Humor e Ironia

as some savage tribes determine the power of muskets by their recoil; that being considered best which fairly prostrates the purchaser.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish.

There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit.

As hand-to-hand combat has gradually disappeared . . . Americans have turned to the automobile to satisfy their love of direct aggression.

A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system.

It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.

The greatest fault of a penetrating wit is to go beyond the mark.

There is no possibility of being witty without a little ill-nature; the malice in a good thing is the barb that makes it stick.

Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.

Wit is like caviar; it should be savored in small elegant proportions, and not spread about like marmalade.

Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop Than when we soar.

I prefer an accommodating vice to an obstinate virtue.

Every stink that fights the ventilator thinks it is Don Quixote.

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop.

The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little—or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.

A satirist is a man profoundly revolted by the society in which he lives. His rage takes the form of wit, ridicule, mockery.

The difference between satire and humor is that the satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive— often to release him again for another chance.

People can be induced to swallow anything, provided it is sufficiently seasoned with praise.

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. There is just too much fraternizing with the enemy.

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilized music in the world.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

implying in a subtle, complimentary way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.