Don't emphasise money if you don't have much; be happy
I was terrible at straight items. When I wrote obituaries, my mother said the only thing I ever got them to do was die in alphabetical order.
I walked out of the movie "Lincoln" and bought the book [of Doris Kearns Goodwin] at the bookstore next door.
Every man gets an opportunity once in a lifetime.
Occasionally, once a speaker is on his feet, it is difficult to get him to sit down. ... If and when he returns to earth, he notices half of the room is paging the other half and a few are playing with the melted candles.
What a crock. I could easily overemphasize the importance of good grammar. For example, I could say: Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America, or Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II.
If a bank fails in China, they behead the men at the top of it that was responsible... If we beheaded all of ours that were responsible for bank failures, we wouldn't have enough people left to bury the heads.
Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.
Men's magazines often feature pictures of naked women. Women's magazines also feature pictures of naked women. This is because the female body is a beautiful work of art, while the male body is lumpy and hairy and should not be seen by the light of day. Men are turned on at the sight of a naked woman's body. Most naked men elicit laughter from women.
It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.
In time of crisis people want to know that you care, more than they care what you know
To people who make moving ads that block the view of websites: Not only will we not buy from you, but we want shrews to eat your liver.
Americans will feed anyone that's not close to them.
There is one thing about Englishmen, they won't fix anything till it's just about totally ruined. You couldn't get the English to fix anything at the start. No! They like to sit and watch it grow worse. Then, when it just looks like the whole thing has gone up Salt Creek, why, the English jump in and rescue it.
Never slap a man who's chewing tobacco. Never kick a cow chip on a hot day. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
I don't know when pepper mills in a restaurant got to be right behind frankincense and myrrh in prominence. It used to be in a little jar that sat next to the salt on the table and everyone passed it around, sneezed, and it was no big deal.
I don't dare start thinking in the morning. I don't dare start thinking in the morning. If I thought thoughts in bed, Them thoughts would bust my head-- So I don't dare start thinking in the morning.
John Dorschner, one of our staff writers here at Tropic magazine at The Miami Herald, who is a good friend of mine and an excellent journalist, but a raving liberal, wrote a story about a group that periodically pops up saying that they're going to start their own country or start their own planet or go back to their original planet, or whatever. They were going to "create a libertarian society" on a floating platform in the Caribbean somewhere. I know there's never going to be a country on a floating anything, but if they want to talk about it, that's great.
The only way to get a thing done is to start to do it, then keep on doing it, and finally you'll finish it.
Politics pretty quiet over the week-end. Democrats are attacking and the Republicans are defending. All the Democrats have to do is promise "what they would do if they got in." But the Republicans have to promise "what they would do" and then explain why they haven't already "done it".
Do not spit gum in the drinking fountains.
When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.
It's almost worth the Great Depression to learn how little our big men know.
When the history of guilt is written, parents who refuse their children money will be right up there in the Top Ten.
... Once you're safely in the mall, you should tie your children to you with ropes so the other shoppers won't try to buy them. Holiday shoppers have been whipped into a frenzy by months of holiday advertisements, and they will buy anything small enough to stuff into a shopping bag. If your children object to being tied, threaten to take them to see Santa Claus; that ought to shut them up.
The central point of this final chapter is that - follow my logic carefully here - unless you die, you will continue to get older. (It's insights like this that separate the professional book author from the person with a real job.)
It's very slow for me to create humor. It takes me a long time to write a humor piece. It takes days.
Before going on a diet you should consult your doctor, or at least send him some money.
I am proud of the fact there is not a human being that I have got it in for. I never met a man I didn't like.
America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to the select few.
I asked you, baby, If you understood- You told me that you didn't, But you thought you would.
Summer was made to give you a taste of what hell is like. Winter was made for landladies to charge high rents and keep cold radiators and make a fortune off of poor tenants.
We have plenty of Confidence in this country, but we are a little short of good men to place our Confidence in.
I bet that if you actually read the entire vastness of the U.S. Tax Code, you'd find at least one sex scene . . .
I've come to realize that you're going to get criticized no matter what. Somebody will always hate what you write, especially if you write humor for a fairly broad audience. Somebody will always find it not funny and declare you're not funny anymore. And sometimes people are just crazy.
I have paid as much as $300 a night to throw up into a sink shaped like a seashell.
My writing has been largely concerned with the depicting of Negro life in America.
I guess the negative thing that happens to me is that I'm old now. They said there was a generation I was too young for and now some will say there's probably 10 generations I'm too old for. They'll say, isn't he dead or retired or whatever? Or it just becomes fashionable to say "Oh he's not funny anymore," which, I don't know, maybe to them I'm not. I'm more likely to hear that now than I am to hear that I'm unacceptably risqué.
Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be.
It's easy being a humorist when you've got the whole government working for you.
A country can get more real joy out of just hollering for their freedom than they can if they get it.
It looks like the financial giants of the world have bungled as much as the diplomats and politicians. This would be a great time in the world for some man to come along that knew something.
And so by the fifteenth century, on October 8, the Europeans were looking for a new place to try to get to, and they came up with a new concept: the West.
In the South Pacific, because of their size, mosquitoes are required to file flight plans.
Good kids are like sunsets. We take them for granted.
Farmers, get out your sense of humor. Congress meets to relieve you again next week.
On prohibiting anybody from learning anything: Why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth.
When should a college athlete turn pro? Not until he has earned all he can in college as an amateur.
My point here, young couples, is that baby-having is extremely serious business, and you probably don't have the vaguest idea what you're doing, as is evidenced by the fact that you're reading a very sloppy and poorly researched book.
I was trampled to death by a man who believed his luggage would be the first piece off. If he were an experienced traveler, he would know that the first piece of luggage belongs to no one. It's just a dummy suitcase to give everyone hope.
The only real diplomacy ever performed by a diplomat is in deceiving their own people after their dumbness has got them into a war.
Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.
An optimist is someone who gets treed by a lion but enjoys the scenery.
The Japanese tend to be far more co-operative and docile and group-oriented. It would be easier to get the entire population of Tokyo to wear matching outfits than to get any two randomly selected Americans to agree on pizza toppings.
Reading... a vacation for the mind.
It would be hard to conceive of any activity more useless than stamp collecting.
Nobody is excused from the excellence trend. Babies are not excused. Starting right after they get out of the womb, modern babies are exposed to instructional flashcards designed to make them the best babies they can possibly be, so they can get into today's competitive preschools. Your eighties baby sees so many flashcards that he never gets an unobstructed view of his parents' faces. As an adult, he'll carry around a little wallet card that says "7x9=63," because it will remind him of mother.
Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.
Life is a big sea full of many fish. I let down my nets and pulled. I'm still pulling.
The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.
