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ENGLISH QUOTES AND APHORISMS
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APHORISMS AND QUOTES
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HUMOROUS ENGLISH QUOTES AND APHORISMS Some have been thought brave because they were afraid to run away. 18th-Century English Proverb. Collected in: Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732). He that seeks trouble never misses. 17th-Century English Proverb. First collected in George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs (1640). Satire is tragedy plus time. You give it enough time, the public, the reviewers will allow you to satirize it. Which is rather ridiculous, when you think about it. Lenny Bruce Fools are my theme, let satire be my song. Lord Byron The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him. Italo Calvino What arouses the indignation of the honest satirist is not, unless the man is a prig, the fact that people in positions of power or influence behave idiotically, or even that they behave wickedly. It is that they conspire successfully to impose upon the public a picture of themselves as so very sagacious, honest and well-intentioned. Claud Cockburn By rights, satire is a lonely and introspective occupation, for nobody can describe a fool to the life without much patient self-inspection. Frank Moore Colby I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me. Charles Dickens Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love. William Hazlitt English essayist. Characteristics: In the Manner of Rochefoucault’s Maxims, no. 77 It is difficult not to write satire. Juvenal Satire must not be a kind of superfluous ill will, but ill will from a higher point of view. Ridiculous man, divine God. Or else, hatred against the bogged-down vileness of average man as against the possible heights that humanity might attain. Paul Klee It is said that truth comes from the mouths of fools and children: I wish every good mind which feels an inclination for satire would reflect that the finest satirist always has something of both in him. G. C. Lichtenberg Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it. Jonathan Swift The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little—or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives. Anthony Trollope Out of the unconscious lips of babes and sucklings are we satirized. Mark Twain Laughing at someone else is an excellent way of learning how to laugh at oneself; and questioning what seem to be the absurd beliefs of another group is a good way of recognizing the potential absurdity of many of one’s own cherished beliefs. Gore Vidal I could draw Bloom County with my nose and pay my cleaning lady to write it, and I’d bet I wouldn’t lose 10% of my papers over the next twenty years. Such is the nature of comic-strips. Once established, their half-life is usually more than nuclear waste. Berke Breathed In the final analysis, a drawing simply is no longer a drawing, no matter how self-sufficient its execution may be. It is a symbol, and the more profoundly the imaginary lines of projection meet higher dimensions, the better. Paul Klee There is a relationship between cartooning and people like Miró and Picasso which may not be understood by the cartoonist, but it definitely is related even in the early Disney. Roy Lichtenstein Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He recopies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt. Pablo Picasso A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption. James Thurber My drawings have been described as pre-intentionalist, meaning that they were finished before the ideas for them had occurred to me. I shall not argue the point. James Thurber To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction. A. J. Ayer Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity. Joseph Addison Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. W. H. Auden All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover. Lenny Bruce Humour is by far the most significant activity of the human brain. Edward De Bono The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it. Luigi Pirandello A difference of tastes in jokes is a great strain on the affections. George Eliot Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists in the room will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke. Garrison Keillor Any discussion of the problems of being funny in America will not make sense unless we substitute the word wit for humor. Humor inspires sympathetic good-natured laughter and is favored by the -healing-power- gang. Wit goes for the jugular, not the jocular, and it’s the opposite of football; instead of building character, it tears it down. Florence King The hall-mark of American humour is its pose of illiteracy. Ronald Knox It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour. W. Somerset Maugham Good taste and humour are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore. Malcolm Muggeridge Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humour is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude. Frank Muir Humor has been a fashioning instrument in America, cleaving its way through the national life, holding tenaciously to the spread elements of that life. Its mode has often been swift and coarse and ruthless, beyond art and beyond established civilization. It has engaged in warfare against the established heritage, against the bonds of pioneer existence. Its objective -the unconscious objective of a disunited people- has seemed to be that of creating fresh bonds, a new unity, the semblance of a society and the rounded completion of an American type. Constance Rourke The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people, that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature. James Thurber Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility. James Thurber Humor is a kind of emotional chaos told about calmly and quietly in retrospect.There is always a laugh in the utterly familiar. Max Eastman Never say a humorous thing to a man who does not possess humour. He will always use it in evidence against you. Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree Probably it is impossible for humor to be ever a revolutionary weapon. Candide can do little more than generate irony. Lionel Trilling Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever. Mark Twain I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don’t know. I mean, how can you tell? Andy Warhol Every American, to the last man, lays claim to a -sense- of humor and guards it as his most significant spiritual trait, yet rejects humor as a contaminating element wherever found. America is a nation of comics and comedians; nevertheless, humor has no stature and is accepted only after the death of the perpetrator. E. B. White Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important. Ludwig Wittgenstein Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue. Woody Allen At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face. Albert Camus In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence. . . and loathing seizes him. Friedrich Nietzsche Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania. Dorothy Parker There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous. Napoleon Bonaparte If you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it. Charlotte Brontė Caprice, independence and rebellion, which are opposed to the social order, are essential to the good health of an ethnic group. We shall measure the good health of this group by the number of its delinquents. Nothing is more immobilizing than the spirit of deference. Jean Dubuffet What forests of laurel we bring, and the tears of mankind, to those who stood firm against the opinion of their contemporaries! Ralph Waldo Emerson So much they scorn the crowd, that if the throng By chance go right, they purposely go wrong. Alexander Pope If someone does something we disapprove of, we regard him as bad if we believe we can deter him from persisting in his conduct, but we regard him as mad if we believe we cannot. In either case, the crucial issue is our control of the other: the more we lose control over him, and the more he assumes control over himself, the more, in case of conflict, we are likely to consider him mad rather than just bad. Thomas Szasz My life has been one great big joke, A dance that’s walked A song that’s spoke, I laugh so hard I almost choke When I think about myself. Maya Angelou Witticism. A sharp and clever remark, usually quoted and seldom noted; what the Philistine is pleased to call a “joke.” Ambrose Bierce Being a funny person does an awful lot of things to you. You feel that you mustn’t get serious with people. They don’t expect it from you, and they don’t want to see it. You’re not entitled to be serious, you’re a clown, and they only want you to make them laugh. Fanny Brice I remain just one thing, and one thing only — and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician. Charlie Chaplin The old idea that the joke was not good enough for the company has been superseded by the new aristocratic idea that the company was not worthy of the joke. They have introduced an almost insane individualism into that one form of intercourse which is specially and uproariously communal. They have made even levities into secrets. They have made laughter lonelier than tears. G. K. Chesterton Prithee don’t screw your wit beyond the compass of good manners. Colley Cibber His hilarity was like a scream from a crevasse. Graham Greene A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide. Oliver Wendell, Sr. Holmes I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces. Samuel Johnson The funniest line in English is “Get it?” When you say that, everyone chortles. Garrison Keillor The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth. Charles Lamb If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly. G. C. Lichtenberg Jokes are grievances. Marshall McLuhan A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion. George Orwell I don’t know jokes; I just watch the government and report the facts. Will Rogers Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. . . . Where be your jibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? William Shakespeare He jests at scars that never felt a wound. William Shakespeare My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world. George Bernard Shaw Suppose the world were only one of God’s jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one? George Bernard Shaw Tolstoy had criticized Shaw for his facetious tone in Arms and the Man, saying that one should not speak jestingly of such a subject as the purpose of human life, the causes of its perversion, and the evil that fills the life of humanity today. ’Tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, — thou hast got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so. Laurence Sterne All womankind, from the highest to the lowest . . . love jokes; the difficulty is to know how they choose to have them cut; and there is no knowing that, but by trying, as we do with our artillery in the field, by raising or letting down their breeches, till we hit the mark. Laurence Sterne All human race would fain be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits. Jonathan Swift
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