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I Can't Believe You Said That! Archive
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January/February 2020

My stockbroker asked me something important today: “Paper or plastic?” - Jay Leno

I was arrested for selling illegal-sized paper. - Steven Wright

My cousin died. He was a dyslexic policeman who had a heart attack. They found him by the phone trying to dial 119. - Joan Rivers

I’m getting sick of pretending to be excited every time it’s somebody’s birthday. What is the big deal? How many times do we have to celebrate that someone was born? Every year, over and over. All you did was not die for twelve months. That’s all you’ve done, as far as I can tell. - Jerry Seinfeld

Probably the toughest time in anyone’s life is when you have to murder a loved one because they’re the devil. Other than that, it’s been a good day. - Emo Philips

The way I look at it, if the kids are still alive when my husband comes home from work, then I’ve done my job. - Roseanne

Every minute of parenting is like hostage negotiations. “Put the kitty down. Come out with your hands up, kicking the candy bar in front of you.” - Reno Goodale

Most children threaten at times to run away from home. This is the only thing that keeps some parents going. - Phyllis Diller

My sister-in-law gives my nephews “sample punishments.” What a great concept. We should get sample punishments throughout our entire adult lives. Park in front of a fire hydrant, and the tow-truck driver should only take your car half a block. “That’s just a sample of what you’ll get, fat boy. Park in a red zone again, I swear I’ll tow you. Look at me when I’m talking to you!” - Rick Ducommun

People in Alabama don’t use their turn signals. They simply look the direction they plan on turning. If they look left, they turn left. If they look right, they turn right. I was behind this little old lady at a stoplight. She did a U-turn. Her head rotated 180 degrees. - Devin Dugan

My parents retired to an island in Florida full of old people who do whatever they want all day. It’s like Lord of the Flies with walkers. - Penelope Lombard

Don’t go to a school reunion. There’ll be a lot of old people there claiming to be your classmates. - Tom Dressen

To give you an idea how difficult my wife can be, she bought me two ties for my birthday. To please her I wore one. She hollered, “What’s the matter, don’t you like the other one?” - Henny Youngman

Republicans will save the rain forest if you tell them that’s where the golf ball trees are. - P.J. O’Rourke

Give me my golf clubs, fresh air and a beautiful partner, and you can keep my golf clubs and the fresh air. - Jack Benny

How do you like bathing beauties? I don’t know, I never bathed one. - Anon.

The world would be a safer place if supermodels used their powers to fight more than just fashion crime. - Brian Beatty

A 1,400-pound bull actually invaded a china shop. Witnesses had no idea what to compare it to. - Craig Kilborn

A poll shows women think men are sexiest playing football. And they’re at their least sexy watching football. - Jay Leno

Your marriage is in trouble if your wife says, “You’re only interested in one thing,” and you can’t remember what it is. - Milton Berle

It’s a funny old world - a man’s lucky if he gets out of it alive. - W.C. Fields

November/December 2019

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun. - George Orwell

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it. - Elbert Hubbard

He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit. - Unknown

If you want to make enemies, try to change something. - Woodrow Wilson

Tell the truth and run. -Yugoslavian proverb

When a dog barks and wags its tail at the same time, how do you know which end to believe? - Tom Barney

I deserve someone who likes me for who I am ... pretending to be. - Arj Barker

One should never know too precisely whom one has married. - Nietzsche

A woman is like a teabag. You can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water. - Ronald Reagan

Santa is very jolly because he knows where all the bad girls live. - Dennis Miller

The girl who is easy to get might be hard to take. - F. Wisely

Most women set out to try to change a man – and when they have changed him, they do not like him. - Marlene Dietrich

The perfect lover is one who turns into a pizza at 4:00 a.m. - Charles Pierce

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. - George Elliot

It takes a woman twenty years to make a man of her son, and another women twenty minutes to make a fool of him. - Helen Rowland

A man in love is incomplete until he is married. Then he is finished. - Zsa Zsa Gabor

Why get married and make one man miserable when I can stay single and make thousands miserable? - Carrie Snow

I used to want to be a Country Western singer, but I took a test and I had too much self-esteem. - Brett Butler

I got married to complicate my thought process. When you’re single, your brain is single-minded. Single guys think three things: “I’d like to go out with her.” “I’d like to buy one of those,” and “I hope those guys win.” - Jerry Seinfeld

I used to walk into a party and scan the room for attractive women. Now I look for women to hold my baby so I can eat potato salad sitting down. - Paul Reiser

Only a man will think of a burp as a greeting for another man. - Tim Allen

We’ve been married six years, so people are trying to force us to have kids. They all say the same thing. “Kids, they a lot of work, but they worth it.” But I noticed something: They never look you in the eye when they say that. - Wanda Sykes

Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes. - Bill Cosby

Most people don’t know what they’re doing, and a lot of them are really good at it. - George Carlin

Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend. - John Singer Sargent

September/October 2019

He who throws mud loses ground. - Adlai Stevenson

I don’t talk trash often, but when I do, I go for the jugular. - Kobe Bryant

In Los Angeles they don’t throw their garbage away. They make it into television shows. - Woody Allen

To play safe, I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute. - Vladimir Nabokov

A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet. - Phyllis McGinley

I love when people talk trash. - Joel Embiid

I trash talk all the time. - Elana Meyers

Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family -. J. D. Vance

You hang out with trash and you start to smell like garbage. - Caroline Manzo

Lovely flowers have been known to grow out of trash heaps. - Elizabeth Kata

Every man is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. - Bertrand Russell

The fly ought to be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity; for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else, and run away even before he comes near them, the fly lights upon his very nose. - Arthur Schopenhauer

...failure is a human condition, not victory over odds; for each Hellen Keller who triumphs, there are tens of millions who fail, mute and deaf and insensate as vegetables tossed upon a vast garbage pile to rot. - Joyce Carol Oates

If I hadn’t been told I was garbage, I wouldn’t have learned how to show people I’m talented. And if everyone had always laughed at my jokes, I wouldn’t have figured out how to be so funny. If they hadn’t told me I was ugly, I never would have searched for my beauty. And if they hadn’t tried to break me down, I wouldn’t know that I’m unbreakable. - Gabourey Sidibe

Vultures are homely, but they clean up all the garbage and that’s good. And they’re elegant in the sky. - Roger Tory Peterson

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. - Marcel Proust

Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. - William James

You might be a redneck if your mailbox is made out of old auto parts. - Jeff Foxworthy

Give me a laundry-list and I’ll set it to music. - Dante Gabriel Rosetti

The gas station attendant looks at the car and says,’”You got a flat tire,” I said, “No, the other three just swelled up.” - Bill Engvall

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. - John Lennon

Oh, that dog! All he does is piddle. He’s nothing but a fur-covered kidney that barks. - Phyllis Diller

She was the prettiest, silliest, most affected, husband hunting butterfly ever. - Mary Mitford

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. - Mark Twain

The doctors x-rayed my head and found nothing. - Dizzy Dean

Are poets imaginative people? Yes, they imagine people like listening to their poems. - Paul Alexander

July/August 2019

This summer one-third of the nation will be ill-housed, ill-nourished, and ill-clad. Only they call it a vacation. - Joseph Salak

There are two classes of travel – first class, and with children. - Robert Benchley

Babies don’t need a vacation. But I still see them at the beach. It pisses me off. When no one’s looking I’ll go over to a baby and ask, “What are you doing here? You haven’t worked a day in your life.” - Steven Wright

Vacation: Two weeks on the sunny sands –and the rest of the year on the financial rocks. - Sam Ewing

A vacation is having nothing to do and all day to do it. - Robert Orben

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read. - Oscar Wilde

I stayed in a really old hotel last night. They sent me a wake-up letter. - Steven Wright

Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures. - Susan Sontag

Any fool can be fussy and rid himself of energy all over the place, but a man has to have something in him before he can settle down to do nothing. - J.B. Priestley

“What shall you do all your vacation?” asked Amy. “I shall lie abed and do nothing,” replied Meg. - Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

There are sultry days in July and August when the [Italian] cities, emptied by the natives, are almost completely taken over by the swarms of dusty and perspiring foreigners. - Luigi Barzini

Traveling is the ruin of all happiness! There’s no looking at a building here after seeing Italy. - Fanny Burney

The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist. - Russell Baker

You might be a redneck if you’ve ever vacationed in a rest area. - Jeff Foxworthy

The hotel was a dump. They had a postcard, and on the picture, the room wasn’t made up. - Rodney Dangerfield

Every year my family would pile into the car for our vacation and drive eighty trillion miles just to prove we couldn’t get along in any setting. - Janeane Garofalo

...in times of great stress, such as a four-day vacation, the thin veneer of family life wears off almost at once, and we are revealed in our true personalities. - Shirley Jackson

I just got back from a pleasure trip. I took my mother-in-law to the airport. - Henny Youngman

Vacation in Asia: It makes you feel taller. - Jason Love

When traveling with someone, take large doses of patience and tolerance with your morning coffee. - Helen Hayes

No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one. - Elbert Hubbard

May/June 2019

I always start everything with the weather, because the weather is the first thing that I notice when I wake up in the morning. - Julia Cameron

A cloudy day, or a little sunshine, have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most real blessings or misfortunes. - Joseph Addison

What dreadful weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance. - Jane Austen

I hate the outdoors. To me, the outdoors is where the car is. - Will Durst

A true fascist is anyone who wants to take away my air conditioning or force me to ride a bike. - David Harsanyi

The mother-in-law came round last week. It was absolutely pouring down. So I opened the door and I saw her there and I said, “Mother, don’t just stand there in the rain. Go home.” - Les Dawson

It doesn’t matter what people say about me, I weather the storm. - Terrell Owens

On cable TV they have a Weather Channel, 24 hours of weather. We had something like that where I grew up. We called it a window. - Dan Spencer

You will enjoy the TV and radio forecast much more if you stop taking it as advice and simply treat it as a short poem about the weather. - Victoria Coren Mitchell

The best weather instrument yet devised is a pair of human eyes. - NY Times 8 May 84

Tonight’s forecast: dark. Continuing dark throughout the night and turning to widely scattered light in the morning. - George Carlin

We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather. - Barbara Ehrenreich

We shall never be content until each man makes his own weather and keeps it to himself. - Jerome K. Jerome

Spring has many American faces. There are cities where it will come and go in a day and counties where it hangs around and never quite gets there. . . . Summer is drawn blinds in Louisiana, long winds in Wyoming, shade of elms and maples in New England. - Archibald Macleish

He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter. - John Burroughs

Scarves, mittens, and hats are a great way to express your personality in the cold weather. - Brad Goreski

If summer had one defining scent, it’d definitely be the smell of barbecue. - Katie Lee

You might be a redneck if your air conditioner is louder than your TV. - Jeff Foxworthy

Aaah, summer – that long anticipated stretch of lazy, lingering days, free of responsibility and rife with possibility. It’s a time to hunt for insects, master handstands, practice swimming strokes, conquer trees, explore nooks and crannies, and make new friends. - Darell Hammond

March/April 2019

Give me a couple of years, and I’ll make that actress an overnight success. - Samuel Goldwyn

An incompetent lawyer can delay a trial for months or years. A competent lawyer can delay one even longer. - Evelle J. Younger

I always travel first-class on the train. It’s the only way to avoid one’s creditors. - Seymour Hicks

Money isn’t everything, but it’s a long way ahead of what comes next. - Edmund Stockdale

One day recently a man called out to me from the other side of the street asking me for the price of a drink. I beckoned him to come over for it and he waved me away. This has to be the Everest of laziness. - Jeffrey Bernard

I was hitchhiking the other day, and a hearse stopped. I said, “No thanks, I’m not going that far.” - Steven Wright

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down. - Woody Allen

My mom said she learned how to swim. Someone took her out in the lake and threw her off the boat. That’s how she learned how to swim. I said, “Mom, they weren’t trying to teach you how to swim.” - Paula Poundstone

If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies. - William Faulkner

Writing is the only profession in which one can make no money without being ridiculous. - Jules Renard

In Hollywood, writers are considered only the first drafts of human beings. - Frank Deford

All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things. - Bobby Knight

I rob banks because that’s where the money is. - Willie Sutton

Writers have two main problems. One is writer’s block, when the words won’t come at all, and the other is logorrhea, when the words come so fast that they can hardly get to the wastebasket in time. - Cecilia Bartholomew

Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good. - Samuel Johnson

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are. - W. Somerset Maugham

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public with his pants down. - Edna St. Vincent Millary

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by a spectacular error. - J.K. Galbraith

People always say, “He died penniless,” as if it’s a terrible thing. Sounds like good timing to me. - Al Cleathen

January/February 2019

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions. - Joey Adams

Joined a health club last year; spent four hundred bucks. Haven’t lost a pound. Apparently, you have to show up. - Rich Ceisler

My New Year’s resolution list usually starts with the desire to lose between 10 and 3,000 pounds. - Nia Vardalos

Promises and pie crust are made to be broken. - Jonathan Swift

Many years ago, I made a New Year’s resolution to never make New Year’s resolutions. Hell, it’s been the only resolution I’ve ever kept! - D.S. Mixell

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. - Bert Lance

Women get a little more excited about New Year’s Eve than men do. It’s like an excuse: You get drunk; you make a lot of promises you’re not going to keep; the next morning as soon as you wake up you start breaking them. For men, we just call that a date. - Jay Leno

To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing. - Mark Twain

To change one’s life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions. - William James

Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of mercury in a barometer, indicate little else than the variability of the weather. - David Hare

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go. - Brooks Atkinson

Tomorrow lurks in us, the latency to be all that was not achieved before. - Loren Eiseley

As long as you can start, you are all right. The juice will come. - Ernest Hemingway

New Year’s resolutions work like this: you think of something you enjoy doing and then resolve to stop doing it. - Charlie Brooker

It is always during a passing state of mind that we make lasting resolutions. - Marcel Proust

New Year’s Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. - Mark Twain

You know how I always dread the whole year? Well, this time I’m only going to dread one day at a time. - Charlie Brown

This New Year’s I was going to make a resolution never to be late again, but I didn’t wake up until January 2nd. - Melanie White

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to. - Bill Vaughan

I never work out. I only go to the gym once a year – to renew. When I get the urge to exercise, I just lie down till it passes. - LeMaire

Saddle your dreams afore you ride ‘em. . - Mary Webb

November/December 2018

Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance. - Dan Greenburg

Ignorant people think it’s the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it’s the sickening grammar they use. - Mark Twain

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs. - Aldous Huxley

I’ve heard that dogs are man’s best friend. That explains where men are getting their hygiene tips. - Kelly Maguire

You might be a redneck if you take your dog for a walk and you both use the tree at the corner. - Jeff Foxworthy

There is the little matter of disposal of droppings in which the cat is far ahead of his rivals. The dog is somehow thrilled by what he or any of his friends have produced, hates to leave it, adores smelling it, and sometimes eats it . . . The cat covers it up if it can . . . - Paul Gallico

That indefatigable and unsavoury engine of pollution, the dog. - John Sparrow

Cats aren’t clean, they’re just covered with cat spit. - John S. Nichols

By and large, people who enjoy teaching animals to roll over will find themselves happier with a dog. - Barbara Holland

Your cat will never threaten your popularity by barking at three in the morning. He won’t attack the mailman or eat the drapes, although he may climb the drapes to see how the room looks from the ceiling. - Helen Powers

Every cat is really the most beautiful woman in the room. - E.V. Lucas

A meow massages the heart. - Stuart McMillan

If animals could speak, the dog would be a blundering, outspoken, honest fellow – but the cat would have the rare grace of never saying a word too much. - Philip Gilbert Hamerton

The great charm of cats is their rampant egotism, their devil-may-care attitude toward responsibility, their disinclination to earn an honest dollar. - Robertson Davies

I once had a dog who really believed he was man’s best friend. He kept borrowing money from me. - Gene Perret

I have noticed that what cats most appreciate in a human being is not the ability to produce food, which they take for granted, but his or her entertainment. - Geoffrey Household

A dog will never forget the crumb thou gavest him, though thou mayst afterwards throw a hundred stones at his head. - Sa’di Gulistan (1258)

CAT: A pygmy lion who loves mice, hates dogs, and patronizes human beings. - Oliver Herford

For unlike a dog that will scare up a flock of birds and then rush away, a cat, even in bitter weather, will wait patiently for hours hoping to make a kill. - Thalassa Cruso

The dog was created specially for children. He is the god of frolic. - Henry Beecher Ward

To live long, eat like a cat, drink like a dog. - German Proverb

A dog is a dog, a bird is a bird, and a cat is a person. - Mugsy Peabody

September/October 2018

Before I became a mother I was such a free spirit. I used to say, “No man will ever dominate me.” Now I have a six-year-old master. - Sully Diaz

I had older brothers. Growing up the only girl in the family is like growing up to be a tropical fruit drink somewhere between spoiled rotten and beaten to a pulp. - Diane Ford

You might be a redneck if three generations of your family are currently working at McDonald’s. - Jeff Foxworthy

I was a poor kid. My mom saved money by shopping at the Army-Navy Surplus store, but I felt stupid going to kindergarten dressed as a Chinese General. - Blamo Risher

Money – the one thing that keeps us in touch with our children. - Gyles Brandreth

Where’s there’s a will, there’s a family fighting over it. - Buzz Nutley

Rich parents are famous both for miserliness and astonishing longevity. And, when they finally do die, you’ll find they’ve left their estate in inviolate trust to the golden retrievers. - P.J. O’Rourke

The cheapest thing my mother ever bought was the peanut butter with the jelly inside. Peanut butter with jelly in the same jar, how low can you go? That’s like buying a shoe with a sock sewn inside. - Chris Rock

According to my dad, he had a really tough childhood. He had to walk twenty miles to school in five feet of snow, and he was only four feet tall. - Dana Eagle

I’d like to have kids. I get those maternal feelings. Like when I’m laying on the couch and I can’t reach the remote control. - Kathleen Madigan

My grandfather had a special rocking chair built that would lean forward rather than backward, so that he could fake interest in any conversation. - Steven Wright

My mother always says, “If I ever get senile, just put me in a home. I don’t want to be a burden to you.” And I say, “Mom, I would shoot you dead before I would do that.” - Laura Silverman

My grandfather was in this Russian, this Yiddish circus. He was a Jewish juggler. He used to worry about six things at once. - Richard Lewis

My mother wrapped the living room furniture in plastic. We practiced safe sitting in our household. - Adam Ferrara

My mother was as religious as she was repressed. Her facts-of-life speech began with the phrase, “Satan takes many forms...” - Dana Gould

The innkeeper loves the drunkard, but not for a son-in-law. - Yiddish Proverb

The family is the place where the most ridiculous and least respectable things in the world go on. - Ugo Betti

The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them. - Bertrand Russell

What is more enchanting than the voices of young people when you can’t hear what they say? - Logan Pearsall Smith

July/August 2018

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you will see why. - Mignon McLaughlin

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk. - Doug Larson

I hate having to repeat myself, but sometimes there is really nothing else to say. - Dmitry Dyatlov

“...in addition to my many other recovery issues, I’m also a founding member of Overtalkers Anonymous.” - Kay Wills Wyma

When a woman is talking to you, listen to what she says with her eyes. - Victor Hugo

A speaker who does not strike oil in ten minutes should stop boring. - Louis Nizer

I always said Little Truman [Capote] had a voice so high it could only be detected by a bat. - Tennessee Williams (Attrib.)

Practically anything you say will seem amusing if you’re on all fours. - P.J. O’Rourke

A psychiatrist is the next man you start talking to after you start talking to yourself. - Fred Allen

Psychoanalysis is confession without absolution. - G.K. Chesterton

How can I believe in God when only last week I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electric typewriter? - Woody Allen

The right to be heard does not include the right to be taken seriously. - Hubert Humphrey

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation. - George Bernard Shaw

I wasn’t allowed to speak while my husband was alive, and since he’s gone no one has been able to shut me up. - Hedda Hopper

My wife has a slight impediment in her speech – every now and then she stops to breathe. - Jimmy Durante

Beware of the conversationalist who adds “in conclusion.” He is merely starting afresh. - Robert Morley

What he lacked in depth as a preacher he made up for in length. - Mark Twain

If you think before you speak, the other fellow gets his joke in first. - Edgar W. Howe

Nothing is as irritating as the fellow who chats pleasantly to you while he’s overcharging you. - Kin Hubbard

The more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation. - Plato

We do not talk – we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests. - Henry Miller

Words [spoken by Americans] were usually ejected in lumps, at enormous speed, groups of them strung together like rushing railroad cars without perceptible separations. - Luigi Barzini

Is there any place where there is no traffic in empty talk? Is there on this earth one who does not worship himself talking? - Kahlil Gibran

Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them. - Richard Strauss

May/June 2018

I ran three miles today. Finally I said, “Lady, take your purse!” - Emo Philips

My doctor told me that jogging could add years to my life. He was right. I feel ten years older already. - Milton Berle

The first time I see a jogger smiling. I’ll consider it. - Joan Rivers

The only exercise program that has ever worked for me is occasionally getting up in the morning and jogging my memory to remind myself exactly how much I hate to exercise. - Dennis Miller

If it weren’t for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn’t get any exercise at all. - Joey Adams

They say that exercise and proper diet are the keys to a longer life. Oh, well. - Drew Carey

Married people don’t have to exercise, because our attitude is “They’ve seen us naked already, and they like it.” - Carol Montgomery

I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth foregoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward. - John Mortimer

My grandfather always said, “Don’t watch your money; watch your health.” So one day while I was watching my health, someone stole my money. It was my grandfather. - Jackie Mason

Cucumber should be well-sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out. -Samuel Johnson

A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch. - James Beard

I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating, and in fourteen days I lost two weeks. - Joe E. Lewis

I’m a light eater. As soon as it gets light, I eat. - Henny Youngman

We ought to have a diet salad dressing called “500 island.” - George Carlin

I bought all those Jane Fonda videos. I love to sit and eat cookies and watch them. - Dolly Parton

I’ve been doing the Fonda workout: the Peter Fonda workout. That’s where I wake up, take a hit of acid, smoke a joint, and run to my sister’s house and ask her for money. - Kevin Meaney

The two biggest sellers in any bookstore are the cookbooks and the diet books. The cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food and the diet books tell you how not to eat any of it. - Andy Rooney

A panhandler approached a Jewish mother on the street and said, “Lady, I haven’t eaten in three days.” “Force yourself,” she replied.

When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin. - J.P. Donleavy

You might be a redneck if your last keg party included a couple of 911 calls. - Jeff Foxworthy

March/April 2018

There are times when parenthood seems nothing but feeding the mouth that bites you. - Peter de Vries

Kids, they’re not easy, but there has to be some penalty for sex. - Bill Maher

Parents are people who bear children, bore teenagers, and board newlyweds. - unknown

My husband is English and I’m American. I wonder what our children would be like. They’d probably be rude, but disgusted by their own behavior. - Rita Rudner

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car. - Erma Bombeck

Madam, there’s no such thing as a tough child – if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender. - W.C. Fields

I went to a conference for bulimics and anorexics. It was a nightmare – the bulimics ate the anorexics. But it was okay, because they were back again in ten minutes. - Monica Piper

China says it wants to start putting people in space. Not to explore, just to get rid of some of them. - Jay Leno

I just quit smoking. I took this course that tells me to breathe deeply every time I have an urge to smoke. Now I’m chain breathing; I paid 400 bucks to hyperventilate. - Craig Shoemaker

Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics. - Fletcher Knebel

I wish there was a knob on the TV so you could turn up the intelligence. They got one marked “brightness,” but it doesn’t work, does it? - Gallagher

I moved to Los Angeles, and I miss so many things from the real world that they don’t have here, like aging, pride, and dignity. People don’t get older here, they just get tighter. - Greg Proops

In Hollywood, if you don’t have happiness you send out for it. - Rex Reed

I’m not feeling very well – I need a doctor immediately. Ring the nearest golf course. - Groucho Marx

What kind of illness does Jackie Chan have? Kung Flu

I filled out an application that said, “In case of emergency notify . . . “I wrote “Doctor.” What’s my mother going to do? - Steven Wright

I have trouble telling women my feelings. I think it goes back to the first time I told my mom I loved her. I said, “I love you, Mommy.” And she said, “Slow down, I’m not ready for that kind of commitment. You’re going way too fast.” - Mike Rubin

Kids are cute, babies are cute, puppies are cute. The little things are cute. See nature did this on purpose so that we would want to take care of our young. Made them cute. Tricked us. Then gradually they get older and older, until one day your mother sits you down and says, “You know, I think you’re ugly enough to get your own apartment.” - Cathy Ladman

Men do cry, but only when assembling furniture. - Rita Rudner

January/February 2018

My mother from time to time puts on her wedding dress. Not because she’s sentimental. She just gets really far behind in her laundry. - Brian Kiley

I’m eighteen years behind in my ironing. There’s no use doing it now, it doesn’t fit anybody I know. - Phyllis Diller

A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket. “You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?” she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, “I didn’t know there were any witnesses. Now I’ll have to kill you too.” - Jake Johansen

I’m not a vegetarian because I love animals. I am a vegetarian because I hate plants. - A. Whitney Brown

Is it true that cannibals don’t eat clowns because they taste funny? - Stephen Wright

I won’t eat snails. I prefer fast food. - Strange de Jim

I had a really bad weekend. It’s hard to lose a pet, and since I have sea monkeys I can lose up to a thousand at a time. Sea monkeys come and go, but it never gets any easier. - Erica Doering

What Einstein was to physics, what Babe Ruth was to home runs, what Emily Post was to table manners . . . that’s what
Edward G. Robinson was to dying like a dirty rat. - Russell Baker

An undertaker calls a son-in-law, “About your mother-in-law, should we embalm her, cremate her, or bury her?” He says, “Do all three. Don’t take chances.” - Myron Cohen

Drug kingpin Amado Carillo Fuentes died from nine hours of liposuction and plastic surgery – or, as it’s commonly known here in Beverly Hills, natural causes. - Bill Maher

There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure. - Jack Leonard

I look like a rock quarry that someone has dynamited. - Charles Bronson

I think of myself as a sex symbol for men who don’t give a damn. - Phyllis Diller

I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I’ve ever known. - Walt Disney

Henry James was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met. - William Faulkner

There are 2 million interesting people in New York – and only 78 in Los Angeles. - Neil Simon

When I saw a sign on the freeway that said, “Los Angeles 445 miles,” I said to myself. “I’ve got to get out of this lane.” - Franklyn Ajaye

It’s stressful trying to raise kids in Las Vegas. We’ve got the strip clubs, the gambling, the all-night drinking, and that’s just inside the day care center. - Beth Davidoff

A company has come out with high school rings for homeschooled children. How boring is that ring ceremony? ... “Billy, come out of your room and bring the dog, your father is about to call your sister’s name.” - Jay Leno

My dad said I’d never amount to anything. Lucky guess. - David Cousin

I got a piece of mail today, and it said, “This is not a bill.” so I opened it up, and inside it said, “That was the envelope. This is the bill.” - Brian Kiley

Someone sent me a postcard picture of the earth. On the back it said, “Wish you were here.” - Stephen Wright

“What are you reading?” asked the prison librarian. “Nothing much,” replied the prisoner. “Just the usual escape literature.” - Henny Youngman

An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo

November/December 2017

Who says we didn’t have controversial subjects on TV back in my time? Remember Bonanza? It was about three guys in high heels living together. - Milton Berle

People come up to me and talk after shows to share their experiences. One guy once said to me, “Well, I’m straight, but I’ve had a homosexual experience.” I’m like, “Exactly what did you do? Buy a pair of shoes and a belt that matched?” - Scott Silverman

My mom had good advice for me about how to stay married for a long time. She said, “Always remember, honesty is very important. It must be avoided. And the most important thing is, you have to let your husband be himself, and you have to pretend he’s someone else.” - Rita Rudner

I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all the afternoon and a cat that comes home late at night. - Marie Corelli

Men are simple things. They can survive a whole weekend with only three things: beer, boxer shorts, and batteries for the remote control. - Diana Jordan

I should warn you that underneath these clothes I’m wearing boxer shorts and I know how to use them. - Robert Orben

You might be a redneck if you regularly answer the door in your underwear, carrying a baseball bat. - Jeff Foxworthy

Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear. - John Galbraith

Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia. - Judith Viorst

Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache. - Mae West

I don’t believe there’s any problem in this country, no matter how tough it is, that Americans, when they roll up their sleeves, can’t completely ignore. - George Carlin

I am rather like a mosquito in a nudist camp; I know what I ought to do, but I don’t know where to begin. - Stephen Bayne

If her lips are on fire and she trembles in your arms, forget her. She’s got malaria. - Jackie Kannon

It’s true that misery loves company. If you ever doubt that, look at a No-Pest Strip. It’s covered with flies. You’d think that the first fly would tell any others, “Go around! Go around!” - Margaret Smith

A woman in Florida got bitten on the hand at a zoo in a shark-petting tank. Who could have seen that coming? By the way, the shark-petting tank was right next to the rattlesnake-kissing booth. - Jay Leno

Men are hunters; women are gatherers. Men risk death to bring back meat. Women bring back useful things like fruit, water, and hunters. - Basil White

If one cannot catch the bird of paradise, better take a wet hen. - Nikita Khrushchev

September/October 2017

Scientists today announced they have discovered a cure for apathy. Unfortunately, no one seems to care. - George Carlin

Writers get exactly the right amount of fame: just enough to get a good table in a restaurant but not enough so that people are constantly interrupting you while you’re eating dinner. - Fran Lebowitz

Last night I ordered an entire meal in French, and even the waiter was surprised. It was a Chinese restaurant. - Henny Youngman

My Playtex Living Bra died – of starvation. - Phyllis Diller

I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn’t find any. - Tommy Cooper

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. - Flannery O’Connor

Death will be a great relief. No more interviews. - Katharine Hepburn

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal is another matter. - Winston Churchill

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very few persons. - James Thurber

Last week I saw my psychiatrist. I told him, “Doc, I keep thinking I’m a dog.” He told me to get off his couch. - Rodney Dangerfield

I was so handsome that women became spellbound when I came into view. In San Francisco, in rainy seasons, I was often mistaken for a cloudless day. - Mark Twain

There are times not to flirt. When you’re sick. When you’re with children. When you’re on the witness stand.
- Joyce Jillson

I’ve got a doctor’s appointment on Monday. I’m not sick or anything. It’s just that I lost some weight, and I want someone to see me naked.
- Tracy Smith

I used to be quite an athlete, big chest, hard stomach. but all that’s behind me now. - Bob Hope

My wife is on a diet. Coconuts and bananas. She hasn’t lost any weight, but she can sure climb trees. - Henny Youngman

This is a stupid sport, marathon running: wandering through town looking for refreshments. - Trina Hess

Tea, tea! What is it with tea? I have passed urine samples that are stronger than this. Gimme a coffee, now! - Colin Mocherie

You can tell a lot about someone’s personality by how he orders coffee, “Decaf please, skim milk, no sugar.” That’s the kind of guy who goes through the car wash wearing a seat belt. - Margot Black

You might be a redneck if people can tell what you had for breakfast by looking at your beard. - Jeff Foxworthy

Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself, for he shall never cease to be entertained. - John Powell

July/August 2017

He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food. - Raymond Chandler

My weakness is wearing too much leopard print. - Jackie Collins

You might be a redneck if you own a pair of homemade lizard-skin boots. - Jeff Foxworthy

I found a snake in my yard, and got a shovel and whacked the hell out of it. Then I didn’t have cable for a week. - Charlie Viracola

When I was a kid my mother would make chopped liver for company, and I thought, “Who wants to eat liver?” That’s the organ that filters out all the crap you eat. I’d look at the liver on my plate and worry, “That could have been an alcoholic cow.” - Joel Warshaw

Made from freshly squeezed cows. Poster for Innocent’s Fresh Yoghurt Thickie

I’ve heard that dogs are man’s best friend. That explains where men are getting their hygiene tips. - Kelly Maguire

The more I see of men, the more I like dogs. - Madame de Stael

A man is a wolf rather than a man to another man, when he hasn’t yet found out what he’s like. - Plautus

Horses? I don’t ride anything I can’t put gas into. - Fonzie

The first thing any comedian does on getting an unscheduled laugh is to verify the state of his buttons; the second is to look around to see if a cat has walked out on the stage. - W.C. Fields

The cat is, above all, a dramatist. - Margaret Benson

If you want to be a psychological novelist and write about human beings, the best thing you can do is keep a pair of cats. - Aldous Huxley

Cats: The simple rule is that, like exclamation marks, more than two signifies complete nutcase. - Jeff Green

There was a knock on the door. I knew it was the mother-in-law because the mice were throwing themselves on the traps. - Les Dawson

You might be a redneck if your parrot can say, “Open up, it’s the police!” - Jeff Foxworthy

She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot. - Mark Twain

I look like a duck. - Michelle Pfeiffer

People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely; because chickens run about so absurdly afterwards that it is impossible to count them accurately. - Oscar Wilde

Our theories of the eternal are as valuable as are those which a chick which has not broken its way through its shell might form of the outside world. - Gautama the Buddha

The future ain’t what it used to be. - Yogi Berra

May/June 2017

Virtue has its own reward, but no sale at the box office. - Mae West

Virtue has never been as respectable as money. - Mark Twain

Money doesn’t talk, it swears. - Bob Dylan

The higher a man stands the more the world ‘vulgar’ becomes unintelligible to him. - John Ruskin (1819-1900)

A taste for drawing-rooms has spoiled more poets than ever did a taste for gutters. - Thomas Beer

As there is a use in medicine for poison, so the world cannot move without rogues. - R. W. Emerson

If you drink much from a bottle marked “poison” it is certain to disagree with you sooner or later. - Lewis Carroll

What cannot be cured must be endured. - Francois Rabelais

It takes a certain courage and a certain greatness even to be truly base. - Jean Annouih

The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die. - Benjamin Haydon

I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true. - Katherine Hepburn

Many men and women enjoy popular esteem, not because they are known, but because they are unknown. - Nicolas-Sebastien Chamfort

If one could recover the uncompromising spirit of one’s youth, one’s greatest indignation would be for what one has become. - Wilfrid Gibson

To win back my youth ... there is nothing I wouldn’t do – except take exercise, get up early, or be a useful member of the community. - Oscar Wilde

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street. - Elbert Hubbard

Do not ask me to be kind; just ask me to act as though I were. - Jules Renard

There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life. - Michel de Montaigne

Never put anything on paper, my boy, and never trust a man with a small black moustache. - P.G. Wodehouse

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas. - Jonathan Swift

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. - Mae West

There are three things a woman ought to look - straight as a dart, supple as a snake, and proud as a tiger lily. - Elinor Glyn

There are three ages of man – youth, age, and ‘you’re looking wonderful’. - Francis Spellman

I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best. - Walt Whitman

March/April 2017

How much money did you make last year? Mail it in. - Stanton Delaplane

Worried about an audit? Always avoid what the IRS considers to be a red flag. For example, you have some money left in your bank account after paying taxes. - Jay Leno

There’s nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won’t cure. - Dan Bennett

To produce an income tax return that has any depth to it, any feeling, one must have lived - and suffered. - Frank Sullivan

Even a tax-gatherer must find his feelings rather worked upon at times. - Charles Dickens

Optimism approves of everything, submits to everything, believes everything; it is the virtue above all of the taxpayer. - Georges Bernanos

Income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf. - Will Rogers

The best indicator of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjustment on his bathroom scales. - Arthur C. Clarke

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin. - Mark Twain

It is the part of a good shepherd to shear his flock, not to flay it. - Tiberius

I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: try being rich first. See if that doesn’t cover most of it. There’s not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job. - Bill Murray

I’m like the guy who prepares your taxes or a dentist. I’m very conservative and boring in a lot of ways. - Augusten Burroughs

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink. - e.e. cummings

It’s income tax time again, Americans: time to gather up those receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up that pencil, and stab yourself in the aorta. – Dave Barry

The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it’s just sort of a tired feeling. - Paula Poundstone

My friend, the undertaker, the last person on earth to let me down. - Anon.

January/February 2017

I attribute my long and healthy life to the fact that I never touched a cigarette, a drink, or a girl until I was ten years old. - George Moore

In the old days, women wore so many girdles, corsets, pantaloons, bloomers, stocking, garters, step-ins and God knows what all that you had to practically be a prospector to get to first base. . . to even find first base. - Danny McGoorty

On miniskirts–Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly. - Sir Cecil Beaton

If men can run the world, why can’t they stop wearing neckties? How intelligent is it to start the day by tying a little noose around your neck? - Linda Ellerbee

You can add years to your life by wearing your pants backwards. - Johnny Carson

When you are getting kicked from the rear it means you’re in front. - Fulton Sheen

A dead atheist is someone who’s all dressed up with nowhere to go. -James Duffecy

Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes. - Don Marquis

I do wish I would tell you my age, but it is impossible. It keeps changing all the time. - Greer Garson

‘Excuse me’ is only one of the phrases current today which has lost its meaning. Today it means ‘Get out of my way.’‘Can I help you, sir?’ means ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ ‘With due respect’ means ‘I have no respect for your opinions at all.’ - John Betjeman

I was in a club the other night. A woman actually asked me out. She said, “You: out!” - Steve Smith

People in a temper often say a lot of silly things that they really mean. - Penelope Gilliat

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. - Franklin P. Jones

The Bible tells us to forgive our enemies; not our friends. - Margot Asquith

Friends are people who borrow books and set wet glasses on them. - E.A. Robinson

I’m not sure that writing gets easier over time. It still seems very hard. The hardest thing is figuring out how to keep the reader from throwing it down and getting a beer instead. - Katherine Boo

As a novelist, I tell stories, and people give me money. Then financial planners tell me stories, and I give them money. - Martin Cruz Smith

A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one. - Thomas Carlyle

Occasionally indulging in a do-nothing day is more than worth the price. - Malcolm Forbes

November/December 2016

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. - George Bernard Shaw

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it. - John W. Roper

I like life. It’s something to do. - Ronnie Shakes

I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. - Jerome K. Jerome

Being busy is the best excuse for not working. - Kenneth Tynan

A kitten is chiefly remarkable for rushing about like mad at nothing whatsoever, and generally stoppping before it gets there. - Agnes Repplier

Any new venture goes through the following stages: enthusiasm, complication, disillusionment, search for the guilty, punishment of the innocent, and decoration of those who did nothing. - Unknown

Any organization is like a septic tank. The really big chunks always rise to the top. - John Imhoff

You might be a redneck if you think the “six to ten pounds” on the side of the Pampers box means how much the diaper will hold. - Jeff Foxworthy

We were so poor we didn’t even have a lavatory brush. We used to tie my pet hedgehog to a stick and tell him to hold his breath. - Ray Brown

You don’t know what love is until you become a parent. You don’t know what love is until you fish a turd out of the bathtub for someone. - Margaret Smith

According to statistics, a man eats a prune every twenty seconds. I don’t know who this fella is, but I know where to find him. - Morey Amsterdam

Happiness is the sublime moment when you get out of your corsets at night. - Joyce Grenfell

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings. - Edward Gardner

A peptic ulcer is a hole in a man’s stomach through which he crawls to escape from his wife. - J.A.D. Anderson

The difference between love and sex is that sex relieves tension and love causes it. - Woody Allen

Women complain about sex more often than men. Their gripes fall into two major categories: (1) Not enough. (2) Too much. - Ann Landers

A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and leaves one unsatisfied. - Oscar Wilde

Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain. - Lily Tomlin

 

September/October 2016

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you get rid of him on weekends. - Nancy Gray

Whenever anything went wrong in my life, my mother would say, “All things happen for the best.” And I’d ask, “Whose best?” And she’d say, “Gotta go.” - Rita Rudner

Sad to admit my age is showing. I fear my days of coming are going. - Gardner E. Lewis

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going. - Tennessee Williams

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking life by the scruff of the neck. - Christopher Quill

My friend Larry’s in jail now. He got twenty-five years for something he didn’t do. He didn’t run fast enough. - Damon Wayans

Neither have they hearts to stay, Nor wit enough to run away. - Samuel Butler

A good storyteller is a person who has a good memory and hopes other people haven’t. - Irvin S. Cobb

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation. - George Bernard Shaw

A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to comprehend his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire it. - Israel Zangwill

A man who is a genius and doesn’t know it probably isn’t. - Stanislaus J. Lec

If you walk like a duck, and you quack like a duck, and you say you’re a duck, you are a duck. -George Bush

My cousin just got married for the totally wrong reasons. She married a man for money. She wasn’t real subtle about it.
Instead of calling him her fiancé, she kept calling him her financee. - Rita Rudner

I walked in on my wife and the milkman, the first thing she says is, “Don’t tell the butcher!” - Rodney Dangerfield

I belong to Bridgegrooms Anonymous. Whenever I feel like getting married, they send over a lady in a housecoat and hair curlers to burn my toast. - Dick Martin

We had a guy in here last night who thought loading the dishwasher meant getting his wife drunk. - Jeff Foxworthy

My husband is German; every night I get dressed up like Poland and he invades me. - Bette Midler

You know, she speaks eighteen languages. And she can’t say ‘No’ in any of them. - Dorothy Parker

Marriage is like a bank account. You put it in, you take it out, you lose interest. - Professor Irwin Corey

There was a time in my life when I spent 90 percent of my money on booze and broads. And the rest of it I just wasted. - Ben Jones

Everybody got it wrong. I said I was into porn again, not born again. - Billy Idol

If you’re going to say anything filthy, please speak clearly after the tone. - Viv Stanshall’s answer machine

One learns in life to keep silent and draw one’s own confusions. - Cornelia Otis Skinner

July/August 2016

A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some damn fool who knows what he’s talking about. - Anonymous

The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing. - Henry S. Haskins

In conclusion: the phrase that wakes up the audience. - Herbert Prochnov

If you have something of importance to say, for God’s sake start at the end. - Sarah Jeannette Duncan

No one is exempt from talking nonsense: the misfortune is to do it solemnly. - Michel de Montaigne

Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe, Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast, Is that portentous phrase, ‘I told you so.’ - Lord Byron

I’ve decided what the DMV needs is an arts and crafts section. If I’m going to throw away my whole day there, I might as well come out with a new pot holder. And if they had a game of musical chairs set up, I think people would pay extra tax dollars for that. - Jeremy Beth Michaels

Why do they lock gas station bathrooms? Are they afraid someone will clean them? - George Carlin

In Berlin, a laundromat was raided because it was a front for a brothel. You know what tipped police off? Men doing laundry. - Jay Leno

Why does women’s underwear have lace and flowers all over it? You never see men’s underwear with a big wrench in the middle of it. - Heidi Joyce

I’m chunky. In a bathing suit I look like a Bartlett pear with a rubber band around it. - Drew Carey

In Cleveland there is legislation moving forward to ban people from wearing pants that fit too low. However, there is lots of opposition from the plumbers’ union. - Conan O’Brien

The government of China canceled their plans to put a man on the moon. their reasoning is that they only deliver within a 100,000-mile radius. - Conan O’Brien

I once dated a waitress. In the middle of sex she’d say, “How is everything? Is everything okay over here?” - David Corrado

I don’t mind sleeping on an empty stomach provided it isn’t my own. - Philip J. Simborg

What is a date really, but a job interview that lasts all night? The only difference is that in not many job interviews is there a chance you’ll wind up naked. - Jerry Seinfeld

I can’t think of anything worse after a night of drinking than waking up next to someone and not being able to remember their name, or how you met, or why they’re dead. - Laura Kightlinger

The easiest job in the world has to be coroner. You perform surgery on dead people. What’s the worst that could happen? If everything went wrong, maybe you’d get a pulse. - Dennis Miller

On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down. - Woody Allen

You might be a redneck if you’ve given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dog. - Jeff Foxworthy

I once had a dog who really believed he was man’s best friend. He kept borrowing money from me. - Gene Perret

Know yourself. Don’t accept your dog’s admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful. - Ann Landers

Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it. - William Durant

May/June 2016

I’m doing what I can to help the environment. I started a compost pile. It’s in the back seat of my car. - Janine Di’Tullio

You might be a redneck if the lawncare service never leaves a flyer on your front door. - Jeff Foxworthy

What smells so? Has somebody been burning a rag or is there a dead mule in the back yard? No, the man is smoking a five-cent cigar. - Eugene Field

The baby is fine. The only problem is that he looks like Edward G. Robinson. - Woody Allen

I don’t get no respect. I told my dentist my teeth are going yellow. He told me to wear a brown necktie. - Rodney Dangerfield

I try to fill the emptiness deep inside me with Cheetos, but I am still depressed. Only now my fingers are stained orange. I am blue. And I am orange. - Karen Salmansohn

He awoke with a severe hangover. His mouth felt as if it had been used as a latrine by some small animal. - Kingsley Amis

What is a human being but an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing? - Christopher Morley

Moonshine corn liquor has been known to stop the victim’s watch, snap his suspenders and crack his glass eye right across. - Irvin Cobb

When we were growing up my mother told my brother he was a pain in the neck. He became a chiropractor. I’m glad she didn’t call him a pain in the ass. - Joel Warshaw

The chip on my shoulder’s a little heavy. I have back problems now. - Janeane Garofalo

I got a dog, a cocker spaniel. He swallowed a Viagra pill. Now he’s a pointer. - Rodney Dangerfield

I have a dog that’s half pit bull, half poodle. Not much of a guard dog, but a vicious gossip. - Craig Shoemaker

Lawyers: people who prove that talk definitely isn’t cheap. - Justine McCarthy

My uncle Sammy was an angry man. He had printed on his tombstone ‘What are you looking at?’ - Margaret Smith

The first sign of his approaching end was when one of my old aunts, while undressing him, removed a toe with one of his socks. - Graham Greene

Once, when somebody in our house stepped on the cat’s paw, my mother turned to the cat and said sternly ‘I told you not to go around barefoot!’ - Zero Mostel

You might be a redneck if you broke a toe when you dropped your belt buckle on it. - Jeff Foxworthy

This guy came running up to me on the street saying, “Call me a doctor, call me a doctor!” I asked, “What’s the matter, are you sick?” He said, “No, I just graduated from medical school.” - Henny Youngman

Your medical tests are in. You’re short, fat, and bald. Ziggy (Tom Wilson)

I never had a sense of humor. What started me in a theatrical direction was finding at a very early age that I had a talent. I could impersonate chickens. Buk buk buk bacagh. - Jonathan Miller

To me, the most blatant example of cruelty to animals is the rotisserie. It’s just a really morbid Ferris wheel for chickens. - Mitch Hedberg

A new study says that one of the advantages of the treadmill is that it’s the highest calorie burner of the exercisers. And the other advantage is that hamsters can now laugh at us. - Johnny Robish

March/April 2016

My mother wants grandchildren. I said, “Mom, go for it!” - Sue Murphy

I have an 18-year-old; her name is Alexis. I chose that name because if I hadn’t had her, I’d be driving one. - Robin Fairbanks

Some guy hit my fender, and I told him, “Be fruitful and multiply.” But not in those words. - Woody Allen

A blind bloke walks into a shop with a guide dog. He picks the dog up and starts swinging it around his head. Alarmed, a clerk calls out: “Can I help, sir?” “No thanks,” says the blind bloke. “Just looking around.” A guy walks into the psychiatrist wearing only Saran wrap for shorts. The shrink says, “Well, I can clearly see you’re nuts.” - Tommy Cooper

At an amusement park a man’s prosthetic leg flew off while he was riding the roller coaster. Luckily it knocked over three bowling pins and he won a doll. - Craig Kilborn

I was on the subway sitting on a newspaper, and a guy comes over and asks, “Are you reading that?” I didn’t know what to say. So I said, “Yes,” stood up, turned the page, and sat down again. - David Brenner

Men always scratch their ass when they’re thinking. Because that’s where their brain is. - Tim Allen

I have a dog, and I’ve trained him to go on the paper, but he won’t wait until I’ve finished reading it. - Richard Jeni

A metallurgist is someone who can look at a platinum blonde and tell whether she’s virgin material or a common ore. - Brian Johnson

She was what we used to call a suicide blonde – dyed by her own hand. - Saul Bellow

I once said to a woman in a bar, “What’s your name?” She said, “Don’t even bother.” I said, “Is that an Indian name, because I’d like to meet Hot to Trot. Is she here?” - Garry Shandling

I went to a cross-dressing store – Susan Be Anthony. - Zach Galifianakis

I was in McDonald’s, and I saw this kid take his Happy Meal toy and throw it on the ground. His mom said, “Hey, you play with that. There are children in China manufacturing those.” - Laura Silverman

Last week I helped my friend stay put. It’s a lot easier than helping someone move. I just went over to his house and made sure that he did not start to load shit into a truck. - Mitch Hedberg

A man brags about his new hearing aid. “It’s the most expensive one I’ve ever had: It cost $2,500.” His friend asks, “What kind is it?” He says, “Half-past four.” - Henny Youngman

If you’re married for fifty years, your wife is going to tell you the same four stories every single day, which is why I don’t care that I lost my hearing. - Old Man Heywood

I don’t get no respect. I met the surgeon general. He offered me a cigarette. - Rodney Dangerfield

In Arkansas a man woke from a nineteen-year coma and asked for a Pepsi. “Just a small glass,” he said. “Caffeine keeps me up.” - Conan O’Brien

I don’t mind dying; the trouble is you feel so bloody stiff the next day. - George Axlerod

January/February 2016

I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me. - Anaïs Nin

How to make God laugh: Tell him your future plans. - Woody Allen

Sometimes I lie awake at night and ask, “Is it all worth it?” And then a voice says, “Who are you talking to?” And another voice says, “You mean: to whom are you talking?” and I say, “No wonder I lie awake at night.” - Charlie Brown

I fear that one day I’ll meet God, he’ll sneeze, and I won’t know what to say. - Ronnie Shakes

It takes too long to work out. It’s just faster not to walk by a mirror when you’re naked. - Richard Jeni

I hate clothes. I can’t stand every day trying to come up with little outfits for myself. I think fashion won’t even exist eventually, because anytime I see a movie or a TV show where there’s people from the future of another planet, they’re all wearing the same thing. Somehow they decided, “This is going to be our outfit: one-piece silver jumpsuit, V-stripe, and boots.” - Jerry Seinfeld

You might be a redneck if you wake up in the morning already dressed for work. - Jeff Foxworthy

I feel like I’m in a rut. Every time I go to bed at night, I find myself getting up again in the morning. - Brad Stine

If you rest, you rust. - Helen Hayes

I like to wake up each morning feeling a new man. - Jean Harlow

You always know when the relationship is over. Little things start grating on your nerves, “Would you please stop that! That breathing in and out, it’s so repetitious!” - Ellen DeGeneres

I saw a billboard for a small hotel that said, “We Treat You Like Family.” And sure enough, nine o’clock the next morning, someone was banging on my door yelling, “When the hell are you gonna get a place of your own?” - Brian McKim

Anyone who thinks that art of conversation is dead ought to tell a child to go to bed. - Robert Gallagher

If you listen carefully to children, you will have plenty about which to laugh. - Steve Allen

A pat on the back, though only a few vertebrae removed from a kick in the pants, is miles ahead in results. - Bennett Cerf

November/December 2015

I went into a McDonald’s yesterday and said, “I’d like some fries.” The girl at the counter asked, “Would you like some fries with that?” - Jay Leno

You are what you eat. which makes me cheap, quick, and easy. - Dave Thomas

The noblest of all dogs is the hot dog. It feeds the hand that bites it. - Laurence J. Peter

I went to a conference for bulimics and anorexics. It was a nightmare: The bulimics ate the anorexics. But it was OK because they were back again in ten minutes. - Monica Piper

Why is it that with birthday cakes you can blow on them and spit on them and everyone rushes to get a piece? - Bobby Kelton

Here’s a money-saving tip for Christmas: Glue a jujube on a brick and mail it out as fruitcake. - Julie Brown

Americans are getting stronger. Twenty years ago it took two people to carry ten dollars’ worth of groceries. Today, a five-year-old can do it. - Henny Youngman

A professor at the University of Wisconsin says he’s found a way to take the bitterness out of cheddar cheese. Now, if he can only find a way to remove the arrogance from Wheat Thins. - Tina Fey

I never drew a fat salary, but I once sketched a skinny tomato. - Lou Costello

Vegetarianism is harmless enough, though it is apt to fill a man with wind and self-righteousness. - Robert Hutchinson

I bought Odor Eaters. They ate for half an hour, and then threw up. - Howie Mandel

I’m always putting my foot in my mouth. I met this woman recently, and I could have sworn she was pregnant. I think the rule is don’t guess at that ever, ever, ever. - Brian Regan

Only a man will think of a burp as a greeting for another man. - Tim Allen

A watched pot never boils. But it does get paranoid. - Lesley Wake

Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. They also discovered other similarities between the two but can’t remember what they are. - Matt Lauer

Scientists today announced they have discovered a cure for apathy. Unfortunately, no one seems to care. - George Carlin

When things are bad and getting worse, keep a cookie in your purse. - Naomi Judd

I bought all of those Jane Fonda videos. I love to sit and eat cookies and watch them. -Dolly Parton

We lived for days on nothing but food and water. - W.C. Fields

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. - Redd Foxx

No man is lonely while eating spaghetti; it requires so much attention. - Christopher Morley

I saw a product in the market, Mr. Salty Pretzels. Isn’t that nerve? Everything nowadays is low salt or salt-free. Here’s a guy, the hell with you, Mr. Salty Pretzels. Like Mr. Tar and Nicotine Cigarettes,
Mr. Gristle and Hard Artery Beefsteak. - Bill Maher

A waist is a terrible thing to mind. - Jane Caminos

September/October 2015

Saw this personal ad in the paper, “Democratic man would like to meet young woman Republican. Object: Third party.” - Henny Youngman

I saw a personal ad that looked interesting. It said she loved long walks, running on the beach, going to parks. As it turns out, she was a German shepherd. - David Corrado

I was the Best Man at a wedding. I thought the title was a bit much. If I’m the Best Man, why is she marrying him? - Jerry Seinfeld

I hated my last boss. He asked, “Why are you two hours late?” I said, “I fell downstairs.” He said, “That doesn’t take two hours.” - Johnny Carson

My wife was afraid of the dark. Then she saw me naked. Now she’s afraid of the light. - Rodney Dangerfield

Some sad news: The world’s oldest man has died in Japan at the age of 114. What’s the deal with this world’s oldest title? It’s like some kind of curse, have you noticed? As soon as you get it, like, a year later, you’re dead. - Jay Leno

I never believed in casual sex. I have always tried as hard as I could. - Garry Shandling

I recently got one of those things where money is taken out of your paycheck before you get a chance to see it. What do you call that? Oh yeah, a wife. - Peter Sasso

Scientists have found a male monkey who can shut his ears, but only when the female monkey is telling him about her day. - Craig Kilborn

My girlfriend says I never listen to her. I think that’s what she said. - Drake Sather

A woman woke up from four and a half years in a coma. Her husband spent the whole time by her bedside, and when she came to, he said, “Honey, can you get me a beer?” - Jay Leno

My husband says I feed him like he’s a god; every meal is a burnt offering. - Rhonda Hansome

Was the Buddha married? His wife would say, “Are you just going to sit around like that all day?” - Garry Shandling

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper. -Robert Frost

I bear no grudges. I have a mind that retains nothing. - Bette Midler

The prime purpose of eloquence is to keep other people from talking. - Louis Vermeil

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously. - Hubert Humphrey

 

July/August 2015

I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance – a sharp, vindictive glance. - James Thurber

The problem with cats is that they get the exact same look on their face whether they see a moth or an ax murderer. - Paula Poundstone

Ignorant people think it’s the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it’s the sickening grammar they use. - Mark Twain

Cats aren’t clean, they’re just covered with cat spit. - John S. Nichols

To bathe a cat takes brute force, perseverance, courage of conviction, and a cat. The last ingredient is usually hardest to come by. - Stephen Baker

When my mom found my diaphragm, I told her it was a bathing cap for my cat. - Liz Winston

Q. What do you call a cat with three heads? A. Here kitty, kitty, kitty.

One cat just leads to another. - Ernest Hemingway

No matter how much cats fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens. - Abraham Lincoln

It is the distinction of the black cat that he is one of the few cheerful superstitions left to us. - Robert Lynd

A Japanese company is offering a translator so you can tell what your cat is saying. I can already tell you it’s two things: “Feed me” and “Take a hike.” - Jay Leno

A cat sleeps fat, yet walks thin. - Fred Schwab

Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow. - George F. Will

A cat pours his body on the floor like water. - William Lyon Phelps

Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function. - Garrison Keillor

It is better to be a mouse in a cat’s mouth than a man in a lawyer’s hands. - Spanish proverb

I’ve been trying to train my cat to understand the meaning of the word ”no.” Which seems to be roughly equivalent to teaching a dog Latin. - Judy Brown

There is, incidently, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person. - Dan Greenberg

Meow is like aloha - it can mean anything. - Hank Ketchum

“Meow” means “woof” in cat. - George Carlin

A meow massages the heart. - Stuart McMillan

Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire, he is still only a whisker away from the wilds. - Jean Burden

Some people say man is the most dangerous animal on the planet. Obviously those people have never met an angry cat. - Lillian Johnson

A cat’s rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. - William S. Burroughs

May/June 2015

I am a deeply superficial person. - Andy Warhol

Everyone is entitled to my opinion. - Madonna

Possessions, outward success, publicity, luxury - to me these have always been contemptible. - Albert Einstein

So many beautiful women and so little time. - John Barrymore

I had plastic surgery last week. I cut up my credit cards. - Henny Youngman

Fame lost its appeal to me when I went into a public restroom and an autograph seeker handed me a pen and paper under the stall door. - Marlo Thomas

There’s this statistic that 95 percent of autographs are lost a week after they’re signed. - Jack White

Fame is being asked to sign your autograph on the back of a cigarette packet. - Billy Connolly

Flattery is like a cigarette - it’s all right so long as you don’t inhale. - Adlai Stevenson

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself. - Abraham Lincoln

I smell a rat. Did you bake it or fry it? - Bill Hoest

Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself. - Jane Wagner

Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them. - Louis B. Nizer

He who lives far from neighbors may safely praise himself. - Erasmus

Good fences make good neighbors must have been said by someone who did not know my neighbor. - LL Lower

The closest anyone ever comes to perfection is on a job application form. - Unknown

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are. - Gore Vidal

Fame is like a river, that beareth up things light and swollen, and drowns things weighty and solid. - Francis Bacon

Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch where it itches. - Alice Roosevelt Longworth

I base most of my fashion taste on what doesn’t itch. - Gilda Radner

My new dress. Do you like it? It’s from my favorite designer, On Sale. - Rita Rudner

Plunging necklines attract more attention and cost less money. - Shelley Winters

You might be a redneck if a man asks you to dance and you take off your clothes and climb on a table. - Jeff Foxworthy

You might be a redneck if you have a pair of cutoffs made from double knit pants. - Jeff Foxworthy

March/April 2015

Someone asked me, “What’s your idea of a good time? I said “6:45.” - Dick Cavett

I failed my driver’s test. The guy asked me, “What do you do at a red light? I said, “I don’t know. Look around, listen to the radio? - Bill Braudis

When I was little, I got a boy to play doctors with me, but he sent me a bill. - Joan Rivers

Adam came first, but men always do. - Anonymous

Rejection slip returned with a poem entitled “Why Do I Live?” – Because you send your poem by mail. - Eugene Field

Never eat Chinese food in Oklahoma. - Bryan Miller

In Mexico we have a word for sushi – bait. - José Simon

On being asked to describe Hollywood - Can a fish describe the murky water in which it swims? - Albert Einstein

Why are fishmongers so mean? Because their job makes them sell fish. - Anon

I went hunting for the first time. I shot an elk. I felt bad at first, but the guy was wearing a plaid leisure suit so he pretty much had it coming. - Brian Kiley

If a parsley farmer goes bankrupt, can they garnish his wages? - Bruce Baum

I bought a box of animal crackers, and it said on it, “Do not eat if seal is broken.” so I opened up the box, and sure enough . . . - Brian Kiley

F*** whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - George Carlin

Men do cry, but only when assembling furniture. - Rita Rudner

What do men want? Men want a mattress that cooks. - Judy Tenuta

People always say, “He died penniless,” as if it’s a terrible thing. Sounds like good timing to me. - Al Cleathen

Life offers many lessons. This is a limited time offer. - LLLower

To achieve great things, we must live as though we were never going to die. - Marquis de Vauvenargues

I went to a therapist, and he said to treat every day like it’s your last. So I did, I stiffed him. - Bob Zany

You might be a redneck if you’ve given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dog. - Jeff Foxworthy

You know you’re on a diet when cat food commercials make you hungry. - Andy Bumatai

A smile is a curve that sets everything straight. - Phyllis Diller

January/February 2015

How you elect to spend New Year’s Eve will depend upon your/ a. Age/ b. Remaining levels of optimism/ c. Threshold of pain. - Joseph Connolly

Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man. - Benjamin Franklin

Ill habits gather by unseen degree – as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. - John Dryden

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everyone ought to bear patiently the results of his own conduct. - Phaedrus

I have no way of knowing how people really feel, but the vast majority of those I meet couldn’t be nicer. Every once in a while someone barks at me. My New Year’s resolution is not to bark back. - Tucker Carlson

Change is often rejuvenating, invigorating, fun...and necessary. - Lynn Povich

Everyone should have a few bad habits so he’ll have something he can give up if his health fails. - Franklin P. Jones

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties. - Helen Keller

May all your troubles last as long as your New Year’s resolutions! - Joey Adams

Women get a little more excited about New Year’s Eve than men do. It’s like an excuse: you get drunk; you make a lot of promises you’re not going to keep; the next morning as soon as you wake up you start breaking them. For men, we just call that a date. - Jay Leno

You might be a redneck if you give up smoking for three hours every New Year’s Day. - Jeff Foxworthy

Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year. Even when a new century begins it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols. - Thomas Mann

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough. - Albert Einstein

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

November/December 2014

Neither cast ye pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. - Bible, Matthew 7:6

When I’m not thank’d at all, I’m thank’d enough, I’ve done my duty, and I’ve done no more. - Henry Fielding

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child! - King Lear, Shakespeare

Child-rearing can be a tedious and thankless undertaking. - Jessica Valenti

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted. - Garrison Keillor

It was a woman who drove me to drink – and, you know, I never even thanked her. - W.C. Fields

Thank God for his ironic kindness. As our sight fades our face wrinkles. - LL Lower

Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for. - Will Rogers

The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful, and has nobody to thank. - Dane Gabriel Rossetti

Blow, blow, thou winter wind. / Thou art not so unkind / As man’s ingratitude. - As You Like It, Shakespeare

Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom. - Marcel Proust

True forgiveness is when you can say, “Thank you for that experience.” - Oprah Winfrey

The unthankful heart discovers no mercies; but the thankful heart will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings. - Henry Ward Beecher

In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

They tend to be suspicious, bristly, paranoid-type people with huge egos they push around like some elephantiasis victim with his distended testicles in a wheelbarrow terrified no doubt that some skulking ingrate of a clone student will sneak into his very brain and steal his genius work.- William S. Burroughs

I give thanks everyday that I’ve been able to take my craziness and make it work for me. - Fritz Scholder

October 2014

Last Halloween was bad for me. I got real beat up. I went to a party dressed as a piñata. - Jim Samuels

The Pope. Great guy. But in a fashion sense, he’s one hat away from being the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. - Jon Stewart

Being in a band you can wear whatever you want — it’s like an excuse for Halloween everyday. - Gwen Stefani

If Dracula can’t see his reflection in a mirror, how come his hair is always so neatly combed? - Steven Wright

When I was in college, I came up with the perfect Halloween costume. I wore cat ears and angel wings and carried a pitchfork, and went as every girl on campus. - Steve Hofstetter

This Halloween, the most popular mask is the Arnold Schwarzenegger mask. And the best part? With a mouth full of candy you will sound just like him. - Conan O'Brien

Be sure to remember when Hallowe’en is. Answering the door when you’re three-quarters crocked and finding a pack of midget He-Men, Master of the Universes on the front porch can be a scary experience if you’re not expecting it. - P.J. O’Rourke

You Might be a Redneck on Halloween if people compliment your “Hobo” costume and you are wearing your everyday clothes. - Jeff Foxworthy

In Hollywood, children don’t wear masks on Halloween. They usually dress up as agents, valet parkers, or second-unit directors instead. - Ellen DeGeneres

A lot of the main characters in horror movies are outsiders as well, so that outsider syndrome reverberates within horror fans and geeky collectors. It’s kind of a rallying call that brings fans and collectors together who are a little socially retarded, maybe. - Kirk Hammett

Halloween was confusing. All my life my parents said, “Never take candy from strangers.” And then they dressed me up and said, “Go beg for it.” I didn’t know what to do! I’d knock on people’s doors and go, “Trick or treat.” “No thank you.” - Rita Rudner

Cat No-No’s - I will not puff my entire body to twice its size for no reason after my humans watch a horror movie. - Bob Phillips Cat Humor

Ducking for apples - change one letter and it’s the story of my life. - Dorothy Parker

July/August 2014

Artificial manners vanish the moment the natural passions are touched. - Maria Edgeworth

I know you believe you understand what you think I said. But I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. - Patrick Murray

If you want to know what a man is really like, take notice how he acts when he loses money. - New England proverb

A man of great common sense and good taste, – meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage. - George Bernard Shaw

A genius is a man who can rewrap a new shirt and not have any pins left over. - Dino Levi

The French invented the only known cure for dandruff. It is called the guillotine. - P.G. Wodehouse

You might be a redneck if you have your appendix in a jar, sitting on your mantel, with the track lighting focused on it. - Jeff Foxworthy

There’s a woman who swam around Manhattan. Someone asked why she did it. She said, “Because no one had ever done it before.” Well, she didn’t have to do that. If she wanted to do something no one else had ever done before, all she’d have to do is vacuum my apartment. - Rita Rudner

Women never look so well as when a man comes in wet and dirty from hunting. - Robert Smith Surtees

You might be a redneck if birds are attracted to your beard. - Jeff Foxworthy

Is that a beard, or are you eating a muskrat? - Dr. Gonzo

If your husband ceases to call you “Sugarfoot” or “Candy Eyes” or “Cutie Fudge Pie” during the first year of your marriage, it is not necessarily a sign that he has come to take you for granted or that he no longer cares. It is probably an indication that he has recovered his normal perspective. - James Thurber

From birth to 18, a girl needs good parents; from 18 to 35 she needs good looks; from 35 to 55 she needs a good personality; and from 55 on she needs cash. - Sophie Tucker

Marriage is really tough because you have to deal with feelings and lawyers. - Richard Pryor

For certain people, after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex. - Gore Vidal

The good news is that Jesus is coming back. The bad news is that He’s really pissed off. - Bob Hope

May/June 2014

AI got in a fight one time with a really big guy and he said, “I’m going to mop the floor with your face.” I said, “You’ll be sorry.” He said, “Oh yeah? Why? and I said, “Well, you won’t be able to get into the corners very well.” - Emo Philips

When I tell people I’m a comedian they say, “Oh, are you funny?” I say, “No, it’s not that kind of comedy.” - Betsy Salkind

Whatever you have read I have said is almost certainly untrue, except if it is funny in which case I definitely said it. -Tallulah Bankhead

You’re not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on. - Dean Martin

If you enjoy your alcohol, remember this: If you put your old, rotten, used-up liver under your pillow, the Beer Fairy will leave you a keg. - Paul F. Tomkins

I took my uncle to his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I went but we ended up at a Triple A meeting by mistake. We didn’t know it. Everyone is sitting there filling out forms and reading maps. We’re looking there going, “How is this going to help?” My uncle, the trouper, stood up and said, “My name is Frank and I’m an alcoholic.” They all looked up and said, “You shouldn’t be driving” and went right back to the maps. - Billiam Coronel

Some of the best authors were alcoholics. That’s odd. Nobody wants to listen to a drunk talk, but we’ll read what they write. - Jayson Cross

There are just three rules for writing – but nobody knows what they are. - Somerset Maugham

You might be a redneck if Jack Daniel’s makes your list of most admired people. - Jeff Foxworthy

Seventeen – suggested answer to the question: How many times have I told you not to spit in the sink? A Puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things. - G.K. Chesterton

It is illegal to make liquor privately or water publicly. - Lord Birkett

Armpits lead lives of quiet perspiration. - Patrick Murray

I don’t jog. It makes the ice jump right out of my glass. - Martin Mull

There was a power outage at a department store yesterday. Twenty people were trapped on the escalators. - Steven Wright

There is no pleasure in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it. - John W. Raper

March/April 2014

A good listener is a good talker with a sore throat. - Katharine Whitehorn

Mr. Drysdale: It’s that time again – time to pay income taxes.” Jed Clampett: “Oh, good. Let’s give ‘em a little extry this year. I can’t spend all the money I’ve got.” - The Beverly Hillbillies

Money is honey, my little sonny, And a rich man’s joke is always funny. - T.E. Brown

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. - Herman Wouk

It’s tax time. I know this because I’m staring at documents that make no sense to me, no matter how many beers I drink. - Dave Barry

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin. - Mark Twain

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing. - Jean Baptiste Colbert

The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it’s just sort of a tired feeling. - Paula Poundstone

I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent. - Dame Edith Sitwell

O that there might in England be/ A duty on Hypocrisy,/ A tax on humbug, an excise/ On solemn plausibilities. - Henry Luttrell

Don’t get excited about a tax cut. It’s like a mugger giving you back fare for a taxi. - Arnold Glasow

You might be a redneck if you write off those foxy lady mud flaps as a business expense. - Jeff Foxworthy

Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax. - Mike Royko

Today’s payslip has more deductions than a Sherlock Holmes story. - Raymond Cvikota

On income tax day I am reminded that while people say money talks, mine seems to go without saying a word. - Mary Ellen Pinkham

I started out with nothing. I still have most of it. - Michael Davis

To produce an income tax return that has any depth to it, any feeling, one must have Lived – and Suffered. - Frank Sullivan

No animal will more repay/ A treatment kind and fair;/ At least so lonely people say/ Who keep a frog (and, by the way, They are extremely rare). - Hilaire Belloc

Bread that must be sliced with an axe is bread that is too nourishing. - Fran Lebowitz

January/February 2014

A good listener is a good talker with a sore throat. - Katharine Whitehorn

Many a man’s tongue broke his nose. - Seumas MacManus

Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace. - Buddha

The longest word in the English language is the one which follows the phrase, ‘And now, a word from our sponsor.’ - Hal Eaton

My wife has a slight impediment in her speech – every now and then she stops to breathe. - Jimmy Durante

If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating. - Leigh Hunt

I bought a talking refrigerator that said ‘Oink’ every time I opened the door. It made me hungry for pork chops. - Marie Matt

We got a new garbage disposal: my brother-in-law. He’ll eat anything. - Henny Youngman

You might be redneck if your wife left you for last year’s winner of the hog-calling contest. - Jeff Foxworthy

Mr. Robin Day asks me to vouch for the fact that he can sing. I testify that the noise he makes is in fact something between that of a rat drowning, a lavatory flushing and a hyena devouring her after-birth in the Appalachian Mountains under a full moon. - Aubern Waugh

Sometimes I’m afraid of bears, sometimes I’m not. I must be bipolar. - Peter Sasso

I’m a little bit femme and little bit butch. I wear makeup but I keep it in a tackle box. - Lynda Montgomery

I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth. - Janeane Garofalo

Good taste is better than bad taste, but bad taste is better than no taste. - Arnold Bennett

The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet. - Mark Twain

Scientists believe that monkeys can be taught to think, lie, and even play politics within their community. If we can just teach them to cheat on their wives we can save millions on congressional salaries. - Jay Leno

I love the women’s movement, especially when I’m walking behind it. - Rush Limbaugh

As a general thing, when a woman wears the pants in a family, she has a good right to them. - Josh Billings

The man with the manners gals all adore, is the man who never spits on the floor. Thank you! - Ron Barrett

November/December 2013

When the heroes go off the stage, the clowns come on. - Heinrich Heine

It gives me great pleasure to introduce this next comedian. But before I give myself great pleasure... - Buzz Belmondo

I’d like to introduce a man with a lot of charm, talent, and wit. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be here tonight, so instead ... - Dave Attell

There are three ways to be ruined in this world. First is by sex, the second is by gambling, and the third is by telling jokes. Sex is the most fun, gambling is the most exciting, and being a comedian is the surest. - Paul Roth

I don’t believe in spanking children; you can find more creative ways of discipline. Depending on the age of the kids, you can use “I’m gonna tell a really gross story” as either a threat or a punishment. And I’m a nurse, so I know lots of gross stories. All my amusing anecdotes involve at least one body fluid. - Kelli Dunham

In Arkansas a man woke from a 19-year coma and asked for a Pepsi. “Just a small glass,” he said. “Caffeine keeps me up.” - Conan O’Brien

Saw this commercial on TV for Ex-Lax, it says, “Works while you sleep” That scares me. - Steve Mendoza

Who invented the brush they put next to the toilet? That thing hurts. - Andy Andrews

You might be a redneck if you know for a fact that a sock can be used as toilet paper. -Jeff Foxworthy

If I was stranded on a desert island and could only have one book, I would choose the one with the softest pages. - Vinny Badabing

I was trying to make conversation with a man from the Philippines. When he said he was from Manila, I replied, “I use your envelopes.” - Peter Sasso

I wasn’t any good in French or Italian, but I excelled in Thousand Island. - Steve Moris

Making love to a woman is like buying real estate: location, location, location. - Carol Leifer

You might be a redneck if when people talk about the Big Easy, you think they are referring to your ex-girlfriend. - Jeff Foxworthy

Watch out when you’re getting all you want: only hogs being fattened for the slaughter get all they want. - Joel Chandler Harris

There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible. - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

I am not so think as you drunk I am. - Sir John Squire

An improper mind is a perpetual feast. - Logan Pearsall Smith

 

September/October 2013

Fall is my favorite season in L.A., watching the birds change color and fall from the trees. - David Letterman

Mrs. Allonby: I delight in men over 70, they always offer one the devotion of a lifetime. - Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

The way to fight a woman is with your hat – grab it and run. - John Barrymore

Then there’s the overweight jogger who ignored advice and panted himself into a coroner. - Bert Murray

This guy came running up to me on the street saying, “Call me a doctor, call me a doctor!” I asked, “What’s the matter, are you sick?” He said, “No, I just graduated from medical school.” - Henny Youngman

My mother groan’d, my father wept, Into the dangerous world I leapt. - William Blake

PUNK ROCK: a newborn baby, crying.- Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth

I have a Dachshund. It curses when it barks. Why? You would too if you were dragging your balls on the sidewalk. - Billy Connolly

Rolls-Royce announced today that it is recalling all Rolls-Royce cars made after 1966 because of faulty nuts behind the steering wheel. - Walter Cronkite

It’s a lonely business, bein’ ballsy. - Tanya Tucker

I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn’t mine. - Rita Rutner

BALLET: men wearing pants so tight that you can tell what religion they are. - Robin Williams

When I’m not in a relationship, I shave one leg. So when I sleep, it feels like I’m with a woman. - Garry Shandling

You might be a redneck if your mother does not remove the Marlboro from her lips before telling the state patrolman to kiss her ass. - Jeff Foxworthy

I read this article. It said the typical symptoms of stress are eating too much, smoking too much, impulse buying, and driving too fast. Are they kidding? This is my idea of a great day! - Monica Piper

What’s great about aspirin is that no matter how long you suck on it, it never loses its flavor. - Gregg Rogell

July/August 2013

I’m going to make a prediction: it could go either way. - Ron Atkinson

In supermarkets, Soup For One is always eight aisles away from Party Mix. - Elayne Boosler

It’s like my mama always says, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, talk about it so much you want to stuff a sofa cushion up their mouths. - Aileen Foster, Double Trouble

NAIL: something you aim at before hitting your thumb with a hammer. - Peter Eldin

I love my blubber. It keeps me warm, it keeps me company, it keeps my pants up. - Oscar Madison

MODERN ART: a square lady with three breasts and a guitar up her crotch. - Noel Coward

I wear my heart on my sleeve. I wear my liver on my pant leg. - Steven Wright

A man can wear a hat for years without being oppressed by its shabbiness. - James Douglas

Don’t you think it’s a little too ironic the AARP appoints its executive director for life? -Will Durst

When my wife asked me to start a garden, the first think I dug up was an excuse. - Henny Youngman

I don’t remember anybody’s name. How do you think the “dahling” thing got started? - Zsa Zsa Gabor

Zsa Zsa the-Bore. Did I spell that right? - Elayne Boosler

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. - Mitch Hedberg

There’s a commercial where guys sit around drinking beer, cleaning fish, wiping their noses on their sleeves, and saying, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” That’s not a commercial. That’s a warning. - Diane Jordan

You might be a redneck if you’ve ever waved at traffic from your front porch wearing nothing but your underwear. - Jeff Foxworthy

Never fry bacon in the nude. - H. Peter Miner

There are few nudities so objectionable as the naked truth. - Agnes Repplier

May/June 2013

(Writing) - the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair - Mary Heaton Vorse

Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of the memory. - Will Durant

Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth. - Peter Ustinov

I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn’t irascible. - Ezra Pound

Profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer. - Mark Twain

The man who first abused his fellows with swear-words instead of bashing their brains out with a club should be counted among those who laid the foundations of civilizations. - John Cohen

If you cannot answer a man’s argument, all is not lost, you can still call him vile names. - Elbert Hubbard

In quarreling, the truth is always lost. - Publilius Syrus

In Hollywood, a marriage is successful if it outlasts milk. - Rita Rudner

Our parents got divorced when we were kids and it was kind of cool. We got to go to divorce court with them. It was like a game show. My mom won the house and car. We were all excited. My dad got some luggage. - Tom Arnold

I have bursts of being a lady, but it doesn’t last long. - Shelley Winters

My familiy is so dysfunctional that if I had to write a song about them, it would be called, “Gimme, Ain’t You got, Loan Me, Don’t You Have.” It would be No. 1 on the country-western charts for weeks. - Paulara R. Hawkins

We never talked in our family. We communicated by putting Ann Landers articles on the fridge. - Judy Gold

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit. - Henry Brooks Adams

People in New York are always in a hurry. When you call 911 the operator says, “This better be good.” - David Letterman

You might be a redneck if all the holes in your jeans came from buckshot and barbed wire fences. - Jeff Foxworthy

March/April 2013

A man was arrested for holding up a 7-Eleven with a banana. Not for the holdup but for bringing something that was actually nutritious into a 7-Eleven. - Caroline Rhea

The founder of 7-Eleven has died. He’s survived by his wife and a thirty-year-old ham sandwich. - Conan O’Brien

A Pittsburgh man walked 680 miles to the South Pole, I feel sorry for his kids. “Can we have a ride to school, Dad?” “What? I walked 680 miles in freezing...” - Jay Leno

I was shoveling my sidewalk today and I found three old newspapers and a Jehovah’s Witness. - David Letterman

I was raised Catholic and received the body and blood of Christ every Sunday at Communion until the age of thirty when I became a vegetarian. - Joe Queenan

For a lesbian bastard writer mental case, I’m doing awfully well. - Jill Johnston

Have you seen that documentary about the woman who was actually Adolf Hitler’s secretary? It’s called Hitler’s Secretary. Man, that has to look bad on your resume. - Jay Leno

Hitler had only one testicle. It’s true. You use facts like that to make class more interesting. But that’s the only thing kids remember from that class. So you have a history test and the question is, “The Causes of World War II” and the kid writes, “Hitler had only one nut.” -Steve Brinder

In Australia, they have a big whorehouse that sold shares and went public. The first day on the market, they say the stock went up and down and up and down. - Bill Maher

You might be a redneck if babysitters never work for you more than once. - Jeff Foxworthy

The toilet paper was composed of quartered sheets of typing paper, with holes in one corner. These were covered in messages, many of them marked ‘Secret’ and some of them marked ‘Top Secret.’ - Peter Ustinov

Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished manuscript. - Sylvia Plath

Since brevity is the soul of wit, And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I will be brief. - Shakespeare, Hamlet

If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you are overdressed. - Kate Halvorson

January/February 2013

Until you’ve lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was. - Margaret Mitchell

I’m a quadrasexual. That means I’ll do anything with anyone for a quarter. - Ed Bluestone

Ignorant people think it’s the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain’t so; it’s the sickening grammar they use. - Mark Twain

My wife was in labor for thirty-two hours and I was faithful to her the whole time. - Jonathan Katz

A little nonsense now and then / Is relished by the best of men. - Old nursery rhyme

If you’re less than ten years old you’re so excited about aging you think in fractions. “How old are you?” “Six and a half!” You’re never thirty-six and a half. Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100 you become a kid again: “104. And a half!” - Larry Miller

Sometimes I get mixed-up in my brains. - Pancho, The Cisco Kid

Van Gogh became a painter because he had no ear for music. - Nikki Harris

I wish I had gotten as much in bed as I got in the newspapers. - Linda Ronstadt

Writing books is the closest men will ever come to childbearing. - Norman Mailer

Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way around. - David Lodge

You might be a redneck if your grandmother is pregnant. - Jeff Foxworthy

Most fading rock gods seem to know intuitively that overly sexualized stage outfits turn into clown costumes after a certain age. - Alex Williams

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens. - William Butler Yeats

A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement. - Charles Bukowski

You might be a redneck if you actually know which kinds of leaves make the best substitute for toilet paper. - Jeff Foxworthy

I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize. - Steven Wright

No matter how bad it gets, I’m rich at the Dollar Store. - Jason Love

November/December 2012

Parking is such street sorrow. - Herb Caen

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining. - Longfellow

I spilled spot remover on my dog – now he’s gone. - Steven Wright

I had plastic surgery last week. I cut up my credit cards. - Henny Youngman

It is a sad fact that 50 percent of marriges in this country end in divorce. But hey, the other half end in death. You could be one of the lucky ones! - Richard Jeni

Life is like a ‘B’ movie. You don’t want to leave in the middle of it, but you don’t want to see it again. - Ted Turner

I looked up the word politics in the dictionary, and it’s actually a combination of two words: poli, which means “many,” and tics, which means “bloodsuckers.” - Jay Leno

The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it. - Dudley Moore

The highway cop said, “Walk a straight line.” I said, “Well, Officer Pythagoras, the closest you could ever come to achieving a straight line would be making an electroencelphalogram of your own brain waves.” He said, “You’re under arrest. You have the right to remain silent. Do you wish to retain that right?” I thought, “Oooh, a paradox!” - Emo Philips

I drink too much. Last time I gave a urine sample there was an olive in it. - Rodney Dangerfield

I hate to eat and eat and eat and run. - Neila Ross

Exercise daily. Eat wisely. Die anyway. - Unknown

Consequences, shmonsequences, as long as I’m rich. - Daffy Duck

In breeding cattle you need one bull for every twenty-five cows, unless the cows are known sluts. - Johnnny Carson

No man ever stuck his hand up your dress looking for a library card. - Joan Rivers

All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things. - Bobby Knight

You might be a redneck if you stare at a can of frozen orange juice because it says “concentrate.” - Jeff Foxworthy

September/October 2012

In New Zealand a dog was sucked into a tornado and then returned ten hours later. The good news is, he was totally unharmed. The bad news: They lost his luggage. - Caroline Rhea

A tractor-trailer turned over, releasing twenty-five million bees. But don’t worry, they’re still stuck in traffic. - Craig Kilborn

A guy killed someone before his yoga class. It was premeditated murder. - Myq Kaplan

I’m in favor of personal growth as long as it doesn’t include malignant tumors. - George Carlin

Every one should keep a mental waste-paper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it – torn up to irrecoverable tatters. -Samuel Butler

Has anyone ever seen a dramatic critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good. - P.G. Wodehouse

I’ve got a doctor’s apppointment on Monday. I’m not sick or anything. It’s just that I lost some weight, and I want someone to see me naked. -Tracy Smith

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income. - Errol Flynn

Men date thin girls because they’re too weak to argue and salads are cheap. - Jennifer Fairbanks

She was an earthy woman, so I treated her like dirt. - George Carlin

Women claim that what they look for in a man is a sense of humor, but I don’t believe it. Who do you want removing your bra, Tom Selleck or the Three Stooges? - Bruce Smirnoff

I woke up this morning to the smell of coffee, bacon on the griddle, pancakes being made. I looked around. G-- dammit! I passed out in Denny’s again! - Mark Klein

A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run. - Elbert Hubbard

You know what I hate? Indian givers...no, I take that back. - Emo Philips

Q: What happens when the human body is completely submerged in water? A: The telephone rings. - Big Book of Jokes and Riddles, 1978

The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public. - Sir George Jessel

On the chest of a barmaid in Sale
Were tattooed the prices of ale,
And on her behind,
For the sake of the blind,
Was the same information in Braille.
- Anon.

To my daughter Leonora without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time. - P.G. Wodehouse

Next to the writer of real estate advertisements, the autobiographer is the most suspect of prose artists. - Donal Henahan

'I haven’t left my house in days. I watch the news channels incessantly. All the news stories are about the election; all the commercials are for Viagra and Cialis.
Election, erection, election, erection – either way it’s about getting screwed!'– Bette Midler.

July/August 2012

The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from science, along with behavior control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers. - Lewis Thomas

I tried to resist his overtures, but he plied me with symphonies, quartettes, chamber music, and cantatas. - S.J. Perelman

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for forty-five minutes. - Aaron Copland

His performance is so wooden you want to spray him with Liquid Pledge. - John Stark

The dead actor requested in his will that his body be cremated and ten percent of his ashes thrown in his agent’s face. - Unknown

There are days when it takes all you’ve got just to keep up with the losers. -Robert Orben

A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down. - Robert Benchley

Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly. - Rosalind Russell

You might be a redneck if your dog rides in the front seat and your kids ride in the back. - Jeff Foxworthy

There is something going on now in Mexico that I happen to think is cruelty to animals. What I’m talking about, of course, is cat juggling. - Steve Martin

Old women snore violently. They are like bodies into which bizarre animals have crept at night. - Joyce Carol Oates
You might be a redneck if people drive from miles away to look at your grandma’s underpants hanging on the clothes line. - Jeff Foxworthy

For men obsessed with women’s underwear, a course in washing, ironing, and mending is recommended. - Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical naked . . . - Allen Ginsberg, Howl

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. - G.K. Chesterton

I’d rather laugh in bed than do it....If I went to a lady of the night, I’d probably pay her to tell me jokes. Would that be perverted? - Billy Joel

My wife is a natural woman, she don’t wear wigs or anything. I don’t really like women who wear wigs because it makes your head smell like a foot. - David Allen Grier

There was a little girl / Who had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good / And when she was bad, she was very, very popular. - Max Miller

More than any time in history mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total destruction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly. - Woody Allen

If it’s not one thing, it’s two. - James Ledford

Marriage is a two-way street. Look before you cross. - LL Lower

Some men are wise and some are otherwise. - Tobias Smollett

May/June 2012

Do you know what someone said to me last week? They told me I looked like my dad. Just what every girl wants to hear: You look a lot like a middle-aged overweight Italian man with a mustache. - Lori Giarnella

She got her looks from her father. He’s a plastic surgeon. - Groucho Marx

Your medical tests are in. You’re short, fat, and bald. - Ziggy

“Don’t get smart with me,” my father would growl. That was my favorite expression of his. Don’t get smart with me. Just once I wanted to make a weird face and go, “Duh! Is this dumb enough for you, Dad?”
- Louie Anderson

A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair. - Niccolo Machiavelli

It is a gorgeous gold pocket watch. I’m proud of it. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch. - Woody Allen

There is nothing like a morning funeral for sharpening the appetite for lunch. - Arthur Marshall

Dinner at the Huntercombes’ possessed only two dramatic features – the wine was a farce and the food a tragedy. - Anthony Powell

I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person of pre-Adamite
ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can’t help it. I was born sneering. - W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

The Family! Home of all social evils, a charitable institution for indolent women, a prison workshop for the slaving breadwinner, and a hell for children. - August Strindberg

Told her I had always lived alone
And I probably always would,
And all I wanted was my freedom,
And she told me that she understood.
But I let her do some of my laundry
And she slipped a few meals in between,
The next thing I remember she was all moved in
And I was buying her a washing machine.
- Jackson Browne

You might be a redneck if you’re naked on laundry day. - Jeff Foxworthy

She was stark naked except for a PVC raincoat, dress, net stocking, undergarments, shoes, rain hat and gloves. - Keith Waterhouse

Nothing to do but work,
Nothing to eat but food,
Nothing to wear but clothes
To keep one from going nude.
- Ben F. King

She looked as though she had been poured into her clothes and had forgotten to say ‘when.’ - P.G. Wodehouse

Once while we were making love, a curious optical illusion occurred, and it almost looked as though she were moving. - Woody Allen

A terrible thing happened again last night - nothing. - Phyllis Diller

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. - George Burns

That married couples can live together day after day is a miracle the Vatican has overlooked. - Bill Cosby

March/April 2012

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes. - Thornton Wilder

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped self-addressed envelope, big enough to send the manuscript back in. This is too much of a temptation for the editor. - Ring Lardner

Dear Editor, What I have written you is a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a cheque. - Erle Stanley Gardner

No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents. - Eugene Pottier

Who is wise?
He that learns from everyone.
Who is powerful?
He that governs his passions.
Who is rich? He that is content.
Who is that?
Nobody.
- Benjamin Franklin

There is no greater bliss in life than when the plumber eventually comes to unblock your drains. No writer can give that sort of pleasure. - Victoria Glendinning

First coffee. Then a bowel movement. Then the muse joins me. - Gore Vidal

Coffee is good for talent, but genius wants prayer. - Emerson

If a third of all the novelists and maybe two thirds of all the poets now writing dropped dead suddenly, the loss to literature would not be great. - Charles Osborne

He is a distinguished man of letters. He works for the Post Office. - Max Kaufmann

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one. - Aldous Huxley

The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress. - Philip Roth

I have problems flown in fresh daily wherever I am. - Richard Lewis

The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities. - Sophocles

Everyone has his faults which he continually repeats; neither fear nor shame can cure them. - Jean de la Fontaine

Don’t tell my mother I work in an advertising agency. She thinks I play the piano in a whorehouse. - Jacques Seguela

My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference. - Harry S. Truman

The main difference between Los Angeles and yogurt is that yogurt has an active living culture. - Tom Taussik

Everything in L.A. is too large, too loud, and usually banal in concept. The plastic asshole of the world. - William Faulkner

One reassuring thing about modern art is that things can’t possibly be as bad as they are painted. - Anonymous

It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish. - Aeschylus

January/February 2012

Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to. - Bill Vaughan

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves. - Bill Vaughn

We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed. - Thomas Fuller

It is the hour to be drunken! To escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish. - Charles Baudelaire

There’s not a string atund’d to mirth/ But has its chord in melancholy. - Thomas Hood

A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in, / A minute to smile and an hour to weep in, / A pint of joy to a peck of trouble, / And never a laugh but the moans come double; / And that is life! - Paul Laurence Dunbar

Be at war with your vices; at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man. - Benjamin Franklin

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes. - Carl Sandburg

The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without, and to depart. - John Morley

Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret. - Benjamin Disraeli

You know you’re on a diet when cat food commercials make you hungry. - Andy Bumatai

I never felt more single than when I found myself buying heart-shaped catnip toys on Valentine’s Day. - Judy Brown

Don’t talk to me about Valentine’s Day. At my age an affair of the heart is a bypass. - Joan Rivers

Never let a fool kiss you, or a kiss fool you. - Joey Adams

A fool always finds a greater fool to admire him. - Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux

The good thing about being a circus clown must be that you never have to worry about how your hair looks. - Reno Goodale

Whenever a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old. - Washington Irving

Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct. - Jane Austen

December 2011

A man can stand almost anything except a succession of ordinary days. - Goethe

Oh don’t the days seem lank and long / When all goes right and nothing goes wrong, / And isn’t your life extremely flat
With nothing whatever to grumble at! - Gilbert and Sullivan

Measurement of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length. - Thomas Hardy

I believe the future is only the past again, entered through another gate. - Sir Arthur Wing Pinero

I have always felt that the moment when first you wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the 24 hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that . . . absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn’t, matter not one jot. The possibility is always there. - Monica Baldwin

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper. - Francis Bacon

The man of destiny knows that beyond the hill lies another and another. The journey is never complete. - F. W. De Klerk

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The slow compromise, or even surrender, of our fondest hopes is a regular feature of normal human life. - Leston L. Havens

Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses. - Russell Baker

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length. - Robert Frost

Show me a man with both feet on the ground and I’ll show you a man who can’t put his pants on. - Arthur K. Watson

Jogging is very beneficial. It’s good for your legs and your feet. It’s also very good for the ground. It makes it feel needed. - Charles Schulz

The man with the manners gals all adore, is the man who never spits on the floor. Thank you! - Ron Barrett

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but they make a good excuse. - Thomas Szasz

Man is a slow, sloppy and brilliant thinker; the machine is fast, accurate and stupid. - William M. Kelly

When love and skill work together expect a masterpiece. - John Ruskin

Madness is part of all of us, all the time, and it comes and goes, waxes and wanes. - Otto Friedrich

I’m frank, brutally frank. And even when I’m not frank, I look frank. - Roy Thomson

When in charge, ponder. When in trouble, delegate. When in doubt, mumble. - Good Life Almanac

Charm is a way of getting the answer yes without asking a clear question. - Albert Camus

Do not all charms fly / At the mere touch of cold philosophy? - Keats

November 2011

In spite of the cost of living, it’s still popular. - Kathy Norris

If you’ve read a lot of books you are considered well-read, but if you watch a lot of TV, you’re not considered well-viewed. - Lily Tomlin

Seven days without laughter make one weak. - Joel Goodman

My cousin Seymour the dentist married a manicurist, and they’re not getting along. They keep fighting tooth and nail. - Joan Rivers

Speeches are like babies - easy to conceive and hard to deliver. - Pat O’Malley

Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace. - Buddha

It is not true that life is one damn thing after another - it’s one damn thing over and over. - Edna St. Vincent Millay

Any idiot can face a crisis - it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out. - Anton Chekhov

Politics, dark comedy, perpetuity. - LL Lower

Time the devourer of everything. - Ovid

Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do. - Jean-Paul Sartre

Behind every successful man you’ll find a woman who has nothing to wear. - Harold Goffin

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. - Bertrand Russell

Happy the man who gains sagacity in youth, but thrice happy he who retains the fervour of youth in age. - Dagobert Runes

Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I speak truth not so much as I would, but as much as I dare, and I dare a little more as I grow older. - Montaigne

The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute, he simply speaks and does what is right. - Mencius, Chinese philosopher

Few people would not be the worse for complete sincerity. - F.H. Bradley

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead. - Johnny Carson

Too bad the only people who know how to run the country are busy driving cabs and cutting hair. - George Burns

Your public servants serve you right. - Adlai Stevenson

Poverty makes you sad as well as wise. - Bertholt Brecht

If Noah had been very wise, he would have swatted those two flies. - Anon.

The Pekinese dog was hurling abuse in Chinese. - P.G. Wodehouse

Why did the chicken cross the road? For some fowl reason. - Max Miller

October 2011

Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity. - Nick Diamos

“The Ancient Mariner” would not have been so popular if it had been called “The Old Sailor.” - Alan Coren

A cat sleeps fat, yet walks thin. - Fred Schwab

Two heads are better than none. - Jean Green

The more unpredictable the world becomes, the more we rely on predictions. -Steve Rivkin

Rules and models destroy genius and art. - William Hazlitt

You’re not a kid anymore when you are obsessed with the thermostat. - Jeff Foxworthy

Did you ever walk into a room and forget why you walked in? I think that’s how dogs spend their lives. - Sue Murphy

I had a linguistics professor who said that it’s man’s ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet. That may be. But I think there’s one other thing that separates us from animals; We aren’t afraid of vacuum cleaners. - Jeff Stilson

We gave our kids old-fashioned names. Our little boy is Hunter, and our little girl is Gatherer. - Brian Kiley

A publishing company made a Bible for teens. You can tell it’s for teens because at one point Moses tells Pharaoh, “We’re so out of here!” - Conan O’Brien

People have been obsessed with fashion ever since the Garden of Eden, when Eve said to Adam, “That fig leaf you have on is so last season.” - Dennis Miller

Be sure to wear a good cologne, a nice aftershave lotion, and a strong underarm deodorant. And it might be a good idea to wear some clothes, too. - George Burns

Getting dressed for work would be a lot easier if my boss considered wrinkled lint with just a faint hint of BO “business casual.” - Brian Beatty

Office hours are from twelve to one with an hour off for lunch. - George S. Kaufman

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams

Silence is one of the hardest arguments to refute. - Josh Billings

Advice is probably the only free thing which people won’t take. - Lothar Kaul

You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won’t wake up, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she’ll hear you. - J.D. Salinger

What are perfect strangers? Do they have perfect hair? Do they dress perfectly? - Ellen Degeneres

It is useless to hold a person to anything he says while he’s in love, drunk, or running for office. - Shirley MacLaine

The detergent Tide is improved. They are still working on Tide. - Jerry Seinfeld

September 2011

I owe my great learning to the fact that I have always kept an open book on my desk and read it whenever someone on the phone said “just a moment please.” - Helen Daley

We spend the first twelve months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve years telling them to sit down and shut up. - Phyllis Diller

I remember reading how a bunch of high school kids were asked to define the Monroe Doctrine, and they thought it was a new band. - Whoopi Goldberg

In high school, I was in the marching band, so you know the babes were all over me. - Drew Carey

I considered myself and still consider myself the hippest man on the planet. - Barry Manilow

I try to fill the emptiness deep inside me with Cheetos, but I am still depressed. Only now my fingers are stained orange. I am blue. And I am orange. - Karen Salmansohn

Everything you see I owe to spaghetti. - Sophia Loren

There is nothing for a case of nerves like a case of beer. - Joan Goldstein

What good are vitamins? Eat four lobsters, eat a pound of caviar - live! If you are in love with a beautiful blonde with an empty face and no brain at all, don’t be afraid, marry her - live! - Artur Rubinstein

As favour and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before. - La Bruyere

Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay. - Lord Chesterfield

The wolf loses his teeth, but not his inclinations. - Spanish Proverb

Cigarettes are killers that travel in packs. - Mary S. Ott

The government’s right hand doesn’t know what its left hand is doing, rest assured both the left hand and right hand are in our pockets. - LL Lower

People say law but they mean wealth. - Emerson

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous for its prey - Moliere

The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours. -William Hazlitt

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness - Elbert Hubbard

I hate cameras. they are so much more sure than I am about everything. - John Steinbeck

After a couple of days and after a hundred coffees and a thousand cigarettes and a million words and quite a few lunchtime beers we were able to agree that we didn’t know nothing. - James Herndon

Youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms. - Oscar Wilde

 

August 2011

Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing. - London Sunday Times

I got an ‘A’ in philosophy because I proved my professor didn’t exist. - Judy Tenuta

God created man, and finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more. - Paul Valery

It is not good for man to be alone. But oh my god, what a relief. - John Barrymore

Like a glorious sunset, a resigning politician is a beautiful sight. - Matthew Parris

Old lawyers never die, they simply lose their appeals. - John Mortimer

Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. - Charles Lamb

It’s a sure sign of summer if the chair gets up when you do. - Walter Winchell

When a man opens the car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife. - Prince Philip

I think dreams are based on indigestion. - Beck Hansen

What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left. - Oscar Levant

I know I am God because when I pray to him I find I’m talking to myself. - Peter Barnes

Man’s attitude toward great qualities in others is often the same as toward high mountains - he admires them but he prefers to walk around them. - Morty Saphir

Clever men are impressed in their differences from their fellows. Wise men are conscious of their resemblance to them. - R. H. Tawney

Profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer. - Mark Twain

Swearing was invented as a compromise between running away and fighting. - Noel Coward

Running is an unnatural act, except from enemies or to the bathroom. - George Carlin

Many a man’s tongue broke his nose. - Seumas MacManus

With women I get no respect. A belly dancer told me I turned her stomach. - Rodney Dangerfield

A two-year-old is like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it. - Jerry Seinfield

Having a child changes everything, including this cliché. - LL Lower

A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

My wife wanted to go someplace expensive over the weekend, so I took her to a Shell station. - Jay Leno

My husband is so tight with money he sent away for 1,500 pounds of steel wool. He’s going to knit a Volkswagen. - Phyllis Diller

One of the best travel tips I can pass along is “Never order sushi at a truck stop.” -Dobie Maxwell

If all else fails, read the instructions. - Anon.

July 2011

A good rule of thumb is if you’ve made it to thirty-five and your job still requires you to wear a name tag, you’ve probably made a serious vocational error. - Dennis Miller

I could have done the job myself in twenty minutes, but as things turned out I had to spend two days to find out why it had taken someone else three weeks to do it wrong. - J.L. McCafferty

I blame my mother for my poor sex life. All she told me was ‘the man goes on top and the woman underneath.’ For three years my husband and I slept in bunk beds. - Joan Rivers

If women can sleep their way to the top, how come they aren’t there? - Ellen Goodman

Success is women you don’t even know walking around your house. - Saturday Night Live

New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most of it unsolved. - Johnny Carson

All news is an exaggeration of life. - Daniel Schorr

A work of art is an exaggeration. - Andre Gide

The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any. - Katharine Whitehorn

The creditor hath a better memory than the debtor. - James Howell

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes. - Oscar Wilde

Undermine the entire economic structure of society by leaving the pay toilet door ajar so the next person can get in free. - Taylor Meade

In this country you’re guilty until proven wealthy. - Bill Maher

A lawyer is swimming in the water. A shark comes toward him and veers away: professional courtesy. - Henny Youngman

Cats know not how to pardon. - Jean de La Fontaine

In order to keep a true perspective of one’s importance, everyone should have a dog that will worship him and a cat that will ignore him. - Dereke Bruce

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. - Albert Schweitzer

Airborne filth settling on aphis honeydew would asphyxiate all those plants which survive the sucking, biting, chewing, riddling activities of the insects, if it were not for the fact that they are generally pecked to death by sparrows, dug up, trodden on, sat on or stolen, or simply annihilated by a blast of animal urine or overwhelmed by a cloaking turd, long before that. - Germaine Greer

When the insects take over the world, we hope they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics. - Bill Vaughan

I’ve had enough of gardening – I’m just about ready to throw in the trowel. - Anon.

May 2011

My family is so dysfunctional that when I looked up the word “dysfunctional” in the dictionary there was a picture of my mother. - Paulara R. Hawkins

My mother just wrote her autobiography. Pick it up. It’s in the stores right now. It’s entitled, I Came. I Saw. I Criticized. - Judy Gold

I can’t sleep. I have insomnia. I had a nightmare last night. I had a terrible dream. I dreamt my parents came to visit me.... That’s it. - Cathy Ladman

Yeah, I saw my parents today...It’s all right, they didn’t see me or anything. - Margaret Smith

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage. - Erma Bombeck

As a child my family's menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it. - Buddy Hackett

An answering machine...is like the stupidest gift to give your parents. No one ever calls them except for their kids. My mother put the appropriate message on the machine: “Look. We’re not here right now. If you’d like to leave a message, leave one. If you don’t want to leave one, don’t. We’re not going to be making decisions for you anymore. So make up your own g--damn mind. Thank you.” - Judy Gold

Schoolmasters and parents exist to be grown out of. - John Wolfenden

Instead of saying hello, my mother gets on the phone and says, “Guess who died?” - Dom Irrera

When choosing a movie, the opinion of a dumb friend is better than the opinion of a smart critic. - George Leonard

In high school, my sister went out with the captain of the chess team. My parents loved him because he was the captain of the chess team. They figured that any guy that took hours to make a move was okay with them. - Brian Kiley

Good girls go to heaven, and bad girls go everywhere. - Helen Gurley Brown

Neurotic means he is not as sensible as I am, and psychotic means he’s even worse than my brother-in-law. - Karl Menninger

I was brought up to respect my elders so now I don’t have to respect anybody. - George Burns

The secret of eternal youth is arrested development. - Alice Roosevelt Longworth

I do wish I could tell you my age, but it is impossible. It keeps changing all the time. - Greer Garson

Men go to the theatre to forget; women, to remember. - George Jean Nathan

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion. - Mark Twain

April 2011

You might be a redneck if you sell rabbits out of your car. - Jeff Foxworthy

The rush-hour traffic I’d just as soon miss when caraftercarismovinglikethis. - Robert Lauher

The difference between a conjuror and a psychologist is that one pulls rabbits out of a hat while the other pulls habits out of a rat. - Anon.

He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food. - Raymond Chandler

Kraft Foods laid off six thousand workers and profits are up. Well, sure, they got six thousand more people living on macaroni and cheese. - Jay Leno

If you are ever at a loss to support a flagging conversation, introduce the subject of eating. - Leigh Hunt

Even the Catholic church is laying off priests and going to a new voicemail confession system. 1-800-FESS-UP. “Hello, you’ve reached the Catholic Church. If you’re a bigamist, press 2 now. If you’re worshipping Satan, press 666. If you’ve done something you’re ashamed of with a farm animal, press BAA. Please do not touch your private parts as this will further delay your call.” - Richard Jeni

I was a born pessimmist. My first words were, “My bottle is half empty.” - Lacie Harmon

Happiness is nothing more than health and a poor memory. - Albert Schweitzer

Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics. - Fletcher Knebel

That I am totally devoid of sympathy for, or interest in, the world of groups is directly attributable to the fact that my two greatest needs and desires – smoking cigarettes and plotting revenge – are basically solitary pursuits. - Fran Lebowitz

One of the delights known to age and beyond the grasp of youth is that of not going. - J.B. Priestley

Science has conquered many diseases, broken the genetic code and even placed human beings on the moon, yet when a man of eighty is left in a room with two eighteen-year-old cocktail waitresses, nothing happens. Because the real problems never change. - Woody Allen

First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally you forget to pull it down. - George Burns

To me, guys in bars are all the same, white collar, blue collar, flea collar. They all just sniff around, scratch, and then look for a place to bury their bone. - Pamela Yager

The best way to find something you have lost is to buy a replacement. - Ann Landers

I’ve been on a calendar, but never on time. - Marilyn Monroe

At age 82, I sometimes feel like a twenty-year-old, but there is seldom one around. - Milton Berle

A pun is a short quip followed by a long groan. - Anon

March 2011

What this country needs is more unemployed politicians. - Edward Langley

It is inaccurate to say I hate everything.
I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for any public office. - H.L. Mencken

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation. - Henry Kissinger

God is dead, but fifty thousand social workers have risen to take his place. - J.D. McCoughey

Kissing is a means of getting two people so close together that they can’t see anything wrong with each other. - Rene Yasenek

If you want to look young and thin, hang around old fat people. - Jim Eason

All human wisdom is summed up in two words – wait and hope. - Alexandre Dumas

Hope, deceitful as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of life along an agreeable road. - Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Growing old - it’s not nice, but it’s interesting. - August Strindberg

Old age comes at a bad time. - Sue Banducci

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious. -Peter Ustinov

Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant, of a teacher and a learner. - John Updike

Don’t be afraid to make a mistake, your readers might like it. - Randolph Hearst

The best-loved man or maid in the town would perish with anguish could they hear all that their friends say in the course of a day. - John Hay

A cynic can chill and dishearten with a single word. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something. - Frank Capra

Happiness to a dog is what lies on the other side of a door. - Charleton Ogburn Jr.

Mother is the name of God in the lips and hearts of children. - William Thackeray

A child becomes an adult when he realizes that he has a right not only to be right but also to be wrong. - Thomas Szasz

For words divide and rend;
But silence is most noble till the end.
- Algernon Swinburne

A good book is the purest essence of a human soul. - Thomas Carlyle

A writer and nothing else: a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right. - John K. Hutchens

No man is lonely while eating spaghetti – it requires so much attention. - Christopher Morley

A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat. - P.J. O’Rourke

 

FEBRUARY 2011

God is Prince Charming rarely becomes King Integrity. - LL Lower

Next to the originator of a great quote is the first quoter of it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Warning signs that your lover is bored: 1. Passionless kisses 2. Frequent sighing 3. Moved, left no forwarding address. - Matt Groening

What do people mean when they say, “The computer went down on me”? - Marilyn Pittman

The first time we ever made love I said, “Am I the first man that ever made love to you?” She said, “You could be. You look damn familiar.” - Ronnie Bullard

What do hookers do on their nights off, type? - Elayne Boosler

Why is Wednesday called “hump day” when most people get laid on the weekends? - Jeff Marder

I’d like to have kids. I get those maternal feelings. Like when I’m laying on the couch and I can’t reach the remote control. - Kathleen Madigan

Condoms aren’t completely safe. A friend of mine was wearing one and got hit by a bus. - Bob Rubin

A man is only as old as the women he feels. - Groucho Marx

Most attorneys practice law because it gives them a grand and glorious feeling. You give them a grand, and they feel glorious. - Milton Berle

It was a perfect marriage – she didn’t want to and he couldn’t. -Spike Milligan

It is not good for man to be alone. but oh my God, what a relief. - John Barrymore

Marriage is a ghastly public confession of a strictly private intention. -Ian Hay

Should we all confess our sins to one another we would all laugh at one another for our lack of originality. - Kahlil Gibran

A nymphomaniac is a woman as obsessed with sex as the average man. - Mignon McLaughlin

He kissed me as though he was trying to clear the drains. - Alida Baxter

Splendid couple – slept with both of them. - Maurice Bowra

If God had meant us to have group sex, he’d have given us more organs. - Malcolm Bradbury

The closest I ever came to a menage-a-trois was when I dated a schizophrenic. - Rita Rudner

When a girl marries she exchanges the attentions of many men for the inattention of one. - Helen Rowland

It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop than with a brawling woman in a wide house. - Bible, Proverbs

When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her. - Sacha Guitry

Men and women, women and men. It will never work. - Erica Jong

 

JANUARY 2011

God is a comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh. - H.L. Mencken

Actors are the only honest hypocrites. - William Hazlitt

He who would do good to another, must do it in minute particulars. General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer. - William Blake

A good deed never goes unpunished. - Gore Vidal

The Truth is hard to find. Especially, when somebody keeps moving it. - LL Lower

Some for renown, on scraps of learning dote, and think they grow immortal as they quote. - Edward Young

As I grow older and older,
And totter towards the tomb,
I find that I care less and less
Whom goes to bed with whom.
- Dorothy Sayers

The other night my wife and I decided to spice things up a little. So we switched positions. She lay on the couch with the remote and I did the ironing. - Peter Sasso

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice. - Theodore Roosevelt

He who hates vice hates men. - John Morley

Vice goes a long way tow’rd makin’ life bearable. A little vice now an’ thin is relished by th’ best iv men. - Finley Peter Dunne

The formula for complete happiness is to be very busy with the unimportant. - Edward Newton

Love is like the measles; we all have to go through it. - Jerome K. Jerome

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings. - Ed Gardner

There are three things not worth running for - a bus, a woman, or a new economic panacea; if you wait a bit another one will come along. - Derick Heathcot-Amory

Adolescents tend to be passionate people, and passion is no less real because it is directed toward a hot-rod, a commercialized popular singer, or the leader of a black-jacketed gang. - Edgar Friedenberg

Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you. - Fran Lebowitz

There must be something to acupuncture - after all, you never see any sick porcupines. - Bob Goddard

To err is human, to moo, bovine. - Uncle John

Doctors think a lot of patients are cured who have simply quit in disgust. - Don Herold

He’s turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he’s miserable and depressed. - David Frost

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. - James Branch Cabell

Diets are for those who are thick and tired of it. - Anon.

It is better to be a mouse in a cat’s mouth than a man in a lawyer’s hands. - Spanish proverb

Growing old is like being increasingly
penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.
- Anthony Powell

...As I grew up I became increasingly interested in philsophy, of which they [family] profoundly disapproved. Every time the subject came up they repeated with unfailing regularity, ‘What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.’ After some fifty or sixty repetitions, this remark ceased to amuse me. - Bertrand Russell

The love of money and the love of learning rarely meet. - George Herbert

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search for truth and perfection, is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life. - Lewis Mumford

DECEMBER 2010

Hors d’oeuvres: a ham sandwich cut into forty pieces. - Jack Benny

I’d hate to be a member of Overeaters Anonymous. It’s not like Alcoholics Anonymous where you can hear some wild testimony of drunken debauchery. How exciting can OA testimony be? It’s not like you are ever going to hear, “Wow I’m sorry...I was so full last night I don’t remember meeting you.” - Laura Kightlinger

I’ve been doing the Fonda workout: the Peter Fonda workout. That’s where I wake up, take a hit of acid, smoke a joint, and go to my sister’s house and ask her for money. - Kevin Meaney

I was high on life, but eventually I built up a tolerance. - Arj Barker

On marathons: What would make 17,000 people want to run 26 miles? All I could figure out was maybe there was a Hare Krishna in back of them going, “Excuse me. Could I talk to you for just a second?” -Rita Rudner

All religions are the same: basically guilt, with different holidays. “I feel so guilty. Well, let’s eat.” - Cathy Ladman

The day after Christmas, when we all have two more ugly sweaters. - Craig Kilborn

There are three stages of man: he believes in Santa Claus; he does not believe in Santa Claus; he is Santa Claus. - Bob Phillips

I stopped believing in Santa Claus at an early age. Mother took me in to see him in a department store and he asked me for my autograph. - Shirley Temple Black

The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped. - Arthur Schopenhauer

The invention of film has given our generation the dubious advantage of watching our acting heroes deteriorate before our eyes. - Robert Brustein

You know you’re getting old when work is a lot less fun – and fun is a lot more work. - Joan Rivers

Death is just a distant rumor to the young. - Andy Rooney

Baloney is the unvarnished lie laid on so thick you hate it. Blarney is flattery laid on so thin you love it. - Fulton Sheen

The aim of flattery is to soothe and encourage us by assuring us of the truth of an opinion we have already formed about ourselves. - Edith Sitwell

Under pressure, people admit to murder, setting fire to the village church or robbing a bank, but never to being bores. - Elsa Maxwell

Changeable women are more enduring than monotonous ones. They are sometimes murdered but seldom deserted. - George Bernard Shaw

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it is possible you haven’t grasped the gravity of the situation. - Jean Kerr

NOVEMBER 2010

Children, for whom suburban life was supposed to make wholesome little Johns and Wendys, became the acid-dropping, classroom-burning hippies of the 1960s. - Ronald Steel

You might be a redneck if your dog rides in the front seat and your kids ride in the back. - Jeff Foxworthy

A dog will sit beside you while you work. A cat will sit on the work. - Pam Brown

It is said that Hamlet is the first modern man - so obvously he must be insane. - Terry Hands

Madness is part of all of us, all the time, and it comes and goes, waxes and wanes. - Otto Friedrich

The goitrous, torpid and squinting husks provided by Matisse in his sculpture are worthless except as tactful decorations for a mental home. - Percy Wyndham-Lewis

An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper. - Kahlil Gibran

One lives in the hope of becoming a memory. - Antonio Porchia

Look in my face. My name is Used-to-was; I am also called Played-out and Done-to-death, And It-will-wash-no-more. - Henry Duff Traill

When you pick something up with your toes and transfer it to your hand, don’t you feel, just briefly, like a superior creature? Like you could probably survive alone in a forest for a long time? Just briefly. - George Carlin

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves. - Don Marquis

The general advertiser’s attitude would seem to be: if you are a lousy, smelly, idle, under-privileged, overweight and over-sexed status-seeking neurotic moron, give me your money. - Kenneth Bromfield

Outer space is no place for a person of breeding. - Violet Bonham Carter

OCTOBER 2010

Where is Engagement Ohio? Halfway between Dayton and Marion.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink. - e.e.cummings

I have a great diet – you’re allowed to eat anything you want, but you must eat it with naked fat people. - Ed Bluestone

Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologise for a lack of decent clothing. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

It’s about time that people forget that image of strip clubs as seedy places – today’s strip clubs are “capital-intensive female empowerment zones.” - Demi Moore

I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring. - Prince Otto von Bismarck

The struggling for knowledge has a pleasure in it like that of wrestling with a fine woman. - George Savile, Lord Halifax

He not only overflowed with learning, but stood in the slop. - Sydney Smith (1771-1845)

To know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody. - Quentin Crisp

To really know someone is to have loved and hated him in turn. - Marcel Jouhandeau

We might define an eccentric as a man who is a law unto himself, and a crank as one who, having determined what the law is, insists on laying it down to others. - Louis Kronenberger

I am a deeply superficial person. - Andy Warhol

I look at ordinary people in their suits, them with no scars, and I’m different. I don’t fit with them. I’m where everybody’s got scar tissue on their eyes and got noses like saddles. I go to the conventions of old fighters like me and I see the scar tissue and all them flat noses and it’s beautiful. Galento, may he rest in peace. Giardello, LaMotta, Carmen Basilio. What a sweet-heart Basilio is. They talk like me, like they got rocks in their throats. Beautiful! - Willie Pastrano

There is one thing to be said for country clubs; they drain off a lot of people you wouldn’t want to associate with anyway. - Joseph Prescott

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. - Leo Tolstoy

So let us all who pray ask for what most of them need badly, a sense of humor to lighten their way through life, making it merrier for themselves and easier for others. - Sean O’Casey

SEPTEMBER 2010

I quit smoking. I feel better. I smell better. And it’s safer to drink out of old beer cans laying around the house.
- Roseanne

He must have had a magnificent build before his stomach went in for a career of its own. - Margaret Halsley

Watch out when you’re getting all you want: only hogs being fattened for the slaughter get all they want. - Joel Chandler Harris

You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive. - Jean Cocteau

You die as you’ve lived. If you were paranoid in life, you’ll probably be paranoid when you’re dying. - Dr. James Cimino

If you want a place in the sun, prepare to put up with a few blisters. -Abigail Van Buren

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat. - Elizabeth Bowen

People don’t choose their careers; they are engulfed by them. - John Dos Passos

There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money either. - Robert Graves

When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended for self-flagellation solely. - Truman Capote

In New York when someone puts a knife to your chest you give them your money. In L.A. when someone puts a knife to your chest, you give them your money, you say “Thank you doctor,” and buy a bigger bra. - Deidre Sullivan

We’re an interracial couple, my wife and I. I’m from Kentucky and she’s not a relative. - Mark Klein

I come from a typical American family. You know, me, my mother, her third husband, his daughter from a second marriage. My stepsister. Her illegitimate son. - Carol Henry

The two times they pronounce you anything in life is when you are man and wife or they pronounce you dead on arrival. - Dennis Miller

His face was filled with broken commandments. - John Masefield

A thick head can do as much damage as a hard heart. - H.W. Dodds

Eruditon. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull. - Ambrose Bierce

In a mere half-century, films have gone from silent to unspeakable. - Doug Larson

 

AUGUST 2010

It’s a funny old world – a man’s lucky if he can get out of it alive. - W.C. Fields

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never any use to oneself. - Oscar Wilde

Traditional American values: Genocide, aggression, conformity, emotional repression, hypocrisy, and the worship of comfort and consumer goods. - George Carlin

I wanted to be a Boy Scout, but I had all the wrong traits. They were looking for kids who were trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Whereas I tended to be devious, fickle, obstructive, hostile, impolite, mean defiant, glum, extravagant, dirty, and sacrilegious. - George Carlin

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens. - Benjamin Disraeli

God alone knows the future, but only an historian can alter the past. -Ambrose Bierce

We all get heavier as we get older because there’s a lot more information in our heads. - Vlade Divac

I’m trying to get back to my original weight – eight pounds, three ounces. - Cheril Vendetti

We are so vain that we even care for the opinion of those we don’t care for. - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

I believe in reincarnation. I’ve had other lives. I know. I have clues. First of all, I’m exhausted. - Carol Siskind

TV evangelists are the pro wrestlers of religion. - Rick Overton

They just opened a new Starbucks, in my living room. - Janeane Garofalo

If it works, they’ll stop making it. - Jane Otten

A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation. - Howard Scott

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy. - Sir Isaac Newton

The more help a person has in his garden, the less it belongs to him. - William H. Davies

A guest sees more in an hour than the host in a year. - Polish proverb

When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea that his first name was Always. - Rita Rudner

JUNE 2010

Boy, it was hot today! I saw a dog chasing a cat and they were both walking. - Robert Burlingame

On cable TV they have a weather channel - 24 hours of weather. We had something like that where I grew up. We called it a window. - Dan Spencer

Cockroaches and socialites are the only things that can stay up all night and eat anything. - Herb Caen

Who bothers to cook TV dinners? I suck them frozen. -Woody Allen

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead. - Voltaire

Martyrdom: The only way a man can become famous without ability. - George Bernard Shaw

Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don’t work, those that break down and those that get lost. - Russell Baker

The only reason a great many American families don’t own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. - Mad Magazine

My new dress. Do you like it? It’s from my favorite designer, On Sale. - Rita Rudner

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.” - Steven Wright

In an underdeveloped country don’t drink the water. In a developed country don’t breathe the air. - Jonathan Raban

On my first day in New York a guy asked me if I knew where Central Park was. When I told him I didn’t he said, “Do you mind if I mug you here?” - Paul Merton

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes, than a public library. - Samuel Johnson

Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it’s about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustrations that it creates. - Mordecai Richler

If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city. - Charles Caleb Colton

My uncle was the town drunk – and we lived in Chicago. - George Gobel

You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy. - Eric Hoffer

Some folks are wise and some otherwise. - Josh Billings

You might be a redneck if you list “staring” among your hobbies. - Jeff Foxworthy

They can’t censor the gleam in my eye. - Charles Laughton

Good thing I was not born a girl because I could never say no. - Warren G. Harding

Make crime pay. Become a lawyer. - Will Rogers.

MAY 2010

The easiest way to get in trouble is to be right at the wrong time. - Langford (S.D.) Bugle

Why do they call it rush hour when nothing moves? - Robin Williams

Have you noticed? Anyone going slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a moron. - George Carlin

Humour can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process. - E. B. White

Humor enables one to live in the midst of tragic events without becoming a tragic figure. - E.T. Eberhart

Don’t ever slam the door; you might want to go back. - Don Herold

Learn all the rules, every one of them, so that you will know how to break them. - Irvin S. Cobb

There’s no love in the world that can’t be killed if you beat it to death long enough. - Tammy Wynette

I’m going to make a prediction: it could go either way. - Ron Atkinson

Diplomacy: the art of saying ‘nice doggie’ until you can find a rock. - Will Rogers

A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip. - Caskie Stinnet

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe. - Goethe

What garlic is to a salad, insanity is to art. - Augustus Homer

If you’re going through hell, keep going. - Winston Churchill

Birds sing after a storm, why shouldn’t we? - Rose Kennedy

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. -Albert Schweitzer

Happiness: your dentist telling you it won’t hurt and then catching his hand in the drill. - Johnny Carson

He who limps still walks. - Stanislaw Lec

Joseph Coors, founder of the Coors Brewery, has died at eighty-eight. He’ll be cremated and his urn crushed against a frat guy’s forehead. - Craig Kilborn

That Oscar Meyer section is creepy. This guy is inventing meat. There’s no olive-loaf animal, as far as I know. - Jerry Seinfeld

What always staggers me is that when people blow their noses, they always look into their hankies to see what came out. What do they expect to find? A silver sixpence? - Billy Connolly

A new study recommends taking a nap in the afternoon because it can really refresh you. So much that you’ll be able to go out and find a new job after your boss fires you. - Craig Kilborn

There are three ages of man – youth, age, and ‘you’re looking wonderful’. - Francis Spellman

Personally, I’m waiting for caller I.Q. - Sandra Bernhard

Children really brighten up a household – they never turn the lights off. - Ralph Bus

Abstract art is a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled, to the utterly bewildered. - Al Capp

The dawn is a term for the early morning used by poets and other people who don’t have to get up. - Oliver Herford

There is only one thing more powerful than all the armies of the world, that is an idea whose time has come. - Victor Hugo

MAY 2010

The fly ought to be used as the symbol of impertinence and audacity; for whilst all other animals shun man more than anything else, and run away even before he comes near them, the fly lights upon his very nose. - Schopenhauer

I neglect God and his angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door. - John Donne

As we grow old, our sense of the value of time becomes vivid. Nothing else, indeed, seems of any consequence. - William Hazlitt

It haunts me, the passage of time. I think time is a merciless thing. I think life is a process of burning oneself out and time is the fire that burns you. But I think the spirit of man is a good adversary. - Tennessee Williams

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. - Shakespeare, Richard II

I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines. - Oliver Goldsmith

Youth is a disease that must be borne with patiently! Time, indeed, will cure it. - R.H. Benson

On any morning these days whole segments of the population wake up to find themselves famous, while, to keep matters shipshape, whole contingents of celebrities wake up to find themselves forgotten. - Louis Kronenberger

Tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse. Everything passes, everything perishes, everything palls. - Anonymous

God is a great humorist. He just has a slow audience to work with. - Garrison Keillor

..and always remember the last words of my grandfather, who said, “A truck!” - Emo Philips

The weeping of an heir is laughter in disguise. - Michel de Montaigne

I’m very proud of my gold pocket watch. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch. - Woody Allen

My definition of utter waste is a coachload of lawyers going over a cliff with three empty seats. - Lamar Hunt

Yesterday was the first day of the rest of your life and you messed it up again. - Patrick Murray

There are days when it takes all you’ve got just to keep up with the losers. - Robert Orbene

He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden. - Plato

A cloudy day, or a little sunschine, have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most real blessing or misfortunes. - Joseph Addison

For the man sound in body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every sky has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously. - George Gissing

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. - Charles Dickens

Be grateful for luck. Pay the thunder no mind – listen to the birds. And don’t hate nobody. - Eubie Blake

MARCH 2010

It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. - Bertrand Russell

Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most. - Samuel Johnson

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did. - James Baldwin

God gave a loaf to every bird, But just a crumb to me. - Emily Dickinson

The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong - but that’s the way to bet. - Damon Runyon

Those who mistake their good luck for their merit are inevitably bound for disaster. - Christopher Herold

Boredom turns a man to sex, a woman to shopping, and it drives newscasters berserk. - Bruce Herschensohn

There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody. - Adlai Stevenson

A fool and his money were lucky to get together in the first place. - Harry Anderson

When I was born I did lament and cry / And now each day doth shew the reason why. - Richard Watkyns

Think of the ills from which you are exempt. - Joseph Joubert

If you are cross-eyed and have dyslexia, can you see okay? - John Mendoza

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out. - Walter Winchell

There are three kinds of friends: best friends, guest friends, and pest friends. - Laurence J. Peter

It is a mistake to judge people by their friends. Judge them by their enemies. I am very proud of my enemies.
- Norman Tebbit

In the rush of daily living it’s easy to forget all the remarkable people, real or fictional, who have been a part of your life. But if you just imagine they are near for a moment, you will realize that anyone who ever touched your heart is always with you, patiently waiting to emanate warmth and support whenever you remember to think of them. - Barbara Sher

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. - Paul Dudley White

Occasionally indulging in a do-nothing day is more than worth the price. - Malcolm Forbes

Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well. - The Buddha

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. - George Baker

I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth. - Janeane Garofalo

I finally have a dental plan. I chew on the other side. - Janine Ditullio

FEBRUARY 2010

You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen, it said “Parking Fine.” - Tommy Cooper

You might be a redneck if your car breaks down on the side of the road and you never go back and get it. - Jeff Foxworthy

A rare old bird is the pelican;
His bill holds more than his belican.
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week;
I’m darned if I know how the helican.
- Dixon Merritt

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries. - Stephen King

New York is like living inside Stephen King’s brain during an aneurysm. - Kevin Rooney

Life begins at 40 - but so do fallen arches, rheumatism, faulty eyesight, and the tendency to tell a story to the same person, three or four times.” - Helen Rowland

Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory. - Franklin P. Adams

I don’t have a bank account because I don’t know my mother’s maiden name. - Paula Poundstone

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. - Mitch Hedberg

Remember the scene in West Side Story when a guy is running through Spanish Harlem yelling out, “Maria” and only one woman comes to the window? - Bobby Slayton

Did you ever notice when you blow in a dog’s face he gets mad at you? But when you take him in a car he sticks his head out the window. - Steve Bluestone

I think everyone just has to grow up a little and realize that, hey, life’s rough for everybody. It sucks across the board. “Hi, I’m Bill, and I’m a birth survivor.” I’ve got to live with that every day. - Bill Maher

A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs – jolted by every pebble in the road. - Henry Ward Beecher

The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us. - Bill Watterson

My wife is a sex object - every time I ask for sex, she objects. - Les Dawson

Husbands are like fires. They go out when unattended. - Zsa Zsa Gabor

Arnold Schwarzenegger looks like a condom full of walnuts. - Clive James

Most of the time, Brando sounds like he has a mouth full of wet toilet paper. - Rex Reed

Behind every successful man is a surprised woman. - Mayon Pearson

I cut my Adam’s apple shaving. What a mess . . . apple juice everywhere. - Drake Sather

My motto is the same as my blood type: B Positive. - Cynthia Nelms

When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way, so I just stole one and asked Him to forgive me.- Emo Philips

DECEMBER 2009

It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians. - Henrik Ibsen

No physician is really good before he has killed one or two patients. - Hindu proverb

Doctors are the same as lawyers; the only difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you and kill you too. - Anton Chekhov

One cannot walk through a mass-production factory and not feel that one is in Hell. - W.H. Auden

Hell is a city much like London. - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell. - Aldous Huxley

Welcome to hell. Here’s your accordion. - Cartoon caption by Gary Larson

Winter is reality, summer is illusion. - Toivo Pekkanen

The cello has such a lugubrious sound, like someone reading a will. - Irene Thomas

I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world. - Russell Baker

Problems are messages. - Shakti Gawain

No man is useless while he has a friend. - Robert Lewis Stevenson

Even the most useless person can serve as a bad example. - Unknown

Egotism – usually just a case of mistaken nonentity. - Barbara Stanwyck

No man knows what true happiness is until he has a complete set of false teeth and has lost all interest in the opposite sex. - Lord Rosebery

A hooker told me she’d do anything I wanted for fifty bucks. I said, “Paint my house.” - Henny Youngman

What does “good in bed” mean to me? When I’m sick and I stay home from school propped up with lots of pillows watching TV and my mom brings me soup – that’s good in bed.- Brooke Shields

The nearest I’ve been to a sexual experience lately is finding lipstick on a cafe cup. - Guy Bellamy

When you’re camping and a bear attacks, you don’t have to run faster than the bear; you just have to run faster than the slowest camper.- Michael Ruppert

You too must not count overmuch on your reality as you feel it today, since, like that of yesterday, it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow.– Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936)

Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.- G.K. Chesterton

Be grateful as your deeds become less and less associated with your name, as your feet ever more lightly tread the earth.- Dag Hammarskjöld

NOVEMBER 2009

No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British, which amazes Americans, who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute. - Paul Gallico

What is the test of good manner? Being able to bear patiently with bad ones. - Solomon Gabirol

I always believe in the old adage, Leave them while you’re looking good. - Zsa Zsa Gabor

I think Dostoevsky was right, that every human being must have a point at which he stands against the culture, where he says, this is me and the damned world can go to hell. - Rollo May

A man may as well open an oyster without a knife, as a lawyer’s mouth without a fee. - Barten Holyday

Real friendship is shown in times of trouble; prosperity is full of friends. - Euripedes

When you are in trouble, people who call to sympathise are really only looking for more details. - Edgar W. Howe

Help a man in trouble and he’ll never forget you - especially the next time he’s in trouble. - Johnny Lyons

I am so busy I have had to put off the date of my death. -Bertrand Russell

At my age flowers scare me. - George Burns

Remember, blood is not only thicker than water, it’s much more difficult to get off the carpet. - Phyllis dililer

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem. - Gore Vidal

He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea. - Thomas Fuller

There are three ways to get something done; do it yourself, hire someone, or forbid your kids to do it. - Mona Crane

Once, when somebody in our house stepped on the cat’s paw, my mother turned to the cat and said sternly “I told you not to go around barefoot!" - Zero Mostel

The worst sensation I know of is getting up at night and stepping on a toy train. -Kin Hubbard

A dead atheist is someone who’s all dressed up with nowhere to go. - James Duffey

OCTOBER 2009

Give us grace to listen well. - John Keble

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul. - Joyce Carol Oates

Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind. - Robert W. Chambers

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. - Logan Pearsall Smith

The trouble with us in America isn’t that the poetry of life has truned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy. - Louis Kronenberger

What an author likes to write most is his signature on the back of a check.” - Brendan Francis

What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out of the window. - Burton Rascoe

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs. - James Thurber

Don’t let young people confide in you their aspirations; when they drop them, they will drop you. - Logan Pearsall Smith

Every good journalist has a good novel in him – which is an excellent place for it. - Russell Lynes, editor and author

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back anymore - the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men. - Joseph Conrad

When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not. - Mark Twain

A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom. - Alfred de Vigny

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation. - W. Somerset Maugham

When you have got an elephant by the hind legs and he is trying to run away, it’s best to let him run. - Abraham Lincoln

SEPTEMBER 2009

There was a young man with a hernia, Who said to his doctor, ‘Goldernia, When improving my middle, Be sure you don’t fiddle, With matters that do not concernia.’ - Heywood Broun

After two days in hospital, I took a turn for the nurse. - W.C. Fields

A historic operation occurred in Boston. Doctors successfully transplanted tissue from a pig’s brain to a man’s brain, and the man’s brain did not reject it. That pretty much confirms what women have been saying about men. - Jay Leno

The first human being who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization. - Sigmund Freud

Women’s intuition is the result of millions of years of not thinking. - Rupert Hughes

Never explain - your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyway. - Elbert Hubbard

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. - Saki (H.H. Munro)

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap. - Cynthia Heimel

It is not difficult to be unconventional in the eyes of the world when your unconventionality is but the convention of your set. - W. Somerset Maugham

To all things clergic, I am allergic. - Alexander Woollcott

AUGUST 2009

There is never enough time unless you are serving it. - Malcolm Forbes

A lady came up to me on the street and pointed at my suede jacket. “You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?” she sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, “I didn’t know there were any witnesses. Now I’ll have to kill you too.” - Jake Johansen

There are no more car thieves. These are non-traditional commuters. Homeless people are full-time outdoorsmen. Prostitutes are sexual maintenance partners. - Paul Rodriguez

I like dogs. I do. But they’re not that bright, really. Let’s examine the dog mind: Every time you come home, he thinks it’s amazing. He can’t believe that you’ve accomplished this again. You walk in the door. The joy of it almost kills him. “He’s back again! It’s that guy! It’s that guy!” - Jerry Seinfeld

I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ ve always worked for me. - Hunter S. Thompson

A psychiatrist asks a lot of expensive questions that your wife asks for nothing. - Joey Adams

A child develops individuality long before he develops taste. I have seen my kid straggle into the kitchen in the morning with outfits that need only one accessory: an empty gin bottle. - Erma Bombeck

I was so naive as a kid I used to sneak behind the barn and do nothing. - Johnny Carson

JULY 2009

Always tell the truth, it’s the easiest thing to remember. - David Mamet

The only Tell, should be William.– Mike Sharkey

A publisher would as soon see a burglar in his office as a poet. - H. de Vere Stacpoole

I’ve found that the friendliest people are in the South. When I’m in New York in a hotel and check my messages, they say, “Is your light on? No.” But in the South the answer is different. They say, “Yes, you do. Billy called. I think he likes you.” - Caroline Rhea

I didn’t find the New York subway scary, I thought it was a little odd. Everywhere I looked were big signs that said NO SPITTING. I don’t know if I have a big defiant streak in me or what, but I never even thought about spitting till they brought it up. And then it was all I felt like doing. - Paula Poundstone

Television is the literature of the illiterate, the culture of the low-brow, the wealth of the poor, the privilege of the underprivileged, the exlusive club of the excluded masses. - Lee Loevinger

Sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipede - not because they have a hundred feet, but because most people can’t count above fourteen. - G.C. Lichtenberg

Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one. - A.J. Liebling

The man who has not anything to boast of but his illustrious ancestors is like a potato - the only good belonging to him is underground - Thomas Overbury

The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity. - Ouida

Relationships get more difficult as you get older. The idea now of beginning to go through all that again is unsupportable, so I don’t bother. - Peter O’Toole

It isn’t the mountain ahead that wears you out – it’s the grain of sand in your shoe. - Robert Service

JUNE 2009

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing. - Redd Foxx

Quit worrying about your health. It’ll go away. - Robert Orben

My doctor gave me two weeks to live. I hope they’re in August. - Ronnie shakes

Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst clothes. - J.B. Priestley

Before I was married I had three theories about raising children. Now I have three children and no theories. - John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester

Making duplicate copies and computer printouts of things no one wanted even one of in the first place is giving America a new sense of purpose. - Andy Rooney

To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it. - Herman Melville

I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one; But, I can tell you, anyhow, I’d rather see than be one. - Gelett Burgess

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
- Emily Dickinson

To call Richard Brautigan’s poetry doggerel is an insult to the entire canine world. - Lazlo Coakley

It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and I’m wearing Milk Bone shorts. - Kelly Allen

Mother Hubbard was old, alone, and a widow – a friendless, old, solitary widow. Yet, did she despair? Did she sit down and weep or read a novel, or wring her hands? No! She went to the cupboard. - Lord Desart

When Jaws 1 was made, people stopped going to the ocean, and when Jaws 2, 3, and 4 were made, people stopped going to the theater. - Dave Attell

MAY 2009

The most vigilant self-criticism of course is necessary, but the time comes when the artist must tell himself he is good or he will go under. - Gerald Moore

The artistic impulse seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly deserts us half-way, after the idea is born; and if we go on, art is labor. - Clarence Day

Constant success shows us but one side of the world. For as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects. - Charles Caleb Colton

Success causes us to be more praised than known. - Joseph Roux

Vanity is truly the motive-power that moves humanity, and it is flattery that greases the wheels. - Jerome K. Jerome

Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident; the only earthly certainty is oblivion. - Mark Twain

If you would live innocently, seek solitude. - Publilius Syrus

Everyone suffers wrongs for which there is no remedy. - Edgar Watson Howe

Anybody who has ever tried to rectify an injustice or set a record straight comes to feel that he is going mad. - Mary McCarthy

Every now and then, when you’re on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It’s a sound you can’t get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you’ve hit them where they live. - Shelley Winters

Nothing can so pierce the soul as the uttermost sigh of the body. - George Santayana

The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off. - Emerson

Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. - Shakespeare

APRIL 2009

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. - Psalms

Sadness is almost never anything but a form of fatigue. - Andre Gide

One third of the people of the world are asleep at any given moment. The other two thirds are awake and probably stirring up trouble somewhere. - Dean Rusk

The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can’t get there, is the meanest feeling in the world. - Edgar Watson Howe

For the mind disturbed, the still beauty of dawn is nature’s finest balm. - Edwin Way Teale

No emotion, any more than a wave, can long retain its own individual form. - Henry Ward Beecher

Time cools, time clarifies; no mood can be maintained quite unaltered through the course of hours. - Thomas Mann

A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for the instinctual drives must be satisfied. - Cyril Connolly

Nothing vivifies, and nothing kills, like the emotions. - Joseph Roux

The bottomless bitter misery of childhood: how little even now it is understood. Probably no adult misery can be compared with a child’s despair. - Iris Murdoch

We begin life with loss. We are cast from the womb without an apartment, a charge plate, a job or a car. We are sucking, sobbing, clinging, helpless babies. - Judith Viorst

A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child. - Longfellow

My childhood was so bleak, I wanted to stick my head in my Easy Bake oven. - Mary O’Halloran

I had a stick of carefree gum, but it didn’t work. I felt pretty good while I was blowin’ that bubble, but as soon as the gum lost its flavor, I went back to pondering my mortality. - Mitch Hedberg

Did you ever read that book Everything I Needed to Know I learned in Kindergarten? I learned only two things in kindergarten: First, if someone has something you want, you can remove it from them physically. And second, Elmer’s glue makes a great between-meals snack. - Gary Barkin

The real menace in dealing with a five-year-old is that in no time at all you begin to sound like a five-year-old. - Jean Kerr

You can’t stay young forever, but you can be immature for the rest of your life. - Maxine Wilkie

The real fountain of youth is to have a dirty mind. - Jerry Hall

Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure. - Charles Dudley Warner

The sun, though it passes through dirty places, yet remains as pure as before. - Francis Bacon

I worry about kids today. Because of the sexual revolution they’re going to grow up and never know what “dirty” means. - Lily Tomlin

I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty. - George Burns

A lot of history is just dirty politics cleaned up for the consumption of children and other innocents. - Richard Reeves

A nice man is a man of nasty ideas. - Jonathan Swift

I always start writing with a clean piece of paper and a dirty mind. - Patrick Dennis

Quoting, like smoking, is a dirty habit to which I am devoted. - Carolyn Heilbrun

FEBRUARY 2009

Be not hasty to marry; it’s better to have one plough going than two cradles; and more profit to have a barn filled than a bed. - Thomas Fuller (1608-1661)

Love is ideal. Marriage is real. The confusion of the two shall never go unpunished. - Goethe

Music played at weddings always reminds me of the music played for soldiers before they go into battle. - Heinrich Heine

All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of love. - Ann Landers

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.” - Steven Wright

Basically I wanted a woman who was an economist in the kitchen and a whore in bed. I wound up with a woman who was a whore in the kitchen and an economist in bed. - Geoffrey Gorer

On sex in the kitchen: Nothing like a little stove top stuffing. - Tony Edwards

Men only have two feelings - we’re either hungry or horny. I tell my wife, if I don’t have an erection, make me a sandwich. - Bobby Slayton

The first time you buy a house you see how pretty the paint is and buy it. The second time you look to see if the basement has termites. It’s the same with men. - Lupe Velez

Men are nicotine-soaked, beer-besmirched, whiskey-greased, red-eyed devils. - Carry Nation

Never trust a husband too far, nor a bachelor too near. - Helen Rowland

Girls are always running through my mind. They don’t dare walk. - Andy Gibb

Sexual fidelity is not necessary to a well-conducted marriage. Your eldest son should certainly be your own, but beyond this it is excessively vulgar to enquire too closely into the paternity of your children. - Simon Raven

The chain of wedlock is so heavy that it takes two to carry it, sometimes three. - Alexandre Dumas

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage and half-shut afterwards. - Benjamin Franklin

The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons. - R. W. Emerson

A 90-year-old Florida man won a $16 million lottery. He’s using the money to start a foundation to help him remember where he left his pants. - Conan O’Brien

I have my 87th birthday coming up and people ask me what I’d most appreciate getting. I tell them a paternity suit. - George Burns

The joy of being older is that in one’s life, one can, towards the end of the run, over-act appallingly. - Quentin Crisp

There’s many a good tune played on an old fiddle. - Samuel Butler

I was at a gay nineties party the other night. All the men were gay and all the women were ninety. - Eric Morecambe

My wife and I were considering a divorce, but after pricing lawyers we decided to buy a new car instead. - Henny Youngman

My notion of a wife at forty is that a man should be able to change her, like a bank note, for two twenties. - Douglas Jerrold

I’ve never yet turned over a fig leaf that didn’t have a price tag on the other side. - Saul Bellow

I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy. - Steve Martin

My biggest sex fantasy is we’re making love and I realize I’m out of debt. - Beth Lapides

Outside of every thin woman is a fat man trying to get in. - Katherine Whitehorn

Thin people are beautiful but fat people are adorable. - Jackie Gleason

JANUARY 2009

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of witnesses. - Margaret Millar

Is there any place where there is no traffic in empty talk? Is there on this earth one who does not worship himself talking? - Kahlil Gibran

Let me tell you something about silence: the bullshit stops. - Dominick Dunne

He has occasional flashes of silence that make his conversation perfectly delightful. - Sydney Smith

I strive to be brief but I become obscure. - Horace

To make a long story short, there’s nothing like having the boss walk in. - Doris Lilly

An intellectual is someone who has found something more interesting than sex. - Edgar Wallace

Brains are never a handicap to a girl if she hides them under a see-through blouse. - Bobby Vinton

If you’ve never met a student from the University of Chicago, I’ll describe him to you. If you give him a glass of water, he says, “This is a glass of water. But is it a glass of water? And if it is a glass of water, why is it a glass of water?” And eventually he dies of thirst. - Shelley Berman

Very simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds. - Rémy de Gourmont

I know you believe you understand what you think I said. But I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant. - Patrick Murray

If you are sure you understand everything that is going on, you are hopelessly confused. - Walter Mondale

Put your trust in the inexhaustible character of the murmur. - André Breton

I talk to myself because I like dealing with a better class of people. - Jackie Mason

I have suffered from being misunderstood, but I would have suffered a hell of a lot more if I had been understood. - Clarence Darrow

If you keep your mouth shut the flies won’t get in. - Spanish proverb

Philosopher: “You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.” Poet: “Yes, but what are you going to do with a bunch of flies?”

Every man is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. - Bertrand Russell

Never trust anyone over-dirty. - RB

You might be a redneck if you offer to give somebody the shirt off your back and they don’t want it. - Jeff Foxworthy

And, closing the door with the delicate caution of one brushing flies off a sleeping Venus, he passed out of my life. - P.G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves

Every man is thoroughly happy twice in his life: just after he has met his first love, and just after he has left his last one. - H.L. Mencken

An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted. - Arthur Miller

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go. - William Feather

I left the room with silent dignity, but caught my foot in the mat. - George Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody

DECEMBER 2008

Character is what you are in the dark. - Dwight Moody

As only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you’ll live through the night. - Dorothy Parker

When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise, and the night be gone? and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day. - Bible, Job 7.4

I used to lie for hours staring into the dark of the sleeping house, feeling the loneliness that only the sleepless know when the queer feeling comes that it is the sleeping who are alive and that those awake are disembodied ghosts. - Loren Eiseley

A good gulp of hot whiskey at bedtime - it’s not very scientific, but it helps. - Alexander Fleming

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead. - James Thurber

I did not sleep. I never do when I am over-happy, over-unhappy, or in bed with a strange man. - Edna O’Brien

In bed my real love has always been the sleep that rescued me by allowing me to dream. - Luigi Pirandello

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I rise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savour) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. - E. B. White

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

To teach how to live with uncertainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy in our age can still do for those who study it. - John Ruskin

Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work. - Gustave Flaubert

My reputation grows with every failure. - George Bernard Shaw

I would be happy if I knew that on my tombstone could be written these words, “This man was an absolute fool. None of the disastrous things that he reluctantly predicted ever came to pass!” - Lewis Mumford

It has been said that there is no fool like an old fool, except a young fool. But the young fool has first to grow up to be an old fool to realise what a damn fool he was when he was a young fool. - Harold Macmillan, Lord Stockton

If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss. - Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

Experience. The wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced. - Ambrose Bierce

The best way to convince a fool that he is wrong is to let him have his own way. - Josh Billings

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience. - George Bernard Shaw

Experience is a comb which nature gives to men when they are bald. - Eastern proverb

A wise man gets gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends. - Baltasar Gracian

NOVEMBER 2008

The mark of the man of the world is absence of pretension. - Emerson

Tolerably early in life I discovered that one of the unpardonable sins, in the eyes of most people, is for a man to go about unlabelled. The world regards such a person as the police do an unmuzzled dog. - Thomas Huxley

The revolt against individualism naturally calls artists severely to account, because the artist is of all men the most individual: those who were not have been long forgotten. - Willa Cather

The world, like an accomplished hostess, pays most attention to those whom it will soonest forget. - John Churton Collins

Fortitude is the capacity to say “no” when the world wants to hear “yes.” - Erich Fromm

You choose, you live the consequences. Every yes, no, maybe, creates the school you call your personal experience. - Richard Bach

All the glory of greatness has no lustre for people who are in search of understanding. - Pascal

Ours is the age of substitutes: instead of language, we have jargon; instead of principles, slogans; and, instead of genuine ideas, bright ideas. - Eric Bentley

Mass communication communicates massively: its language lacks precise articulation and avoids demanding terms; it argues for the kind of behavior in life which will make a “good program” - ethic equals showbiz. - Frederic Raphael

To say that an idea is fashionable is to say, I think, that it has been adulterated to a point where it is hardly an idea at all. - Murray Kempton

The price one pays for pursuing any profession, or calling, is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side. - James Baldwin

He that resolves to deal with none but honest men must leave off dealing. - Thomas Fuller

Of all plagues, good Heaven, thy wrath can send,/ Save, save, oh save me from the candid friend! - George Canning

More faults are often committed while we are trying to oblige than while we are giving offense. - Tacitus

If we shake hands with icy fingers, it is because we have burnt them so horribly before. - Logan Pearsall Smith

A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice. - Edgar Watson Howe

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning. - James Russell Lowell

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth. - John Locke

If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself...you rise from the table richer, and conscious that a high ideal has for a moment touched and sanctified your days. But oh! to sit next to a man who spent his life in trying to educate others! What a dreadful experience that is. How appalling is that ignorance which is the inevitable result of the fatal habit of imparting opinions. - Oscar Wilde

Spread the table and contention will cease. - English Proverb

Strange to see how a good dinner and feasting reconciles everybody. - Samuel Pepys

Hunger is not debatable. - Harry Hopkins

Too much agreement kills a chat. - Eldridge Cleaver

A good salad may be the prologue to a bad supper. - Thomas Fuller

Long meals make short lives. - Sir John Lubbock

Love fed fat soon turns to boredom. - Ovid

Warmed-over loves and soups are generally not recommended. - Elie Wiesel

Better a little fire to warm us than a great one to burn us. - Thomas Fuller

SEPTEMBER 2008

The man who promises everything is sure to fulfill nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition. - Carl Jung

Institutional psychiatry is a continuation of the Inquisition. All that has changed really is the vocabulary and the social style. The vocabulary conforms to the intellectual expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-medical jargon that parodies the concepts of science. The society style conforms to the political expectations of our age: it is a pseudo-liberal social movement that parodies the ideals of freedom and rationality. - Thomas Szasz American psychiatrist

I have myself spent nine years in a lunatic asylum and have never suffered from the obsession of wanting to kill myself; but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist in the morning, made me want to hang myself because I knew I could not strangle him. - Antonin Artaud

One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom. - Muriel Spark British novelist

We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it – and stop there, lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again – and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore. - Mark Twain

The future is just like the past up until the moment it isn’t anymore. - George Will

Once we get out of the eighties, the nineties are gonna make the sixties look like the fifties. - Dennis Hopper

It is not true that life is one damn thing after another – it is one damn thing over and over. - Edna St. Vincent Millay

At first I thought that my life was going around in circles. Then I got to looking closer and it’s actually a downward spiral. - Tom Ryan

Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. - Unknown

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago. - Bernard Berenson

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. - Willa Cather

Civilization is just a slow process of learning to be kind. - Charles L. Lucas

They showed an execution at some prison. The executioner said, “Killing a man in an electric chair is as easy for me as going to the refrigerator and getting a beer.” I heard that and thought, “Well, scratch that guy off my A-1 party list. He’d be partying at my house and I’d say, “Hey, did you get my beer?” He’d look at me funny. “Huh? I thought you said kill your dad.” - Bobcat Goldthwait

I thought I had PMS, but my doctor said, “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, you don’t have PMS. The bad news is, you’re a bitch.” - Rhonda Bates

I’ve been sort of crabby lately. It’s that time of the month again – the rent’s due. - Margaret Smith

You ever have somebody owe you money, and have the nerve to wear new clothes around you? Brand new clothes, and they point them out, like “Hey, look what I just picked up?” Well, did you see my money while you were down there? - Chris Rock

More and more these days I find myself pondering on how to reconcile my net income with my gross habits. - John Kirk Nelson

I was going to commit suicide by sticking my head in the oven, but there was a cake in it. - Leslie Boone

The commonplace masters us all. - Goethe

Last Will And Testament: I owe much, I have nothing, the rest I leave to the poor. - Rabelais (1494-1553)

AUGUST 2008

A neurotic is a person who builds a castle in the air. A psychotic is the person who lives in it. A psychiatrist is the one who collects the rent. - Jerome Lawrence

‘You seem to be reacting to your boyfriend as if he were your father,’ your shrink may say stonily (unless she is a strict Freudian, in which case she’ll shut up and wait until you think of it yourself, a process that usually takes 10 years. This is why strict Freudians have such lovely summer houses). -Cynthia Heimel

You go to a psychiatrist when you’re slightly cracked and keep going until you’re completely broke. - Anon.

Life is like a B-picture script. It’s that corny. If I had my life story offered to me to film, I’d turn it down. - Kirk Douglas

I do not object to people looking at their watches when I am speaking - but I strongly object when they start shaking them to make certain they are still going. - Lord Birkett

I like Mexico because they got together and decided that every single day as an adult you have to take a nap. Somebody had enough guts to stand up in their sentate and say, “I don’t really give a crap about the economy or anything. But I’m really dragging ass every day between two and four, and I was wondering if we could vote on that being nap time.” - Kathleen Madigan

A damn good funeral is still one of our best and cheapest acts of theatre. - Gwyn Thomas

The founder of 7-Eleven has died. He invented their two most famous slogans: “Oh, thank heaven, it’s 7-Eleven” and “Don’t shoot! The money’s in the till.” The casket will be open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. - Jay Leno

Why does Diet Coke have one calorie? If they can get all the other calories out, then why can’t they get that last little punk out of there? How do they even know it’s still in there? Maybe in a six-pack one can got all six of them. Maybe there are millions of cans with no calories at all, and one big, fat, killer can bouncing all over the place. - Richard Jeni

My wife wanted to go someplace expensive over the weekend, so I took her to a Shell station. - Jay Leno

My ex-wife, what was her name again? Oh yeah, Plaintiff. - David Letterman

You might be a redneck if you asked the preacher to repeat the question during your wedding vows. - Jeff Foxworthy

I’d like to become more of a bimbo if I could, because the less you think, the easier it is. Thinking is fatal. It’s better just to look nice, have your mouth a little open and say, ‘Yeah.’ - Rupert Everett

Why’d she get her tongue pierced? She said, ‘To enhanthe the thekthual thimulathon.’ - Robin Williams

Marriage: a ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman. - Herbert Spencer

A metallurgist is someone who can look at a platinum blonde and tell whether she’s virgin material or a common ore. - Brian Johnson

Women are the most powerful magnet in the universe. And all men are cheap metal. And we all know where north is. - Larry Miller

It is disgusting to pick your teeth; what is vulgar is to use a gold toothpick. - Louis Kronenberger

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar. - G.K. Chesterton

Can you imagine a world without men? No crime and lots of happy fat women. - Nicole Hollander

I grew up hearing such stupid things. My mother would say, “That’s the last time I’m gonna tell you to take out the garbage.”‘ Well, thank God. - George Wallace

JULY 2008

In how many lives does Love really play a dominant part? The average taxpayer is no more capable of a ‘grand passion’ than of a grand opera. - Israel Zangwill

Marriage starts with passion and ends with laundry. - Michael Hogan

Whoever came up with ice fishing must have had the worst marriage on the planet. - Jeff Cesario

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war. - Homer

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure. - John D. Rockefeller

You only live once - but if you work it right, once is enough. - Joe E. Lewis

I plan to be so successful, so famous, so well respected that drag queens will want to dress like me in parades when I’m dead. - Laura Kightlinger

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

This summer I’m going to go to the beach and bury metal objects that say “Get a life” on them. - Demetri Martin

Temptation rarely comes in working hours. It is in their leisure time that men are made or marred. - W.M. Taylor

At an amusement park a man’s prosthetic leg flew off while he was riding the roller coaster. Luckily it knocked over three bowling pins and he won a doll. - Craig Kilborn

Researchers in China - this is amazing - have fused human cells with rabbit eggs. They hope to one day develop a human with a lucky foot. - Jay Leno

If carrots are so good for my eyes, how come I see so many dead rabbits on the highway? - Richard Jeni

I don’t understand evolution. If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? What, they couldn’t make it over the hump? Pat Buchanan made it - what’s up with their raggedy asses? - Kathleen Madigan

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. - Groucho Marks

Remember when Michael Jackson wanted to buy the remains of the Elephant Man? What was he thinking? Let’s see: Michael was walking around his palace going, “In that corner, I just don’t know. A palm tree, an end table, naw ... a dead guy! Yeah, that’s it! - Paul Rodriguez

Stuffed deer heads on walls are bad enough, but it’s worse when you see them wearing dark glasses, having streamers around their necks, and a hat on their antlers. Because then you know they were enjoying themselves at a party when they were shot. - Ellen DeGeneres

You might be a redneck if you have your appendix in a jar, sitting on your mantel, with the track lighting focused on it. - Jeff Foxworthy

If you keep your mind sufficiently open, people will throw a lot of rubbish into it. - William A. Orton

We live and learn, but not the wiser grow. - John Pomfret

When three people call you an ass, put on a bridle. - Proverb

Alas, what ignorant sin have I committed? - Shakespeare, Othello

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. - Hector Berlioz

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act. - Truman Capote

In a little over a hundred years? All new people. - Anne Lamott

JUNE 2008

You might be a redneck if the last thing your ex-wife said to you was “It’s me or them dogs.” - Jeff Foxworthy

Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with was made up of idiots. Remember? One of them always getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the farmhouse to alert the other ones. She’d whimper and tug at their sleeves, and they’d always waste precious minutes saying things: “Do you think something’s wrong?” “Do you think she wants us to follow her?” “What is it, girl?” etc., as if this had never happened before, instead of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under the tractor, I don’t see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filled the applications for. - Dave Barry

If you are a police dog, where’s your badge? - The question James Thurber used to drive his German shepherd crazy

Too bad Lassie didn’t know how to ice skate, because then if she was in Holland on vacation in winter and someone said “Lassie, go skate for help,” she could do it. - Jack Handey

I had a dog who was part collie and pit bull. He’d bite you, but then he’d run for help. - Richard Jeni

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men? Are you kidding me? No wonder they couldn’t put Humpty together again. Just what did those idiots expect the horses to do, anyway? - Jerry Seinfeld

Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love. - Butch Hancock

It doesn’t matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses. - Mrs. Patrick Campbell

In West Virginia yesterday, a man was arrested for stealing several blow-up dolls. Reportedly, police didn’t have any trouble catching the man because he was completely out of breath. - Conan O’Brien

My sister wanted to be an actress, but she never made it. She does live in a trailer. She got half way. She’s an actress, she just never gets called to the set. - Mitch Hedberg

You might be a redneck if defending your sister’s honor is a full-time job. - Jeff Foxworthy

People from Minnesota make fun of people from Wisconsin - that’s like warring trailer parks. - Jackie Kashian

Have you ever noticed that people in mobile home parks never move? If you’re going to live in the same place for fifty years get rid of the wheels. - Shashi Bhatia

I am originally from the Ozarks. Not everyone in the Ozarks lives in a trailer park. There’s a huge waiting list. - Nancy Norton

There was a 4.5 earthquake in Alabama, a tragedy. It’ll spawn at least ten thousand country and western songs. - Craig Kilborn

A folksinger is someone who sings through his nose by ear. - Anonymous

A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized. - Fred Allen

The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely. - Lorraine Hansberry

If one sticks too rigidly to one’s principles, one would hardly see anybody. - Agatha Christie

Most saints live to regret their career choice. - Bob Stokes

In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice; because I will not have anybody’s torments in this world or the next laid to my charge. - Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773)

When a man comes to me for advice, I find out the kind of advice he wants, and I give it to him. -Josh Billings

Blessed is he who expects no gratitude, for he shall not be disappointed. - W.C. Bennett

MAY 2008

I was going I was going to buy a copy of The Power of Positive Thinking, and then I thought: What the hell good would that do? - Ronnie Shakes

Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for his novel The Stranger, which says, in effect, that life is meaningless. But that novel’s dust jacket carried a paragraph reporting that Camus died in a car wreck in 1960. It should have added, “Not that it matters.” - Dexter Madison

When one’s own problems are unsolvable and all best efforts frustrated, it is lifesaving to listen to other people’s problems. - Suzanne Massie

Pessimists are usually kind. The gay, bubbling over, have no time for the pitiful. - Sean O’Faolain

A mere trifle consoles us, for a mere trifle distresses us. - Pascal

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, it is possible you haven’t grasped the gravity of the situation. - Jean Kerr

There’s light at the end of the tunnel. And it’s a train. - Margaret Smith

Yes, success is everything. Failure is more common. Most achieve a sort of middling thing, but fortunately one’s
situation is always blurred, you never know absolutely quite where you are. - Donald Barthelme

Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world. - Saint-Exupéry

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death. - Albert Camus

Do you ever try to move your clock ahead an hour, but it’s a digital clock, so you press the little button, and it starts going ahead slowly, taking forever. So you decide to hold the button down and see what happens, and it goes like a million miles an hour into the future? It’s like Planet of the Apes, all of a sudden it’s the year 2504, and everyone you know is dead. - Jay Leno

Modern man, if he dared to be articulate about his concept of heaven, would describe a vision which would look like the biggest department store in the world, showing new things and gadgets, and himself having plenty of money with which to buy them. - Erich Fromm

Toys are made in heaven, batteries are made in hell. - Tom Robbins

The older I get the more sleazy everything seems. - Mark Farrell

You know you’re old when you notice how young the derelicts are getting. - Jeanne Phillips

How beautifully the leaves grow old. How full of light and colour are their last days. - John Burroughs

Joy and sorrow, beauty and deformity, equally pass away - Sa’di Gulistan

APRIL 2008

Space flights are merely an escape, a fleeing away from oneself, because it is easier to go to Mars or to the moon than it is to penetrate one’s own being. - Carl Jung

Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves, and where they dream. - Roger Rosenblatt

Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world. - Goethe

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze - Thomas Carlyle

You may live a long while with some people, and be on friendly terms with them, and never once speak openly with them from your soul. - Ivan Turgenev

When friends stop being frank and useful to each other, the whole world loses some of its radiance. - Anatole Broyard

Words may be false and full of art. Sighs are the natural language of the heart. - Thomas Shadwell

A deep distress hath humanised my Soul. - William Wordsworth

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. - Marcel Proust

Who never ate his bread in sorrow, who never sat through the sorrowful nights weeping on his bed, he knows you not, you heavenly Powers. - Goethe

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. - Oscar Wilde

For the only therapy is life. The patient must learn to live, to live with his split, his conflict, his ambivalence, which no therapy can take away, for if it could, it would take away with it the actual spring of life. - Otto Rank

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. - Bertrand Russell

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul. - Simon Weil

He whose wisdom exceeds his works, to what may he be likened? To a tree whose branches are numerous but whose roots are few. The wind comes along and uproots it and sweeps it down. - Talmud

Though a tree grow ever so high, the falling leaves return to the root. - Malay proverb

It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms. - John Synge

The giant oak is an acorn that held its ground. - Anonymous

Faith sees a beautiful blossom in a bulb, a lovely garden in a seed, and a giant oak in an acorn. - William Arthur Ward

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence. - Hal Borland

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned, and however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly. - Thomas Huxley

Among those whom I like, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. - W. H. Auden

I cannot forgive my friends for dying: I do not find these vanishing acts of theirs at all amusing. - Logan Pearsall Smith

MARCH 2008

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn’t mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar. - Edward R. Murrow

I’m astounded by people who want to “know” the universe when it’s hard enough to find your way around Chinatown. - Woody Allen

Half the world does not know how the other half lives, but is trying to find out. - Edgar W. Howe

Something happens when a man reaches a certain age, that The News becomes the most important thing in his life. All fathers think one day they’re going to get a call from the State Department. “Listen, we’ve completely lost track of the situation in the Middle East. You’ve been watching the news. What do you think we should do about it?” - Jerry Seinfeld

“As information doubles, knowledge halves and wisdom quarters.” - Robert Theobald

Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the ignorant by the incompetent. - Josiah Stamp

The really important things are said over cocktails and are never done. - Peter Drucker

Big ideas are so hard to recognize, so fragile, so easy to kill. Don’t forget that, all of you who don’t have them. - John Elliott Jr.

A “new thinker,” when studied closely, is merely a man who does not know what other people have thought. - F.M.Colby

Every man with an idea has at least two or three followers. - Brooks Atkinson

Originality is the art of concealing your sources. - Unknown

I never lecture; not because I am shy or a bad speaker, but simply because I detest the sort of people who go to lectures and don’t want to meet them. - H.L. Mencken

Character is that which can do without success. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

I cannot afford to waste my time making money. - Louis Agassiz, Letter refusing lecture course offer

My great mistake, the fault for which I can’t forgive myself, is that one day I ceased my obstinate pursuit of my own individuality. - Oscar Wilde

Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one’s identity - Erich Fromm

Once you say you’re going to settle for second, that’s what happens to you in life, I find. - John F. Kennedy

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising. - Cyril Connolly

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth; and truth rewarded me. - Sylvia Ashton-Warner

The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. - Charles Du Bos

Maturity consists of no longer being taken in by oneself. - Kajetan von Schlaggenberg

Time goes by: reputation increases, ability declines. - Dag Hammarskjöld

Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. - Joe Theibert

If you live long enough the venerability factor creeps in; you get accused of things you never did and praised for virtues you never had. - I.F. Stone

I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for. - Jane Carlyle, Letter to Thomas

Nobody objects to a woman being a good writer or sculptor or geneticist if at the same time she manages to be a good wife, good mother, good looking, good tempered, well groomed and unaggressive.- Leslie M. McIntyre

Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God. - Karl Barth

FEBRUARY 2008

That man is an aggressive creature will hardly be disputed. With the exception of certain rodents, no other vertebrate habitually destroys members of its own species. - Anthony Storr

It’s going to be fun to watch and see how long the meek can keep the earth after they inherit it. - Kin Hubbard

Yea, though I should walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, because I am the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley. - Gene M. Nordby

The art of living is more like that of wrestling than of dancing. The main thing is to stand firm and be ready for an unforeseen attack. - Marcus Aurelius

Stoop and you’ll be stepped on; stand tall and you’ll be shot at. - Carlos A. Urbizo

We used to drive by the homeless and wonder what we could do to help. Now we say, “Lock the door.” I think most people would rather help them. But these days you can’t even suggest it. You’re driving by a homeless guy and say, “Should we pick the guy up?” “No, he could get up if he wanted to.” “But he’s only got one leg.” “Well, he shouldn’t have fallen down then, should he?” - Louie Anderson

If you want to understand democracy, spend less time in the library with Plato, and more time in the buses with people. - Simeon Strunsky

Democracy means people of all races, creeds, and colors working hard so they can afford to move away from people of all races, creeds, and colors. - Johnny Carson

To avoid lunatics on buses, sit in the middle of the bus. The friendly lunatics sit as close to the driver as they can, and the unfriendly ones sit as far away as they can. - Keith Allan Hunter

Oklahoma State University’s oldest graduate, sixty-two-year-old Steven Baker Little, formerly alcoholic and homeless, earned a degree in English. Ironically, in today’s job market, an English degree best qualifies a person to become an alcoholic homeless man. - Jimmy Fallon

The intermediate stage between socialism and capitalism is alcoholism. - Norman Brenner

An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do. - Dylan Thomas

I went to San Francisco. I found someone’s heart. - Steven Wright

If you are not too long, I will wait for you all my life. - Oscar Wilde

Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery. - Bertrand Russell

It is a curious thing that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilised taste. - Evelyn Waugh

No matter what your religion, you should try to become a government program, for then you will have everlasting life. - Lynn Martin

I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. - Woody Allen

Looks fade, but humor is forever - I’ll take Woody Allen over Warren Beatty any day. - Bette Midler

Scientists have discovered that a man can be frozen in a state of suspended animation for up to five years without losing his job at the post office. - Kevin Nealon

Saw a guy with a sign that said, WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY? Which freaked me out, because I was on my way to the Motor Vehicle Agency. - Arj Barker

The longer you stay in one place, the greater your chances of disillusionment. - Art Spander

JANUARY 2008

The mouse is an animal which, killed in sufficient numbers under carefully controlled conditions, will produce a Ph.D. thesis. - Journal of Irreproducible Results

It takes forty dumb animals to make a fur coat, but only one to wear it. - Bryn Jones

You know, I saw the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and I didn’t see any tigers or dragons. Then I realized, it’s because they’re crouching and hidden. - Steve Martin

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. - Sir Max Beerbohm

Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog walking on its hind legs. You don’t expect it to be done well – you are surprised to find it done at all. - Samuel Johnson

Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult. - Charlotte Whitton

What if God’s a woman? Not only am I going to hell, I’ll never know why. - Adam Ferrara

The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs. - Mme de Sevigne

Dogs come when they’re called; cats take a message and get back to you. - Missy Dizick

Wits have one thing in common with bores: they recognize at sight and avoid one another, fearing competition. - Hesketh Pearson

When you’re bored with yourself, marry and be bored with someone else. - David Pryce-Jones

Zsa Zsa Gabor has been married so many times she has rice marks on her face. - Henny Youngman

The man who has cured himself of B.O. and halitosis, has learned French to surprise the waiter, and the saxophone to amuse the company, may find that people still avoid him because they do not like him. - Heywood Brown

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you will see why. - Mignon McLaughlin

My sister’s got asthma. In the middle of an attack she got an obscene phone call. The guy said, ‘Did I call you or did you call me?” - John Mendoza

You know what’s fun to do? Rent an adult movie, take it home, record over it with The Wizard of Oz, then return it so the next guy that rents it is thinking, “When is this Dorothy chick going to get naked?” - Mark Pitta

Whatever else can be said about sex, it cannot be called a dignified performance. - Helen Sawrenson

My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror. - W. Somerset Maugham

Is there anyone out there I haven’t offended? - Mort Sahl

We wouldn’t worry so much about what people thought of us if we knew how seldom they did. - William Lampton

Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others. - Virginia Woolf

In judging others, folks will work overtime for no pay. - Charles Edwin Carruthers

Every effect that one produces gives one an enemy. To be popular one must be a mediocrity. - Oscar Wilde

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality. - Goethe

DECEMBER 2007

The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making ten thousand revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him the ride. - H.L. Mencken

The essence of being human is that, in the brief moment we exist on this spinning planet, we can love some persons and some things, in spite of the fact that time and death will ultimately claim us all. - Rollo May

The golden years of my life are slipping by on stealthy feet at nightfall; there is a footprint in the dark, a bell strikes twelve, and the flying year is gone. - Thomas Wolfe

Are poets imaginative people? Yes, they imagine people like listening to their poems. Is there a lot of money in poetry? Yes. But first you must be completely dead. - Paul Alexander

Who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body? - Virginia Woolf

Life is a sexually transmitted disease - and the mortality rate is 100 percent. - R.D. Laing

A taste for drawing-rooms has spoiled more poets than ever did a taste for gutters. - Thomas Beer

Don’t accept rides from strange men – and remember that all men are as strange as hell. - Robin Morgan

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. - Bible, Hebrews

The sexes are so different. Women go out and say, “Before I go to bed with a man, I want to know who he is as a person.” Guys are thinking, “Let’s get them in bed before they find out who we are.” - Tony Stone

Were it not for the presence of the unwashed and the half-educated, the formless, queer and incomplete, the unreasonable and absurd, the infinite shapes of the delightful human tadpole, the horizon would not wear so wide a grin. - F.M. Colby

A good man often appears gauche simply because he does not take advantage of the myriad mean little chances of making himself look stylish. Preferring truth to form, he is not constantly at work upon the facade of his appearance. - Iris Murdoch

Sears Toughskins – reversible, polyester, ugly pants. Your knees will wear out before the pants do. - Tim Allen

Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it’s open to anybody who owns hideous clothing. - Dave Barry

You might be a redneck if breakfast every morning is interrupted by someone asking, “Anybody seen my teeth?” - Jeff Foxworthy

The dentist told me I grind my teeth at night, so now before I go to sleep I fill my mouth with hot water and coffee beans and set my alarm for 7:30. - Jeff Marder

People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table. - Max Beerbohm

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. - William Dement

The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet’s; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatics’s. - G.K. Chesterton

When we talk to God, we’re praying. When God talks to us we’re schizophrenic. - Lily Tomlin.

Crazy? Once I was crazy. They locked me in a room to die. Die? I don’t want to die. All the mice will get me. Mice? I hate mice. They drive me crazy. Crazy? Once I was crazy. They locked.... - Tom Wright

NOVEMBER 2007

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun. - George Orwell

As Miss America, my goal is to bring peace to the entire world and then to get my own apartment. - Jay Leno

Hell is paved with Good Samaritans. - William M. Holden

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject. - Sir Winston Churchill

Mere human beings cannot afford to be fanatical about anything. Not even about justice or loyalty. The fanatic for justice ends by murdering a million helpless people to clear a space for his law courts. If we are to survive on this planet there must be compromises. - Storm Jameson

Fortunately for themselves and the world, nearly all men are cowards and dare not act on what they believe. Nearly all our disasters come of a few fools having the ‘courage of their conviction.’ - Coventry Patmore (1823-1896) English poet

Sometimes a fool makes a good suggestion. - Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (1636-1722) French poet, critic

I was probably the only revolutionary ever referred to as “cute.” - Abbie Hoffman

The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time. - George Bernard Shaw

Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something. - Aldous Huxley

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it. - Elbert Hubbard

He who hesitates is not only lost, but miles from the next exit. - Unknown

If you want to make enemies, try to change something. - Woodrow Wilson

Tell the truth and run. -Yugoslavian proverb

Most women set out to try to change a man – and when they have changed him, they do not like him. - Marlene Dietrich

I deserve someone who likes me for who I am ... pretending to be. - Arj Barker

One should never know too precisely whom one has married. - Nietzsche

The perfect lover is one who turns into a pizza at 4:00 a.m. - Charles Pierce

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ouch! That felt good! - Karen Elizabeth Gordon

What a dog I’ve got; his favorite bone is my arm. - Rodney Dangerfield

My homeboy Tito was always trying to get me to join a gang. Tito, with two black eyes, arm in a sling, and crutches, saying, “Hey Willie, why don’t you join the gang - you get protection!” - Willie Barcena

Never raise a hand to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected. - Red Buttons

OCTOBER 2007

To be alive at all involves some risk. - Harold MacMillan

I’m opening a pair of underwear the other day and a little piece of paper falls out right on the floor. I pick it up. “Inspected by Mary Lou.” Well thank god, I thought, That last pair burst into flames. Now that Mary Lou’s on the job, I can walk around safe in my underwear. - Margaret Smith

DC Comics is reviving Superman’s old outfit. I never understood Superman’s clothes. We all got used to the fact that he wears his underpants over the leotard. But why do his underpants have a belt on them? - Jay Leno

You might be a redneck if you open beer bottles with your belt buckle. - Jeff Foxworthy

Most men wear their belts low here, there being so many outstanding bellies, some big enough to have names of their own and be formally introduced. - Garrison Keillor

Middle age is when a narrow waist and a broad mind begin to change places. - Glenn Dorenbush

You may marry the man of your dreams, ladies, but 14 years later you’re married to a couch that burps. - Roseanne

There are people who are beautiful in dilapidation, like old houses that were hideous when new. - Loan Pearsall Smith

Men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool. - Jonathan Swift

On her wedding day, a Masai tribes-woman symbolizes her low status by putting dung on her head. American women may have to put up with a lot of bullshit, but at least we don’t have to wear it. - Jackie Wollner

Our order is taken ... by a waitress wearing a cowboy hat, a miniskirt, a fringed vest, boots and red garters. ‘The key to a successful restaurant,’ O’Donoghue says, ‘is dressing girls in degrading clothes.’ - Michael O’Donoghue, quoted by Paul Slansky in Playboy

I once wanted to save the world - now I just want to leave the room with some dignity. -Lotus Weinstock

Any girl can be glamorous; all you have to do is stand still and look stupid. - Hedy Lamarr

If her lips are on fire and she trembles in your arms, forget her. She’s got malaria. - Jackie Kannon

I actually learned about sex watching neighborhood dogs. And it was good. Go ahead and laugh. I think the most important thing I learned was: never let go of the girl’s leg no matter how hard she tries to shake you off. - Steve Martin

My brother-in-law died. He was a karate expert, then joined the army. The first time he saluted, he killed himself. - Henny Youngman

Death is not the end; there remains the litigation. - Ambrose Bierce

Blame someone else and get on with your life. - Alan Woods

To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead. - Samuel Butler

If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments. - Earl Wilson

While other people’s deaths are deeply sad, one’s own is surely a bit of a joke - James Cameron

I don’t believe in an afterlife, although I am bringing a change of underwear. - Woody Allen

SEPTEMBER 2007

Nothing so soothes our vanity as a display of greater vanity in others; it makes us vain, in fact, of our modesty. - Louis Kronenberger

The passion for setting people right is in itself an afflictive disease. - Marianne Moore

When they come downstairs from their Ivory Towers, idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter. - Logan Pearsall Smith

The true portrait of a man is a fusion of what he thinks he is, what others think he is, what he really is and what he tries to be. - Dore Schary

For all right judgment of any man or things it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad. - Thomas Carlyle

It is well, when one is judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality. - Arnold Bennett

The closest anyone ever comes to perfection is on a job application form. - Unknown

It is through art, and through art only, that we can realise our perfection. - Oscar Wilde

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next door neighbour. - Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor. - Eric Hoffer

Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves. - Willa Cather

A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only means of strengthening one’s intelligence is to make up one’s mind about nothing – to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. - John Keats

The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellencies, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations. - Rene Descartes

Art is long, life short; judgment difficult, opportunity fleeting. - Goethe

JULY 2007

Why do men seek honour? Surely in order to confirm the favourable opinion they have formed of themselves. - Aristotle

Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself. - Jane Wagner

In order to preserve your self-respect, it is sometimes necessary to lie and cheat. - Robert Byrne

An ounce of pretention is worth a pound of manure. - Steven E. Clark

Women fake orgasms. But men can fake a whole relationship. - Sharon Stone

I figure the only time I really need a man is about once a month, when it’s time to flip my mattress. - Pamela Yager

The man who waits for the woman to make the first move is the man of his dreams. -Robert Byrne

To achieve the impossible dream, try going to sleep. - Joan Klempner

His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets. - Dorothy Parker

Every time a baseball player grabs his crotch, it makes him spit. That’s why you should never date a baseball player. - Marsha Warfield

On a New York subway you get fined for spitting, but you can throw up for nothing. - Lewis Grizzard

You might be a redneck if you’ve ever been arrested for relieving yourself in an ice machine. - Jeff Foxworthy

Never accept a drink from a urologist. - Erma Bombeck’s father

Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone. - Anthony Burgess

Droll thing life is - that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself - that comes too late - a crop of unextinguishable regrets. - Joseph Conrad

Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself. - Joan Didion

The meaning of life is that it stops. - Franz Kafka

JUNE 2007

Character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life - is the source from which self-respect springs. - Joan Didion

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility. - Albert Schweitzer

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice - that is, until we have stopped saying ‘It got lost,’ and say, ‘I lost it.’ - Sydney Harris (b. 1917)
American Journalist

I was at a friend’s house and his dog took a dump on the rug. My friend turned to the dog and said, “Did you do that?” I felt bad for the dog. So I said, “No, I did it.” So he hit me with a newspaper. - John Mendoza

I don’t understand why everyone says dogs are man’s best friend. Do you really want a best friend who licks his butt before he kisses you? - Vicki Larson

Swallow a toad in the morning if you want to encounter nothing more disgusting the rest of the day. - Nicolas Chamfort

My mom always said men are like linoleum floors. Lay ‘em right and you can walk all over them for 30 years. - Brett Butler

I’ve married a few people I shouldn’t have, but haven’t we all? - Mamie Van Doren

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other. - Ann Landers

I’ve given up reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself. - Oscar Levant

The nice thing about egotists is that they don’t talk about other people. - Lucille S. Harper

Middle age is when you’ve met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else. - Ogden Nash

A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention. - Aldous Huxley

When I was born, I was so surprised I couldn’t talk for a year and a half. - Gracie Allen

MAY 2007

If you’re already in a hole, it’s no use to continue digging. - Roy W. Walters

I can’t believe we still have the Miss America pageant. This is America! Where we’re not supposed to judge
people based on how they look; we’re supposed to judge people based on how much money they make. - Heidi Joyce

I find that ducks’ opinion of me is greatly influenced by whether or not I have bread. - Mitch Hedberg

Men look at me and think I’m going to walk on their backs or something. The only time I’ll walk on your back is if there’s something on the other side of you I want. - Margaret Cho

I told my mother that I was thinking about seeing a therapist. She thought that was a good idea because she heard they made a lot of money. - Darlene Hunt

Fifty something million dollars for a Van Gogh. You know, if there is an afterlife, and if Vincent is up there watching, he’s chopping off the other ear, going “Son of a bitch! When I was alive I couldn’t sell dick!” - Paul Rodriguez

Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. - Oscar Wilde

I am heavily in debt. Right now my goal in life is to be just broke. I wanna get back to zero. Someday, I’m gonna have nothing. I’ll leave it to my kids. “See this? None of this is all yours.” - Tom Ryan

If only God would give me some clear sign. Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank. - Woody Allen

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important. - Bertrand Russell

I have a friend who’s collecting unemployment insurance. This guy has never worked so hard in his life as he has to keep this thing going. He’s down there every week, waiting on the lines and getting interviewed and making up all these lies about looking for jobs. If they had any idea of the effort and energy that he is expending to avoid work, I’m sure they’d give him a raise. - Jerry Seinfeld

You can’t believe how much hard work it is to con people into thinking that you’re productive and busy. Always thinking up things to tell them you’re going to do tomorrow, having to exaggerate every minute of your nowhere day . . . it’s worse than having a job. At least when you’re employed, when people ask about your day you can tell them to shut up and mind their own business. - Drew Carey

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell. - George Bernard Shaw

APRIL 2007

If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man. - Mark Twain

Do unto the other feller the way he’s like to do unto you an’ do it fust. - Edward Noyes Westcott

When you are getting kicked from the rear it means you’re in front. - Fulton Sheen

Men seem to kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn’t seem to crack. Women treat it as glass and it goes to pieces. -Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. - Vladmir Nabokov

Millons who long for immortality don’t know what to do on a rainy Sunday afternoon. - Susan Ertz

Death never takes the wise man by surprise, he is always ready to go. - Jean de la Fontaine

Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead. - Robert Lynd

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die and you to live. Which is the better, only God knows. -Socrates

MARCH 2007

Never accept an invitation from a stranger unless he gives you candy. - Linda Festa

I don’t get no respect. I met the surgeon general. He offered me a cigarette. - Rodney Dangerfield

It’s better to be wanted for murder than not to be wanted at all. - Marty Winch

The other day I heard a commercial where some nincompoop says, “I’ve got three speeding tickets, two auto accidents, and one DUI. What I need is affordable auto insurance.” I’m thinking, “No, what you need is to ride the bus.” - Kelly

The bus scares me. Way too many gross people on the bus. Sixty-five people on the bus and I was the last one on. I felt like calling Unsolved Mysteries. “Yeah, I found everybody.” - Kathleen Madigan

Condoms aren’t completely safe. A friend of mine was wearing one and got hit by a bus. -Bob Rubin

Crossing the street in New York keeps old people young - if they make it. - Andy Rooney

The roads of life are strewn with the wreckage of run-down and half-finished lovers. - Ralph Sockman

Don’t touch a woman’s knee at the dinner table; she has an instinctive knowledge whether a man who touches her knee is caressing her or only wiping his greasy fingers on her stocking. - George Moore

I don’t remember names – I remember faces. You should be introduced by the face. Whatever it is you remember about that person. “Big Nose, Short Pants, come here a second. This is my friend, Hawaiian Shirt, Bad Haircut, Broken Glasses, Food-Stuck-in-His Teeth.” Whatever you remember. - Paul Reiser

I don’t remember anybody’s name. How do you think the “dahling” thing got started? - Zsa Zsa Gabor

“Don’t worry about senility,” my grandfather used to say. “When it hits you, you won’t know it.” - Bill Cosby

I’m a psychic amnesiac. I know in advance what I’ll forget. - Michael McShane

One of the most astounding cases of clairvoyance is that of the noted Greek Psychic Achilles Loudos, Loudos realized that he had unusual powers by the age of ten, when he could lie in bed and, by concentrating, make his father’s false teeth jump out of his mouth. - Woody Allen

I never had a sense of humor. What started me in a theatrical direction was finding at a very early age that I had a talent. I could impersonate chickens. Buk Buk Buk Bacagh. - Jonathan Miller

You might be a redneck if you’ve ever removed a wart with a firearm. - Jeff Foxworthy

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man. - George Bernard Shaw

FEBRUARY 2007

A man in love mistakes a pimple for a dimple. - Japanese proverb

A woman’s most erogenous zone is her mind. - Raquel Welch

I like young girls. Their stories are shorter. - Tom McGuane

My father told me all about the birds and the bees. The liar - I went steady with a woodpecker till I was twenty-one. - Bob Hope

I have trouble telling women my feelings. I think it goes back to the first time I told my mom I loved her. I said, “I love you, Mommy.” And she said, “Slow down, I’m not ready for that kind of commitment. You’re going way too fast.” - Mike Rubin

Nobody loves me like my mother, and she could be jivin’ too. - B.B. King

I keep seeing commercials on how to get your dream job. ‘Call now for information on your dream job.’ Wow! Finally, a chocolate factory run by blonde women! Count me in! - Dave Attell

I used to have a job in the Kotex factory. I thought I was making mattresses for mice. - Ray Scott

I found the ideal girl. Her father is a bookmaker and her brother owns a liquor store. - Joe E. Lewis

A hooker told me she’d do anything I wanted for fifty bucks. I said, “Paint my house.” - Henny Youngman

I once got a job at a ladies’ shoe store for three bucks an hour. My plan was that chicks would be there. High heels, short skirts. But if you ever have a choice between selling shoes to young ladies or giving birth to a porcupine on fire, take my advice and look into that second, less painful opportunity. - Richard Jeni

SHOE SALESMAN: Don’t worry about the shoes. They’ll stretch. WOMAN: Then don’t worry about the check. It’ll bounce. - Rita Rudner

If the shoe fits, get another one just like it. - George Carlin

There was a young lady of Twickenham / Whose shoes were too tight to walk quickin ‘em. / She came back from a walk / Looking whiter than chalk /And took ’em both off and was sick in ‘em. - Oliver Herford

You might be a redneck if you actually wear shoes your dog brought home. - Jeff Foxworthy

Women don’t need conventional tools, we’ll use anything that’s handy. But when pounding a nail, don’t use a shoe – shoes cost $40 a pair. A package of frozen hamburger costs $2. Use the hamburger. - Jeannie Dietz

Life is just like a new pair of shoes, at first you don’t get used to it then later it becomes a part of you. - Janis Vidal

Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance. - Oprah Winfrey