Tag Archives: humor

Robert Frost on Our Financial Institutions

Posted on August 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

“A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back again when it begins to rain.”

Robert Frost

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Rotten Reviews: The Human Comedy

Posted on July 25, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Alas! Interested though one is in the attempt, it remains to say that the result is not very happy…there is scarcely a trace of Saroyan’s characteristic charm of manner, and indeed his art of inspired artlessness now falls extremely flat. This, in short, is an excessively simple and very, very sentimental little concoction.”

Times Literary Supplement

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

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George Santayana on Advertising

Posted on July 11, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.”

George Santayana

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Rotten Reviews: Anton Chekhov

Posted on July 7, 2017 | Leave a comment

“If you were to ask me what Uncle Vanya is about, I would say about as much as I can take.”

Robert Garland, Journal American

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

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Clarence Darrow on History

Posted on July 5, 2017 | Leave a comment

“History repeats itself; that’s one of the things that’s wrong with history.”

Clarence Darrow

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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George Bernard Shaw on the Dismal Science and Its Practitioners

Posted on July 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

“If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.”

George Bernard Shaw

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Mark Twain on Civil Liberties

Posted on July 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

“In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either.”

Mark Twain

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Ambrose Bierce on History

Posted on June 27, 2017 | Leave a comment

“History n. An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.”

Ambrose Bierce

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Paul Fussell on Your Alma Mater

Posted on June 21, 2017 | Leave a comment

“Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.”

Paul Fussell

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Portable Curmudgeon. New York: Plume, 1992.

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Rotten Reviews: The Deerslayer

Posted on June 20, 2017 | Leave a comment

“In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.”

Mark Twain How to Tell A Story and Other Essays 1897

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

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