1,564 quotes found
“You judge very properly, and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are ...”
“State your point. If the opposite party doesn't agree, state it harder- with a punch.”
“Formerly these harsh cells in which the discipline of the prison leaves the condemned to himself were composed of four stone walls, a ceiling of stone, a pavement of tiles, a camp bed, a grated air...”
“They regarded our passage not at all, and by the afternoon I felt no more significant than an ant. I had never thought to be disdained by a tree.”
“With sociology one can do anything and call it work.”
“There was something strangely compelling about a Japanese guy with lamb-chop sideburns and a voice so shrill you could be forgiven for thinking his testicles were wired to the national grid.”
“Humour is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.”
“The difficulty with humourists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't whichever seems likelier to win an effect.”
“The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.”
“He that jokes confesses.”
“There are things of deadly earnest that can only be safely mentioned under cover of a joke.”
“Humour is the only test of gravity and gravity of humour for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.”
“A satirist is a man who discovers unpleasant things about himself and then says them about other people.”
“Humour is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity.”
“The best definition of humour I know is: humour may be defined as the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life and the artistic expression thereof. I think this is the best I know because...”
“A humorist is a man who feels bad but who feels good about it.”
“Humour plays close to the big hot fire which is the truth and the reader feels the heat.”
“Wit is the only wall Between us and the dark.”
“Look at Jewish history. Unrelieved lamenting would be intolerable. So for every ten Jews beating their breasts God designated one to be crazy and amuse the breast-beaters. By the time I was five ...”
“Mirthfulness is in the mind and you cannot get it out. It is just as good in its place as conscience or veneration.”
