Famous Quotes & Sayings

Mark Twain

It is no harm to be an ass, if one is content to bray and not kick.

Mark Twain

I have attended operas, whenever I could not help it, for fourteen years now; I am sure I know of no agony comparable to the listening to an unfamiliar opera.

Mark Twain

...there isn't often anything in Wagner opera that one would call by such a violent name as acting.

Mark Twain

The humorist who invented trial by jury played a colossal practical joke upon the world, but since we have the system we ought to try and respect it. A thing which is not thoroughly easy to do, when we reflect that by command of the law a criminal juror must be an intellectual vacuum, attached to a melting heart and perfectly macaronian bowels of compassion.

Muhammad Ali

I'll tell you how I'd like to be remembered: As a black man who won the heavyweight title - Who has humorous and who never looked down on those who looked up to him - A man who stood for freedom, justice and equality - And I wouldn't even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.

Oscar Wilde

Lawyers have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakably innocent.

Louis Kronenberger

Humor simultaneously wounds and heals, indicts and pardons, diminishes and enlarges; it constitutes inner growth at the expense of outer gain, and those who possess and honestly practice it make themselves more through a willingness to make themselves less.

Liza Minnelli

You see, that's another thing that my parents gave me: an enormously great sense of humor.

Mark Twain

The inability to forget is far more devastating than the inability to remember.

Mark Twain

Humor, to be comprehensible to anybody, must be built upon a foundation with which he is familiar. If he can't see the foundation the superstructure is to him merely a freak -- like the Flatiron building without any visible means of support -- something that ought to be arrested.

Mark Twain

The true and lasting genius of humour does not drag you thus to boxes labelled 'pathos,' 'humour,' and show you all the mechanism of the inimitable puppets that are going to perform. How I used to laugh at Simon Tapperwit, and the Wellers, and a host more! But I can't do it now somehow; and time, it seems to me, is the true test of humour. It must be antiseptic.

Mark Twain

Probably there is an imperceptible touch of something permanent that one feels instinctively to adhere to true humour, whereas wit may be the mere conversational shooting up of "smartness"--a bright feather, to be blown into space the second after it is launched...Wit seems to be counted a very poor relation to Humour....Humour is never artificial.

Mark Twain

I pity the fellow who has to create a dialect or paraphrase the dictionary to get laughs. I can't spell, but I have never stooped to spell cat with a 'k' to get at your funny bone. I love a drink, but I never encouraged drunkenness by harping on its alleged funny side.

Mark Twain

So you see, the quality of humor is not a personal or a national monopoly. It's as free as salvation, and, I am afraid, far more widely distributed. But it has its value, I think. The hard and sordid things of life are too hard and too sordid and too cruel for us to know and touch them year after year without some mitigating influence, some kindly veil to draw over them, from time to time, to blur the craggy outlines, and make the thorns less sharp and the cruelties less malignant.

Mark Twain

Humor must be one of the chief attributes of God. Plants and animals that are distinctly humorous in form and characteristics are God's jokes.

Mark Twain

Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.

Mark Twain

The funniest things are the forbidden.

Mark Twain

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.

Miguel de Unamuno

A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.

Ned Rorem

Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.

Priscilla Presley

As a person, he was wonderful. He really was a great person. He was full of life. He had a great sense of humor. Very talented, of course, but very caring to his parents. There was a very endearing quality about Elvis.

Kevin Myers

It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance.

Mark Twain

If you can't get a compliment any other way, pay yourself one.

Mark Twain

Humor is the good natured side of a truth.

Mark Twain

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Mark Twain

There ought to be a room in every house to swear in. It's dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.

Mark Twain

Diligence is a good thing, but taking things easy is much more restful.

Mark Twain

Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.

Oscar Wilde

Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.

Oscar Wilde

I don't at all like knowing what people say of me behind my back. It makes me far too conceited.

Patrick Rothfuss

We need time to relax and enjoy ourselves too, no matter how dark the story. The occasional humorous moment helps with that. That's one of the things that Joss Whedon excels at in his storytelling.

Park Chan-wook

If you are watching my films and wondering, am I missing humorous speak because I'm not Korean? Am I missing out? You don't have to worry, because you're only missing probably about a few cents worth out of your ticket price.

Park Chan-wook

In my creative films, if there was something, some humorous moment that is lost to a non-Korean speaking audience, I'll be very sad.