Humor e Ironia

Ce Corps qui s’appellait, & qui s’appelle encor, le saint Empire Romain, n’était en aucune maniére, ni saint, ni Romain, ni Empire .

If this is the best of all possible worlds, whatare the others like?

Il meglio, è l’inimico del bene .

I’m all for bringing back the birch, but onlybetween consenting adults.

[ Of Richard Nixon :] He turned being a BigLoser into a perfect triumph by managing to lose the presidency in a way bigger and more original than anyone else had ever lost it before.

He will lie even when it is inconvenient, the sign of the true artist.

Twenty-four years ago I was strangely handsome; in San Francisco in the rainy season I was often mistaken for fair weather.

I have no respect for a man who can spell a word only one way.

A well known American writer said once that, while everybody talked about the weather, nobody seemed to do anything about it.

A lawyer one day spoke to him [Mark Twain] with his hands in his pockets. “Is it not a curious sight to see a lawyer with his hands in his own pockets?” remarked the humorist in his quiet drawl.

[ To his wife Olivia, who had repeated his swearing :] You got the words right, Livy, but you don’t know the tune.

[Man] has imagined a heaven, and has leftentirely out of it the supremest of all hisdelights, the one ecstasy that stands first andforemost in the heart of every individual ofhis race—and of ours—sexual intercourse!It is as if a lost and perishing person in aroasting desert should be told by a rescuer hemight choose and have all longed for thingsbut one, and he should elect to leave outwater!

To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was tautology.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

“Classic.” A book which people praise and don’t read.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.

Dying man couldn’t make up his mind which place to go to—both have their advantages, “heaven for climate, hell for company!”

In the matter of intellect the ant must bea strangely overrated bird. During manysummers, now, I have watched him, whenI ought to have been in better business, andI have not yet come across a living ant thatseemed to have any more sense than a deadone. I refer to the ordinary ant, of course; I have had no experience of those wonderfulSwiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies, hold slaves, and dispute about religion.

The widder eats by a bell; she goes to bed by abell; she gits up by a bell—everything’s so awful reg’lar a body can’t stand it.

He knows all about art, but he doesn’t knowwhat he likes.

Some people swallow the universe like a pill; they travel on through the world, like smiling images pushed from behind. For God’s sakegive me the young man who has brains enough to make a fool of himself!

[ Of Ernest Hemingway :] Anyone who marries three girls from St. Louis hasn’t learned much.

[ Of Ezra Pound :] A village explainer, excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.

[ Of Archibald Primrose, Fifth Earl of Rosebery :] [A] man who never missed a chance of missing an opportunity.