Tag Archives: humor

Catherine Aird on Serving as a Good Example

Posted on March 5, 2021 | Leave a comment

“If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.”

Catherine Aird

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Dick Gregory on the Moral and Intellectual Certainty of the White Race

Posted on February 25, 2021 | Leave a comment

“You gotta say this for the white race—its self-confidence knows no bounds. Who else could go to a small island in the South Pacific where there’s no poverty, no crime, no unemployment, no war, and no worry—and call it a ‘primitive society.’”

Dick Gregory, From the Back of the Bus (1962)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige on a Balanced Social Life

Posted on February 12, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Go very lightly on the vices, such as carrying on in society. The social ramble ain’t restful.”

“How to Keep Young,” Colliers, 13 June 1953

Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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Richard Pryor on Marriage

Posted on February 3, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Marriage is really tough because you have to deal with feelings and lawyers.”

Richard Pryor, quoted in Robert Byrne, The Third and Possibly the Best 637 Things Anybody Ever Said (1986)

Excerpted from: Schapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

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The Algonquin Wits: Dorothy Parker on Fidelity

Posted on January 28, 2021 | Leave a comment

“One noon hour at the Round Table, a lady author was congratulating herself on here marital success and extolling the virtues of her mate. ‘I’ve kept him for seven years,” she concluded with pride. The Round Table group did not share the wife’s opinion of her spouse, however, considering him an extremely dull fellow. Mrs. Parker answered the lady’s remark: ‘Don’t worry, if you keep him long enough he’ll come back in style.”

Excerpted from: Drennan, Robert E., ed. The Algonquin Wits. New York: Kensington, 1985.

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The Devil’s Dictionary: Libertarian

Posted on January 19, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Libertarian, n. One who is compelled by the evidence to believe in free-will, and whose will is therefore free to reject that doctrine.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. 

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Walter Page Hines on Woodrow Wilson

Posted on January 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

“The air currents of the world never ventilated his mind.”

Walter Page Hines on Woodrow Wilson

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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The Devil’s Dictionary: Abstruseness

Posted on January 6, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Abstruseness, n. The bait of a bare hook.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. 

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Rotten Reviews: Castle to Castle by Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Posted on December 16, 2020 | Leave a comment

“…quite a tedious book.”

John Weightman, New York Review of Books 

Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.    

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Denis Diderot on Moral Precepts

Posted on December 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

“There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.”

Denis Diderot

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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