song of canaries Never varies, And when they’re moulting They’re pretty revolting.
  • But children, hark! Your mother would rather, When you arrived, have been your father.
  • Children aren’t happy with nothing to ignore, and that’s what parents were created for.
  • Every Englishman knows one thing – that to be an Englishman is the best thing there is.
  • Here lies my past, Goodbye I have kissed it; Thank you kids, I wouldn’t have missed it.
  • Oh, what a tangled web do parents weave, when they think that their children are naive.
  • A man is quite dishonorable to sell himself, For anything other than quite a lot of pelf
  • Middle age ends and senescence begins, the day your descendant’s outnumber your friends.
  • The further through life I drift the more obvious it becomes that I am lacking in thrift.
  • O thrice unhappy home Whose master doesn’t know the difference between a watt and an ohm!
  • Children aren’t happy without something to ignore, And that’s what parents were created for
  • If you don’t want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won’t have to work.
  • If you don’t want to work, you have to work to earn enough money so that you won’t have to work.
  • I don’t care how unkind the things people say about me so long as they don’t say them to my face.
  • Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.
  • Someone invented the telephone, And interrupted a nation’s slumber, Ringing wrong but similar numbers
  • In the words of the poet, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, this erstwhile youth replies, I just can’t
  • The camel has a single hump, The dromedary, two; Or else the other way around; I’m never sure. Are you?
  • Middle age is when you’ve met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.
  • Some one invented the telephone, And interrupted a nation’s slumbers, Ringing wrong but similar numbers.
  • Linguistics becomes an ever eerier area, like I feel like I’m in Oz, Just trying to tell it like it was.
  • I’m like a backward berry, Unripened on the vine, For all my friends are fifty, And I’m only forty-nine.
  • There has been a lot of progress during my lifetime, but I’m afraid it’s heading in the wrong direction.
  • A cough is something that you yourself cant help, but everybody else does on purpose just to torment you.
  • A cough is something that you yourself can’t help, but everybody else does on purpose just to torment you.
  • The camel has a single hump;/ The dromedary, two;/ Or else the other way around./ I’m never sure. Are you?
  • The dog is man’s best friend. He has a tail on one end. Up in front he has teeth. And four legs underneath.
  • Marriage is the only known example of the happy meeting of the immovable object and the irresistible force.
  • A husband is a man who two minutes after his head touches the pillow is snoring like an overloaded omnibus.
  • No matter how deep and dark your pit, how dank your shroud, their heads are heroically unbloody and unbowed.
  • And you stagger down to break your fast. Greasy bacon and lacquered eggs And coffee composed of frigid dregs.
  • A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.
  • Miranda in Miranda’s sight is old, gray and dirty; Twenty-nine she was last night; This morning she is thirty.
  • 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.
  • A dressing is not a compote A dressing is not a custard It consists of pepper and salt, Vinegar, oil and mustard.
  • People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they don’t want it.
  • Marriage is the alliance of two people, one of whom never remembers birthdays and the other who never forgets them.
  • I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks.
  • Middle-age is when you’re sitting at home on a Saturday night and the telephone rings and you hope it isn’t for you.
  • People who have what they want are fond of telling people who haven’t what they want that they really don’t want it.
  • We love the kindly wind and hail, The jolly thunderbolt, We watch in glee the fairy trail Of ampere, watt, and volt.
  • The sky is now indelible ink, The branches reft asunder; But you and I we do not shrink; We love the lovely thunder.
  • I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, were it not for making living, which is rather a nouciance.
  • One rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it/Never lend any money to anybody unless they don’t need it.
  • I have an idea that the phrase weaker sex was coined by some woman to disarm some man she was preparing to overwhelm.
  • I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.
  • I have an idea that the phrase ‘weaker sex’ was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm.
  • Maybe I couldn’t be dafter, But I keep wondering if this time we settle our differences before a war instead of after.
  • Certainly there are things in life that money can’t buy, but it’s very funny – Did you ever try buying them without money?
  • And one of his partners asked Has he vertigo? and the other glanced out and down and said Oh no, only about ten feet more.
  • A husband is a guy who tells you when you’ve got on too much lipstick and helps you with your girdle when your hips stick.
  • Every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz.: That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is.
  • I drink because she nags, she said I nag because he drinks. But if the truth be known to you, He’s a lush and she’s a shrew.
  • To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.
  • Basketball, a game which won’t be fit for people until they set the basket umbilicus-high and return the giraffes to the zoo.
  • I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all.
  • There are two kinds of people who blow through life like a breeze, And one kind is gossipers, and the other kind is gossipees.
  • The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.
  • I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all.
  • Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,/ Is those things arms, or is they legs?/ I marvel at thee, Octopus; If I were thou, I’d call me Us.
  • This is my dream, It is my own dream, I dreamt it. I dreamt that my hair was kempt. Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.
  • I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all.
  • The Pig, if I am not mistaken, Gives us ham and pork and Bacon. Let others think his heart is big, I think it stupid of the Pig.
  • Don’t over-analyze your marriage; it’s like yanking up a fragile indoor plant every 20 minutes to see how its roots are growing.
  • When I remember bygone days I think how evening follows morn So many I loved were not yet dead, So many I love were not yet born.
  • The codfish is a staple food For which I’m seldom in the mood. This fish is such an utter loss That people eat it with egg sauce.
  • There is only one way to achieve happiness on this terrestrial ball, and that is to have either a clear conscience or none at all.
  • And one of his partners asked ”Has he vertigo?” and the other glanced out and down and said ”Oh no, only about ten feet more.”
  • The Pig, if I am not mistaken, Supplies us sausage, ham, and Bacon. Let others say his heart is big, I think it stupid of the Pig.
  • One thing that literature would be greatly the better for Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and>metaphor.
  • If you are really Master of your Fate, it shouldn’t make any difference to you whether Cleopatra or the Bearded Lady is your mate.
  • I have a bone to pick with Fate / Come here and tell me, girlie, / Do you think my mind is maturing late,/ Or simply rotting early?
  • Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who cannot sleep with window shut, and a woman who cannot sleep with the window open.
  • Good wine needs no bush, and perhaps products that people really want need no hard-sell or soft-sell TV push. Why not? Look at pot.
  • Certainly there are lots of things in life that money won’t buy, but it’s very funny- Have you ever tried to buy them without money?
  • Dogs display reluctance and wrath If you try to give them a bath. They bury bones in hideaways And half the time they trot sideaways.
  • A lady wants to be dressed exactly like everybody else but she gets pretty up- set if she sees anybody else dressed exactly like her.
  • The turtle lives ‘twixt plated decks Which practically conceal its sex I think it clever of the turtle In such a fix to be so fertile.
  • I test my bath before I sit, And I’m always moved to wonderment That what chills the finger not a bit Is so frigid upon the fundament.
  • Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody’s reach, And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech.
  • My verse represents a handle I can grasp in order not to yield to the centrifugal forces which are trying to throw me off of the world.
  • The truth I do not stretch or shove When I state the dog is full of love. I’ve also proved, by actual test, A wet dog is the lovingest.
  • Indoors or out, no one relaxes in March, that month of wind and taxes, the wind will presently disappear, the taxes last us all the year.
  • Then here’s to the heartening wassail, Wherever good fellows are found; Be its master instead of its vassal, and order the glasses around.
  • Stuyvesant chats with Kelly and Katz, The professor warms to the broker, And life is good in the brotherhood Of an air-conditioned smoker.
  • Some primal termite knocked on wood. And tasted it, and found it good. And that is why your Cousin May Fell through the parlor floor today.
  • Some hate broccoli, some hate bacon I hate having my picture taken. How can your family claim to love you And then demand a picture of you?
  • I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.
  • To maintain your marriage brimming, with really like in the wedding cup, anytime you are incorrect, admit it each time you’re proper, shut up.
  • I don’t mind their having a lot of money, and I don’t care how they employ it, but I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it.
  • Snow is all right while it is snowing; it is like inebriation because it is very pleasing when it is coming, but very unpleasing when it is going.
  • The Preacher, the Politicain, the Teacher, Were each of them once a kiddie. A child, indeed, is a wonderful creature. Do I want one? God Forbiddie!
  • If some confectioners were willing To let the shape announce the filling, We’d encounter fewer assorted chocs, Bitten into and returned to the box.
  • People can’t concentrate properly on blowing other people to pieces properly if their minds are poisoned by thoughts suitable to the 25th of December
  • How confusing the beams from memory’s lamp are; One day a bachelor, the next a grampa. What is the secret of the trick? How did I get so old so quick?
  • The more you earn, the less you keep, And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to take, If the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.
  • Whether elected or appointed he considers himself the Lord’s anointed, and indeed the ointment lingers on him so thick you can’t get your fingers on him.
  • The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can’t cure, Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor.
  • Sleep is perverse as human nature, Sleep is perverse as a legislature, Sleep is as forward as hives or goiters, And where it is least desired, it loiters.
  • It is my duty, gentlemen, to inform you that women are dictators all, and I recommend to you this moral: In real life it takes only one to make a quarrel.
  • Hark to the whimper of the seagull. / He weeps because he’s not an ea-gull. / Suppose you were, you silly seagull. / Could you explain it to your she-gull?
  • There is something about a martini, Ere the dining and dancing begin, And to tell you the truth, It is not the vermouth- I think that perhaps it’s the gin.
  • There was a young man of Herne Bay who was making some fireworks one day: but he dropped his cigar in the gunpowder jar. There was a young man of Herne Bay.
  • You scour the Bowery, ransack the Bronx,/ Through funeral parlors and honky-tonks./ From river to river you comb the town/ For a place to lay your family down.
  • The highest form of wisdom is to get drunk and go to pieces. The highest form of wisdom is to get drunk and go to pieces. Candy is dandy But liquor is quicker.
  • There once was an umpire whose vision Was cause for abuse and derision He remarked in surprise, ‘Why pick on my eyes? It’s my heart that dictates my decision.’
  • The oboe’s a horn made of wood. I’d play you a tune if I could, But the reeds are a pain, And the fingering’s insane. It’s the ill wind that no one blows good.
  • A bird in the open never looks Like its picture in the birdie books – Or if it once did, it has changed its plumage, And plunges you back into ignorant gloomage.
  • Time is so old and love so brief, love is pure gold and time a thief. We’re late, darling, we’re late, The curtain descends, everything ends, too soon, too soon.
  • Humor is hope’s companion in arms. It is not brash, it is not cheap, it is not heartless. Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit.
  • I think progress began to retrogress when Wilbur and Orville started tinkering around in Dayton and at Kitty Hawk, because I believe that two Wrights made a wrong.
  • The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of sin you must be pursuing, Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.
  • An occasional lucky guess as to what makes a wife tick is the best a man can hope for, Even then, no sooner has he learned how to cope with the tick than she tocks.
  • O money, money, money. I’m not necessarily one of those who think thee holy, but I often stop to wonder how thou canst go out so fast when thou comest in so slowly.
  • There are people who are very resourceful, at being remorseful, and who apparently feel that the best way to make friends is to do something terrible and then make amends.
  • Your hair may be brushed, but your mind’s untidy. You’ve had about seven hours of sleep since Friday. No wonder you feel that lost sensation. You’re sunk from a riot of relaxation.
  • I myself am more and more inclined to agree with Omar and Satchel Paige as I grow older: Don’t try to rewrite what the moving finger has writ, and don’t ever look over your shoulder.
  • There is one fault that I must find With the twentieth century. And I’ll put it in a couple of words; Too adventury. What I’d like would be some nice dull monotony If anyone’s gotony.
  • Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons, or Celts, Can’t seem just to say anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say that it is like something else.
  • Life has a tendency to obfuscate and bewilder, Such as fating us to spend the first part of our lives being embarrassed by our parents and the last part being embarrassed by our children.
  • It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, That all sin is divided into two parts. One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important
  • Now, anybody whom a German hates, He presently exterminates, But he who exterminates a French Is never safe from Gallic revenge, But he who gets even with a German Is obliterated like a vermin
  • They take the paper and they read the headlines. So they’ve heard of unemployment and they’ve heard of bread-lines. And they philanthropically cure them all by getting up a costume charity ball.
  • The noblest lord is ushered in By the practicing physician, And the humblest lout is ushered out By a certified mortician. And in between, they find their foyers Alive with summonses from lawyers.
  • Tonight’s December thirty-first, something is about to burst. The clock is crouching, dark and small, like a time bomb in the hall. Hark, it’s midnight, children dear. Duck! Here comes another year!
  • The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.
  • The doctor gets you when you’re born, The preacher, when you marry, And the lawyer lurks with costly clerks If too much on you carry. Professional men, they have no cares; Whatever happens, they get theirs.
  • People expect old men to die, They do not really mourn old men. Old men are different. People look At them with eyes that wonder when … People watch with unshocked eyes; But the old men know when an old man dies.
  • Sleep is perverse as human nature, Sleep is perverse as legislature…. So people who go to bed to sleep Must count French premiers or sheep, And people who ought to arise from bed Yawn and go back to sleep instead.
  • So I hope husbands and wives will continue to debate and combat Over everything debatable and combatable Because I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life Particularly if he has income and she is pattable.
  • So Columbus said, somebody show me the sunset and somebody did and he set sail for it, And he discovered America and they put him in jail for it, And the fetters gave him welts, And they named America after somebody else.
  • Here is a pen and here is a pencil, here’s a typewriter, here’s a stencil, here’s a list of today’s appointments, and all the flies in all the ointments, the daily woes that a man endures — take them, George, they’re yours!
  • Ten years ago she split the air To seize what she could spy Tonight she bumps against a chair, Betrayed by milky eye. She seems to pant, Time up, time up! My little dog must die, And lie in dust with Hector’s pup; I So, presently, must I.
  • Daybreak is one of the greatest disadvantages of living under the solar system: It means having to get up almost the very minute you go to bed, And bathe and shave and scrub industriously at your molar system And catch a train and go to the office an
  • Love is a word that is constantly heard, Hate is a word that is not. Love, I am told, is more precious than gold. Love, I have read, is hot. But hate is the verb that to me is superb, And Love but a drug on the mart. Any kiddie in school can love like a fool, But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
  • So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf, Which is don’t spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves.
  • Husbands are things that wives have to get used to putting up with. And with whom they breakfast with and sup with. They interfere with the discipline of nurseries, And forget anniversaries, And when they have been particularly remiss, They think they can cure everything with a great big kiss.
  • But that wasn’t fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them, With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to people they say Oh yes, they’re the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them.
  • Here’s a toast to the roast that good fellowship lends, with the sparkle of beer and wine; May its sentiment always be deeper, my friends, than the foam at the top of the stein. Then here’s to the heartening wassail, wherever good fellows are found; Be its master instead of its vassal, and order the glasses around.
  • Abracadabra, thus we learn The more you create, the less you earn. The less you earn, the more you’re given, The less you lead, the more you’re driven, The more destroyed, the more they feed, The more you pay, the more they need, The more you earn, the less you keep, And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to take If the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.
  • Among other things I think humor is a shield, a weapon, a survival kit… So here we are several billion of us, crowded into our global concentration camp for the duration. How are we to survive? Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolity is. I think our best chance lies in humor, which in this case means a wry acceptance of our predicament. We don’t have to like it but we can at least recognize its ridiculous aspects, one of which is ourselves.

 

 

Kin Hubbard (quotes)

/in /by
  • Many a family tree needs trimming
  • All the world loves a good loser.
  • You won’t skid if you stay in a rut.
  • Politics makes strange post-masters.
  • A loafer always has the correct time.
  • It’s the good loser who finally loses out.
  • None but the brave can live with the fair.
  • Lack of pep is often mistaken for patience.
  • Of all the home remedies, a good wife is best.
  • The rich man and his daughter are soon parted.
  • A friend that ain’t in need is a friend indeed.
  • Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.
  • Flattery won’t hurt you if you don’t swallow it.
  • Nobody ever grew despondent looking for trouble.
  • Men are not punished for their sins, but by them.
  • Very often the quiet fellow has said all he knows
  • Nobody can be as agreeable as an uninvited guest.
  • Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.
  • It’s what a fellow thinks he knows that hurts him.
  • Nobuddy ever listened t’ reason on a empty stomach.
  • Nothing dispels enthusiasm like a small admission fee.
  • Nobody kicks on being interrupted if it’s by applause.
  • Making a long stay short is a great aid to popularity.
  • It is no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.
  • Experience is a dear teacher but he delivers th’ goods.
  • If at first you do succeed don’t take any more chances.
  • The hardest thing is to take less when you can get more.
  • Everything comes to him who waits, except a loaned book.
  • Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.
  • Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.
  • The worst feature of a new baby is its mother’s singing.
  • A good listener is usually thinking about something else.
  • There’s many a slip twixt the blueprints and a new house.
  • The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them.
  • Some people pay a compliment as if they expected a receipt.
  • Live so that you can at least get the benefit of the doubt.
  • The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.
  • No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.
  • Look out for the people who allow you to do all the talking.
  • Lots of fellows think a home is only good to borrow money on.
  • Fashion: a barricade behind which men hide their nothingness.
  • Nobody works as hard for his money as the man who marries it.
  • In spite of all our speeding it’s still the style to be late.
  • Gittin’ talked about is one o’ th’ penalties for bein’ purty.
  • When some fellers decide to retire nobody knows the difference.
  • Who remembers when we used to rest on Sunday instead of Monday?
  • Intelligent people are always on the unpopular side of anything.
  • The longer it takes you to select a cantaloupe, the worse it is!
  • Fun is like life insurance; the older you get, the more it costs.
  • .. anything a customer thinks a store is losing money on.
  • We’d all like to vote for the best man but he’s never a candidate.
  • In order to live off a garden, you practically have to live in it.
  • The hardest thing is writing a recommendation for someone we know.
  • Executive: a man who makes quick decisions and is sometimes right.
  • The world gets better every day – then worse again in the evening.
  • Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.
  • Universal peace sounds ridiculous to the head of an average family.
  • Honesty pays, but it doesn’t seem to pay enough to suit some people.
  • When some folks agree with my opinions I begin to suspect I’m wrong.
  • Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Weep, an’ it keeps on laughin’.
  • Beauty is . . . a valuable asset if you’re poor or haven’t any sense.
  • Being an optimist after you’ve got everything you want doesn’t count.
  • Every once in a while someone without a single bad habit gets caught.
  • There are two ways to handle a woman, and nobody knows either of them.
  • Kindness goes a long ways lots of times when it ought to stay at home.
  • Some folks can look so busy doing nothing that they seem indispensable.
  • Some folks pay a compliment like they went down in their pocket for it.
  • There’s another advantage to being poor – a doctor will cure you faster.
  • We’re all self-made men, but not very many of us have stayed on the job.
  • Some fellows get credit for being conservative when they are only stupid.
  • The worst waste of breath, next to playing a saxophone, is advising a son
  • An optimist is a fellow who believes what’s going to be will be postponed
  • A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost pays to be one.
  • Washing your car and polishing it all up is a never failing sign of rain.
  • Nothing’s as mean as giving a little child something useful for Christmas.
  • The reason the way of the transgressor is hard is because it’s so crowded.
  • Where ignorance is bliss it’s foolish to borrow your neighbor’s newspaper.
  • If there’s anything mean in a feller, a litter authority will bring it out.
  • I haven’t heard of anybody who wants to stop living on account of the cost.
  • Bees are not as busy as we think they are. They just can’t buzz any slower.
  • A bee is never as busy as it seems; it’s just that it can’t buzz any slower.
  • Some folks seem to have descended from the chimpanzee much later than others.
  • Folks that blurt out just what they think wouldn’t be so bad if they thought.
  • A sympathizer is a fellow that’s for you as long as it doesn’t cost anything.
  • It seems that nothing ever gets to going good till there’s a few resignations
  • If capital and labor ever do get together it’s good night for the rest of us.
  • Of all the unbearable nuisances, the ignoramus that has traveled is the worst.
  • Women seem to be all right on bargains till it comes to picking out a husband.
  • Whoever takes just plain ginger ale soon gets drowned out of the conversation.
  • If there’s anything a public servant hates to do it’s something for the public.
  • Every father expects his boy to do the things he wouldn’t do when he was young.
  • The only time some fellows are seen with their wives is after they’re indicted.
  • A bad cold wouldn’t be so annoying if it weren’t for the advice of our friends.
  • There isn’t much to be seen in a little town, but what you hear makes up for it.
  • If some people didn’t tell you, you’d never know they’d been away on a vacation.
  • The fellow that owns his own home is always just coming out of a hardware store.
  • Knowin’ all about baseball is just about as profitable as bein’ a good whittler.
  • Plain spoken people get most of the recognition because folks are afraid of them.
  • Some people are so sensitive that they feel snubbed if an epidemic overlooks them.
  • We like little children, because they tear out as soon as they get what they want.
  • We can tell that a good name is better than riches by those who prefer the riches.
  • I never saw an athletic girl that thought she was strong enough to do indoor work.
  • Ther’s still a few honest folks left but they never seem t’ find anything you lose.
  • Most parents don’t worry about a daughter until she fails to show up for breakfast.
  • The safe way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket.
  • A never-failing way to get rid of a fellow is to tell him something for his own good.
  • A lot of Thanksgiving days have been ruined by not carving the turkey in the kitchen.
  • Gossip is vice enjoyed vicariously – the sweet, subtle satisfaction without the risk.
  • The election is not very far off when a candidate can recognize you across the street.
  • One of the commonest ailments of the present day is the premature formation of opinion.
  • Don’t a fellow feel good after he gets out of a store where he nearly bought something.
  • It isn’t enough for you to love money – it’s also necessary that money should love you.
  • The fellow that calls you ‘brother’ usually wants something that doesn’t belong to him.
  • Nothing is as irritating as the fellow who chats pleasantly while he’s overcharging you.
  • University: … a place where rich men send their sons who have no aptitude for business.
  • It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.
  • Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn’t have as many monuments to unveil.
  • I don’t know of anything better than a woman if you want to spend money where it will show.
  • It ain’t a bad plan to keep still occasionally even when you know what you’re talking about.
  • The man who says “I may be wrong, but–” does not believe there can be any such possibility.
  • My idea of walking into the jaws of death is marrying some woman who has lost three husbands.
  • Only one fellow in ten thousand understands the currency question, and we meet him every day.
  • There is nothing so aggravating as a fresh boy who is too old to ignore and too young to kick.
  • There ought t’be some way t’eat celery so it wouldn’t sound like you wuz steppin’ on a basket.
  • If you haven’t seen your wife smile at a traffic cop, you haven’t seen her smile her prettiest.
  • One of the commonest mistakes is thinking your worries are over when your children get married.
  • It’s going to be fun to watch and see how long the meek can keep the earth once they inherit it.
  • There’s no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn’t tell you about it?
  • Next to a circus there ain’t nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Christmas spirit.
  • The fellow that agrees with everything you say is either a fool or he is getting ready to skin you.
  • No matter how much strong black coffee we drink, almost any after- dinner speech will counteract it.
  • A fellow ought to save a few of the long evenings he spends with his girl till after they’re married.
  • Another bad thing about “prosperity” is that you can’t jingle any money without being under suspicion
  • It don’t make no difference what is is, a woman’ll buy anything she thinks a store is losin’ money on.
  • I don’t look for much to come out of government ownership as long as we have Democrats and Republicans.
  • After a fellow gets famous it doesn’t take long for someone to bob up that used to sit by him in school.
  • About the only thing we have left that actually discriminates in favor of the plain people is the stork.
  • There is plenty of peace in any home where the family doesn’t make the mistake of trying to get together.
  • When a woman says, ‘I don’t wish to mention any names’, it means it ain’t necessary to mention any names.
  • If there’s any literary ability in a feller, getting fired out of a good government job will bring it out.
  • A sadder but wiser man is a thousand times more agreeable to meet than the feller that never makes a mistake.
  • Never tell the box-office man that you can’t hear well or he will sell you a seat where you can’t see either.
  • “Why doesn’t the fellow who says, “I’m no speechmaker,” let it go at that instead of giving a demonstration? “
  • When you consider what a chance women have to poison their husbands, it’s a wonder there isn’t more of it done
  • Litigation: A form of hell whereby money is transferred from the pockets of the proletariat to that of lawyers.
  • I will say this for adversity: people seem to be able to stand it, and that is more than I can say for prosperity.
  • No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more that she can be witty by only the help of speech.
  • Don’t knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn’t start a conversation if it didn’t change once in a while.
  • If the government was as afraid of disturbing the consumer as it is of disturbing business, this would be some democracy.
  • Hon Editor Cale Fluhart was a power politically fer years, but he never got prominent enough t’ have his speeches garbled.
  • It used to be that a fellow went on the police force when everything else failed, but today he goes in the advertising game.
  • One of the simple but genuine pleasures in life is getting up in the morning and hurrying to a mousetrap you set the night before.
  • Don’t say yes until I’ve finished talking. – Attributed to many Hollywood executives Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.
  • Gittin’ talked about is one o’ th’ penalties for bein’ purty, while bein’ above suspicion is about th’ only compensation fer bein’ homely.
  • There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.
  • All I kin git out o’ the Wickersham position on prohibition is that the distinguished jurist seems to feel that if we’d let ’em have it the problem o’ keepin’ ’em from gitten;’ it would be greatly simplified
  • I’m sorry to inform you that your 50 year warranty has expired on your back, knees, and memory. Luckily your lifetime warranty on your heart is still in effect. Of course, that becomes void and expires when you do.
  • As to those who hoard gold and silver and spend it not in God’s path, give them, then, the tidings of a painful agony: on a day when these things shall be heated in hell-fire, and their foreheads, and their sides, and their backs shall be branded therewith.

 

 

Josh Billings (quotes)

/in /by
  • Perseverance is king.
  • Silence is a still noise.
  • Truth is the edict of God.
  • Fun is a sugar-coated physic.
  • Pedantry is paraded knowledge.
  • Silence never makes any blunders.
  • The squeeky wheel gets the grease.
  • Stupidity,–unconscious ignorance.
  • Rivalry and envy are Siamese twins.
  • Young widows still bide their time.
  • Faith is the soul riding at anchor.
  • Remember the poor, it costs nothing.
  • Method is the arithmetic of success.
  • Jealousy is one of love’s parasites.
  • Shame is the dying embers of virtue.
  • Anxiety will bear a lot of nuisance.
  • The less we know the more we suspect
  • [Science is] the literature of truth.
  • No one can disgrace us but ourselves.
  • Poverty is the step-mother of genius.
  • Laughter is the fireworks of the soul.
  • Incredulity is the wisdom of the fool.
  • Biography is the best form of history.
  • Some folks are wise and some otherwise.
  • Ignorance is the wet-nurse of prejudice.
  • Good nonsense is good sense in disguise.
  • Clothes form the intellect of the dandy.
  • Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.
  • The soul has more diseases than the body.
  • Pity cost nothing and ain’t worth nothing.
  • Suicide is cheating the doctor out of job.
  • The books are balanced in heaven, not here.
  • Everyone who does the best he can is a hero.
  • The unfortunate do not pity the unfortunate.
  • Tears are a good alterative, but a poor diet.
  • Men who have much to say use the fewest words.
  • The man who ain’t got an enemy is really poor.
  • Wisdom deprives even poverty of half its power.
  • There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.
  • Pity costs nothing, and it ain’t worth nothing.
  • Fools carry their daggers in their open mouths.
  • A good place to visit, but a poor place to stay.
  • Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess.
  • You can reach stupidity only with a cannon ball.
  • Wisdom has never made a bigot, but learning has.
  • The great art of writing is knowing when to stop.
  • Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute.
  • We should make virtue our master, not our servant.
  • Advice maybe wrong, but examples prove themselves.
  • Better make a weak man your enemy than your friend.
  • Peace is the soft and holy shadow that virtue casts.
  • Common sense is instinct, and enough of it is genius.
  • Genius ain’t anything more than elegant common sense.
  • Where religion is a trade, morality is a merchandise.
  • Early genius, like early cabbage, does not head well.
  • Don’t put off till tomorrow what can be enjoyed today.
  • Music wasn’t made to make us wise, but better natured.
  • The dog that will follow everbody ain’t worth a curse.
  • Experience makes more timid men than it does wise ones.
  • Don’t have any more secrets than you can keep yourself.
  • Reason often makes mistakes, but conscience never does.
  • It is better to know nothing than to know what ain’t so.
  • Wise men have but few confidants, and cunning ones none.
  • Doesn’t know much, but leads the league in nostril hair.
  • Ill-nature is a sort of running sore of the disposition.
  • When the truth is in your way, you are on the wrong road.
  • Caution, though very often wasted is a good risk to take.
  • Ambition is like hunger; it obeys no law but its appetite
  • It ain’t often that a man’s reputation outlasts his money.
  • Wisdom that don’t make us happier ain’t worth plowing for.
  • Love looks through a telescope; envy, through a microscope.
  • Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt, not swallowed.
  • The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.
  • Morally considered, laughter is next to the Ten Commandments.
  • Society is composed of slow Christians and wide-awake sinners.
  • People who have nothing to say are never at a loss in talking.
  • There are very few good judges of humor, and they don’t agree.
  • To enjoy a good reputation, give publicly, and steal privately.
  • Experience increases our wisdom but doesn’t reduce our follies.
  • Metaphysics is the science of proving what we don’t understand.
  • Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.
  • Prejudice assumes the garb of reason, but the cheat is too thin.
  • Keep a cow, and then the milk won’t have to be watered but once.
  • There is gravity in wisdom, but no particular wisdom in gravity.
  • Men mourn for what they have lost; women for what they ain’t got.
  • Fashion makes fools of some, sinners of others, and slaves of all.
  • The best creed we can have is charity toward the creeds of others.
  • The wheel that squeaks the loudest is the one that gets the grease.
  • There never yet was a mother who taught her child to be an infidel.
  • Woman’s influence is powerful, especially when she wants something.
  • One legged chickens, I know, are the least apt to scratch a garden.
  • Never run into debt, not if you can find anything else to run into.
  • The fools in this world make about as much trouble as the wicked do.
  • Selfish people, with no heart to speak of, have the best time of it.
  • The man who has never been tempted doesn’t know how dishonest he is.
  • Knowledge is like money, the more a man gits the more he hankers for.
  • Pyrotechnically considered, [laughing] is the fire-works of the soul.
  • Error will slip through a crack, while truth will stick in a doorway.
  • I do not know of a better cure for sorrow than to pity somebody else.
  • I don’t care how much a man talks, if he only says it in a few words.
  • Self-made men are most always apt to be a little too proud of the job.
  • Experience is a school where a man learns what a big fool he has been.
  • Rumor is a vagrant without a home, and lives upon what it can pick up.
  • It ain’t no disgrace for a man to fall, but to lie there and grunt is.
  • Opinions should be formed with great caution, and changed with greater.
  • Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won’t buy the wag of his tail.
  • Everybody in this world wants watching, but nobody more than ourselves.
  • Unless we put heart and soul into our labor we but brutify our actions.
  • A learned fool is one who has read everything and simply remembered it.
  • Advice is like kissing: it costs nothing and is a pleasant thing to do.
  • We mingle in society not so much to meet others as to escape ourselves.
  • One of the rarest things that a man ever does, is to do the best he can.
  • It is a great art to be superior to others without letting them know it.
  • There are lots of people who mistake their imagination for their memory.
  • He whom prosperity humbles, and adversity strengthens, is the true hero.
  • True valor is like honesty; it enters into all that a man sees and does.
  • It is easier to be virtuous than it is to appear so, and it pays better.
  • A man cannot learn to be wise any more than he can learn to be handsome.
  • There is a significant Latin proverb; to wit: Who will guard the guards?
  • It’s not so hard to get rich as it is to know when you have gotten rich.
  • Most men would rather be charged with malice than with making a blunder.
  • Be kind to your mother-in-law, but pay for her board at some good hotel.
  • It strains a man’s philosophy the worst kind to laugh when he gets beat.
  • Don’t mistake pleasure for happiness. They are a different breed of dogs.
  • A puppy plays with every pup he meets, but an old dog has few associates.
  • Show me a thoroughly contented person, and I will show you a useless one.
  • I’ve never known an auctioneer to lie unless it was absolutely necessary.
  • If the world despises a hypocrite, what must they think of him in heaven?
  • As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
  • There are two things in life for which we are never truly prepared: twins.
  • We are ap tu hate them, who wont take our advice, and despise them who do.
  • Occasions are rare; and those, who know how to seize upon them, are rarer.
  • Human happiness konsists in having what yu want, and wanting what yu have.
  • Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
  • Life is short, but it’s long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.
  • If animals had reason, they would act just as ridiculous as we menfolks do.
  • A good way I know to find happiness, is to not bore a hole to fit the plug.
  • A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself.
  • Music hath the charm to soothe a savage beast, but I’d try a revolver first.
  • Advice is like castor oil ‚Äî easy enough to give but dreadful hard to take.
  • There is nothing so easy to learn as experience and nothing so hard to apply.
  • There’s a great power in words, if you don’t hitch too many of them together.
  • Theory looks well on paper, but does not amount to anything without practice.
  • Health is like money, we never have a true idea of its value until we lose it.
  • Time is like money, the less we have of it to spare the further we make it go.
  • I never knew a man troubled with melancholy, who had plenty to do, and did it.
  • Ignorance ain’t not knowin’ stuff; ignorance is knowin’ stuff that AIN’T TRUE.
  • Satire that is seasonable and just is often more effectual than law or gospel.
  • The thinner the ice, the more anxious is everyone to see whether it will bear.
  • The morning paper is just as necessary for an American as dew is to the grass.
  • Some folks as they grow older grow wise but most folks simply grow stubborner.
  • People travel to learn; most of them before they start should learn to travel.
  • You should always live within your income, even if you have to borrow to do so.
  • Rumor is like bees; the more you fight them the more you don’t get rid of them.
  • Fortune is like a coquette; if you don’t run after her, she will run after you.
  • Despatch is taking time by the ears; hurry is taking it by the end of the tail.
  • The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way.
  • Liberty, like chastity, once lost, can never be regained in its original purity.
  • The best medicine I know for rheumatism is to thank the Lord that it ain’t gout.
  • Beauty is a very handy thing to have, especially for a woman who ain’t handsome.
  • Politeness is better than logic. You can often persuade when you cannot convince.
  • Nature makes all the noblemen; wealth, education, or pedigree never made one yet.
  • A good reliable set of bowels is worth more to a man than any quantity of brains.
  • Admiration is a youthful fancy will which scarcely ever survives to mature years.
  • Take the humbug out of this world, and you haven’t much left to do business with.
  • Debt is a trap which man sets and baits himself, and then deliberately gets into.
  • You cannot analyze a kiss any more than you can dissect the fragrance of flowers.
  • Holmes says, both wittily and truly, that crying widows are easiest consoled.
  • As a general thing, an individual who is neat in his person is neat in his morals.
  • A WISE MAN never enjoys himself so much, or a FOOL so little, as when he is alone.
  • Economy is a savings-bank, into which men drop pennies, and get dollars in return.
  • It’s not ignorance does so much damage; it’s knowin’ so derned much that ain’t so.
  • Virtue does not consist in the absence of the passions, but in the control of them.
  • Man isn’t a fool for his ignorance, but rather for believing things that are wrong.
  • I am a poor man, but I have this consolation: I am poor by accident, not by design.
  • There’s one good thing about tight shoes; they make you forget your other troubles.
  • Vanity is a strange passion; rather than be out of a job it will brag of its vices.
  • Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.
  • The road to ruin is always in good repair, and the travellers pay the expense of it.
  • One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness.
  • Every man has his follies – and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.
  • It’s not only the most difficult thing to know one’s self, but the most inconvenient.
  • Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.
  • To bring up a child in the way he should go, travel that way yourself once in a while.
  • There is no greater evidence of superior intelligence than to be surprised at nothing.
  • When good-natured people leave us we look forward with extra pleasure to their return.
  • Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain’t so wicked as their neighbors.
  • It is not much trouble to doctor sick folks, but to doctor healthy ones is troublesome.
  • And now the lads and lasses, following the example of the birds, bill and coo together.
  • Poverty is one of them kind of misfortunes that we all of us dread but none of us pity.
  • Theres not a lot of good humor in medicine, but theres a lot of medicine in good humor.
  • There are two kinds of fools: those who can’t change their opinions and those who won’t.
  • There is not a whole lot of fun in medicine but there is a whole lot of medicine in fun.
  • When a young man begins to go down hill everything seems to be greased for the occasion.
  • Learning sleeps and snores in libraries, but wisdom is everywhere, wide awake, on tiptoe.
  • The time to pray is not when we are in a tight spot but just as soon as we get out of it.
  • As a general rule, if you want to get at the truth – hear both sides and believe neither.
  • If a man is right, he can’t be too radical; if he is wrong, he can’t be too conservative.
  • Building air castles is a harmless business as long as you don’t attempt to live in them.
  • Most men had rather say a smart thing than do a good one. John P. Kotter, Leading Change.
  • It is easy to assume a habit; but when you try to cast it off, it will take skin and all.
  • It ain’t what a man don’t know that makes him a fool, but what he does know that ain’t so.
  • I have never known a person to live to be one hundred and be remarkable for anything else.
  • A witty writer is like a porcupine; his quill makes no distinction between friend and foe.
  • Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just, But four times he who gets his blow in fust
  • Laughter is the sensation of feeling good all over and showing it principally in one place.
  • If you do not know how to lie, cheat, and steal, turn your attention to politics and learn.
  • Take all the fools out of this world and there wouldn’t be any fun living in it, or profit.
  • As a general thing, when a woman wears the pants in a family, she has a good right to them.
  • There is no passion of the human heart that promises so much and pays so little as revenge.
  • Never work before breakfast; if you have to work before breakfast, eat your breakfast first.
  • The best condition in life is to be not so rich as to be envied nor so poor as to be damned.
  • The truly innocent are those who not only are guiltless themselves but who think others are.
  • Our continual desire for praise ought to convince us of our mortality, if nothing else will.
  • Most everyone seems willing to be a fool himself, but he can’t bear to have anyone else one.
  • The greatest thief this world has ever produced is procrastination, and he is still at large.
  • The trouble with most folks isn’t their ignorance. It’s knowin’ so many things that ain’t so.
  • Don’t take the bull by the horns, take him by the tail; then you can let go when you want to.
  • Prejudice is a house-plant which is very apt to wilt if you take it out-of-doors among folks.
  • The best time for you to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.
  • Marrying for love may be a bit risky, but it is so honest that God can’t help but smile on it.
  • Successful writers learn at last what they should learn at first,–to be intelligently simple.
  • Man was created a little lower than the angels and has been getting a little lower ever since.
  • Too many individuals are like Shakespeare’s definition of “echo,”–babbling gossips of the air.
  • I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry.
  • Menny think tha luv their husbands almost tew deth, when in fack, tha are only jealous ov them.
  • When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him.
  • Adam invented love at first sight, one of the greatest labor-saving machines the world ever saw.
  • When I see a man of shallow understanding extravagantly clothed, I feel sorry – for the clothes.
  • I never question a success, any more than I do the right of a bulldog to lie in his own gateway.
  • Life is like a mountain: after climbing up one side and sliding down the other, put up the sled.
  • Man is my brother, and I am nearer related to him through his vices than I am through his virtue.
  • Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.
  • There are people so addicted to exaggeration that they actually can’t tell the truth without lying.
  • Fuss is half-sister to hurry, and neither of them can do anything without getting in their own way.
  • Experience is a grindstone; and it is lucky for us, if we can get brightened by it, and not ground.
  • As long as we are lucky we attribute it to our smartness; our bad luck we give the gods credit for.
  • We have some writers so abstruse and deep that they drown themselves in their fathomless sentences.
  • When a man gets talking about himself, he seldom fails to be eloquent and often reaches the sublime.
  • Advice can be like cod liver oil, easy enough to administer but not so pleasant to take for anybody.
  • A slander is like a hornet; if you cannot kill it dead at the first blow, better not to strike at it.
  • It is a very delicate job to forgive a man, without lowering him in his own estimation, and yours too.
  • The man whose only pleasure in life is making money, weighs less on the moral scale than an angleworm.
  • The quickest way to take the starch out of someone who is always blaming himself is to agree with him.
  • The man who gets bit twice by the same dog is better adapted for that kind of business than any other.
  • Confess your sins to the Lord and you will be forgiven; confess them to man and you will be laughed at.
  • About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment.
  • Half of the troubles of this life can be traced to saying yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough.
  • It is a statistical fact that the wicked work harder to reach hell than the righteous do to enter heaven
  • The nearest we can come to) perfect happiness is to cheat ourselves with the belief that we have got it.
  • The miser and the glutton are two facetious buzzards: one hides his store, and the other stores his hide.
  • There is a sort of charm in ugliness, if the person has some redeeming qualities and is only ugly enough.
  • Marrying a woman for her money is very much like setting a rat-trap, and baiting it with your own finger.
  • Pedigrees seldom improve by age; the grandson is too often a weak infringement on the grandsire’s parent.
  • If there was no faith there would be no living in this world. We could not even eat hash with any safety.
  • Every man should know something of law; if he knows enough to keep out of it, he is a pretty good lawyer.
  • Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.
  • The very thing that men think they have got the most of, they have got the least of; and that is judgment.
  • It is the little bits of things that fret and worry us; we can dodge a elephant, but we can’t dodge a fly.
  • Habits are like the wrinkles on a man’s brow; if you will smooth out the one, I will smooth out the other.
  • It is a great deal easier for a man to find a pedigree to fit his virtues than virtues to fit his pedigree.
  • Consider the postage stamp: its usefulness consists in the ability to stick to one thing till it gets there.
  • It is much easier to repent of sins that we have committed than to repent of those that we intend to commit.
  • If a man should happen to reach perfection in this world, he would have to die immediately to enjoy himself.
  • Titles are valuable; they make us acquainted with many persons who otherwise would be lost among the rubbish.
  • If mankind were only just what they pretend to be, the problem of the millennium would be immediately solved.
  • Take the selfishness out of this world and there would be more happiness than we should know what to do with.
  • The highest philosophers, in explaining the mystery of this world, are obliged to call in the aid of another.
  • Silence is said to be golden, but the best fools the world has ever produced had nothing to say on the subject
  • Zoroaster said, when in doubt abstain; but this does not always apply. At cards, when in doubt take the trick.
  • The hardest thing any man can do is to fall down on the ice when it’s slippery, and get up and praise the Lord.
  • Friendship is like earthenware, once broken, it can be mended; love is like a mirror, once broken that ends it.
  • Seneca devoted much of his time to writing essays in praise of poverty, and in lending money at usurious rates.
  • It AIN’T so much the things we don’t know that get us into trouble. It’s the things we know that just ain’t so.
  • Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can’t suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.
  • Love is said to be blind, but I know some fellows in love who can see twice as much in their sweethearts as I do.
  • In the whole history of the world there is but one thing that money cannot buy…to wit–the wag of a dog’s tail.
  • Plenty of folks are so contrary that if they should fall into the river, they would insist upon floating upstream.
  • I don’t never have any trouble in regulating my own conduct, but to keep other folks’ straight is what bothers me.
  • If you would make yourself agreeable wherever you go, listen to the grievances of others but never relate your own.
  • Waves are inspiring not because they rise and fail, but because each time they fall. They never fail to rise again.
  • The devil is the father of lies, but he neglected to patent the idea, and the business now suffers from competition.
  • What the world wants iz [sic] good examples, not so mutch advice; advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves.
  • …But why discourse Upon the Virtues of the Horse? They are too numerous to tell Save when you have a Horse to Sell.
  • One of the best temporary cures for pride and affectation is seasickness; a man who wants to vomit never puts on airs.
  • A man running for office puts me in mind of a dog that’s lost-he smells everybody he meets, and wags himself all over.
  • Love is like the measles; we can’t have it bad but once, and the later in life we have it the tougher it goes with us.
  • Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.
  • I hate to be a kicker, I always long for peace, But the wheel that does the squeaking, is the one that gets the grease.
  • Never teach your child to be cunning or you may be certain you will be one of the very first victims of his shrewdness.
  • It ain’t because lovers are so sensitive that they quarrel so often; it is because there is so much fun n the making up.
  • There’s a lot of people in this world who spend so much time watching their health that they haven’t the time to enjoy it.
  • About the only difference between the poor and the rich, is this, the poor suffer misery, while the rich have to enjoy it.
  • A secret ceases to be a secret if it is once confided – it is like a dollar bill, once broken, it is never a dollar again.
  • Don’t ever prophesy; for if you prophesy wrong, nobody will forget it; and if you prophesy right, nobody will remember it.
  • I hold that a man has as much right to spell a word as it is pronounced as he has to pronounce it the way it ain’t spelled.
  • If you believe you can do something, then you can acquire the ability to do it even if you didn’t have it in the beginning.
  • There’s tons of people that spend a lot time watching their well being, they have not acquired time to take pleasure in it.
  • The happiest time in any man’s life is when he is in red-hot pursuit of a dollar with a reasonable prospect of overtaking it.
  • There is only one good substitute for the endearments of a sister, and that is the endearments of some other fellow’s sister.
  • I haven’t got as much money as some folks, but I’ve got as much impudence as any of them, and that’s the next thing to money.
  • Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain’t lawful tender for a loaf of bread.
  • There is no limit to the vanity of this world. Each spoke in the wheel thinks the whole strength of the wheel depends upon it.
  • True wisdom is plenty of experience, observation, and reflection. False wisdom is plenty of ignorance, arrogance, and impudence.
  • It’s not what we don’t know that prevents us from succeeding; it’s what we know that just ain’t so that is our greatest obstacle.
  • It’s a wise man who profits by his own experience, but it’s a good deal wiser one who lets the rattlesnake bite the other fellow.
  • Pride seems tew be quite equally distributed; the man who owns the carriage and the man who drives it seem tew have it just alike.
  • I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.
  • I never had a man come to me for advice yet, but what I soon discovered that he thought more of his own opinion than he did of mine.
  • When a man makes up his mind to become a rascal, he should examine himself closely and see if he isn’t better constructed for a fool.
  • Hunting after happiness is like hunting after a lost sheep in the wilderness–when you find it, the chances are that it is a skeleton.
  • The more humble a man is before God the more he will be exalted; the more humble he is before man, the more he will get rode roughshod.
  • The easiest thing for our friends to discover in us, and the hardest thing for us to discover in ourselves, is that we are growing old.
  • My advice to those who are about to begin, in earnest, the journey of life, is to take their heart in one hand and a club in the other.
  • There are only two qualities in the world: efficiency and inefficiency; and only two sorts of people: the efficient and the inefficient.
  • I would much rather always look forward to the time when I am going to ride in a carriage, than to look back on the time when I used to.
  • There are people who are always anticipating trouble, and in this way they manage to enjoy many sorrows that never really happen to them.
  • It is true that wealth won’t make a man virtuous, but I notice there ain’t anybody who wants to be poor just for the purpose of being good.
  • If you ever find happiness by hunting for it, you will find it, as the old woman did her lost spectacles, safe on her own nose all the time.
  • Men of genius are like eagles, they live on what they kill, while men of talents are like crows, they live on what has been killed for them.
  • I called my cat William because no shorter name fits the dignity of his character. Poor old man, he has fits now, so I call him Fitz-William.
  • Sekts and creeds ov religion, are like pocket compesses, good enuff tu pinte out the direction, but the nearer the pole yu git thewuss tha wurk.
  • Genuine laughing is the vent of the soul, the nostrils of the heart, and just as necessary for health and happiness as spring water is for a trout.
  • Silence is one of the hardest kind of arguments to refute. There is no good substitute for wisdom; but silence is the best that has yet been discovered.
  • Men are seldom underrated; the mercury in a man finds its true level in the eyes of the world just as certainly as it does in the glass of a thermometer.
  • Contentment is a kind of moral laziness; if there wasn’t anything but contentment in his world, man wouldn’t be any more of a success than an angleworm is
  • The lion and the lamb may, possibly, sumtime lay down in this world together for a fu minnits, but when the lion kums tew git up, the lamb will be missing.
  • Dangers are sum like a kold bath, very dangerous while you stand stripped on the bank, but often not only harmless, but invigorating, if you pitch into them.
  • As in a game ov cards, so in the game ov life, we must play what is dealt tew us, and the glory consists, not so mutch in winning, as in playing a poor hand well.
  • It iz comparitively eazy tew repent ov the sins that we hav committed, but tew repent ov thoze which we intend to commit, is asking tew mutch ov enny man, now days.
  • Lying is like trying to hide in a fog: If you move about you’re in danger of bumping your head against the truth, and as soon as the fog blows off, you are gone anyhow.
  • Newfoundland dogs are good to save children from drowning, but you must have a pond of water handy and a child, or else there will be no profit in boarding a Newfoundland.
  • Common sense is an instinct given to man and enough of it is genius. Smartness is measured by the level of common sense one has, not by how much educated or knowledgeable he is.
  • What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul I suppose this depends somewhat upon the size of the soul. I think there are cases where the trade would do.
  • If men were stubborn just in proportion as they were right, stubbornness would take her seat among the virtues; but men are generally stubborn just in proportion as they are ignorant and wrong.
  • As the flint contains the spark, unknown to itself, which the steel alone can awaken to life, so adversity often reveals to us hidden gems, which prosperity or negligence would forever have hidden.
  • It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.
  • When you do laugh, open your mouth wide enough for the noise to get out without squealing, throw your head back as though you were going to be shaved, hold on to your false hair with both hands and then laugh till your soul gets thoroughly rested.
  • Put an Englishman into the garden of Eden, and he would find fault with the whole blasted concern; put a Yankee in, and he would see where he could alter it to advantage; put an Irishman in, and he would want to boss the thing; put a Dutchman in, and he would proceed to plant it.
  • Taking from others never results in prosperity. If we steal from others, life will steal from us. There is an incredible abundance on this planet. True prosperity begins with feeling good about yourself and about the choices you make. Life is here for us. Life is here to support us in every way. We give out, we get back. Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain’t lawful tender for a loaf of bread.