Tag Archives: humor

The Simpsons

It was the show that brought me back to television after swearing off the medium for over twenty years, so I tend to assume that this reading on “The Simpsons” and its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension are high-interest materials. These days, I find, adolescents prefer the somewhat coarser, but often just as funny “Family Guy.”

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

The Algonquin Wits: Robert Benchley Shows Early Promise at Harvard

“While a student at Harvard, Benchley came across a final exam question that read: ‘Discuss the arbitration of the international fisheries problem in respect to hatcheries protocol and trawl procedure as it affects (a) the point of view of the United States, and (b) the point of view of Great Britain.’

Benchley answered with a mixture of directness and evasion: ‘I know nothing about the point of view of Great Britain in the arbitration of the international fisheries problem, and nothing about the point of view of the United States. Therefore, I shall discuss the question from the point of view of the fish.’”

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

Write It Right: Authoress

“Authoress. A needless word—as needless as ‘poetess.’”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

Muhammad Ali on Maintaining His Busy Schedule

“Not only do I knock ‘em out, I pick the round.”

Muhammad Ali

Quoted in N.Y. Times, 9 December 1962

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

The Algonquin Wits: Robert Benchley on His Finances

“In 1930, Benchley commented on his reputation as a bad businessman, a weakness he readily admitted: ‘Of course, if I wanted to, I might point out that that out of a possible $5,000 which I have made since I left school I have had $3,000 worth of good food (all of which has gone into making bone and muscle and some nice fat), $1,500 worth of theater tickets, and $500 worth of candy; whereas many of my business friends have simply had $5,000 worth of whatever that stock was which got so yellow along about last November.’”

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

George Jean Nathan on Patriotism

“Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.”

George Jean Nathan

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

Memo to Groucho Viz Television from Goodman Ace

“[Of television) “We call it a medium because nothing’s well done.”

Goodman Ace, in a letter to Groucho Marx

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

The Devil’s Dictionary: Apologize

“Apologize, vi. To lay the foundation for a future offense.”

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

The Algonquin Wits: Alexander Woollcott to Eleanor Roosevelt

“Woollcott enjoyed a close relationship with Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and occasionally visited them at the White House. In a letter to Mrs. Roosevelt, the purpose of which was to solicit the First Lady’s hospitality for an approaching vacation, he wrote: ‘I would like to come for a week or so. If you haven’t room for me, there are plenty of other places for me to go. I prefer yours.’”

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

Rotten Rejections: A Confederacy of Dunces

“A southern writer named John Kennedy Toole wrote a comic novel about life in New Orleans called A Confederacy of Dunces. It was so relentlessly rejected by publishers that he killed himself. That was in 1969. His mother refused to give up on the book. She sent it out and got it back, rejected, over and over again. At last she won the patronage of Walker Percy, who got it accepted by the Louisiana State University Press, and in 1980 it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.”

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