Humor e Ironia

Over the piano was printed a notice: Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.

[ Flower Belle Lee, played by Mae West, replying to judge’s question, “Are you trying to show contempt for the court?” :] No, I’m doing my best to hide it.

[ After Randolph Churchill’s lung was removedand found not to have malignancies :] A typicaltriumph of modern science to find the onlypart of Randolph that was not malignant andremove it.

Any one who has been to an English publicschool will always feel comparatively at home in prison.

The good news may be that Nature is phasing out the white man, but the bad news is that’swho She thinks we all are.

A seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the way God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a granfalloon . Other examples of granfalloons are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows—and any nation, anytime, anywhere.

I want my attorney, my tailor, my valets, andeven my wife to believe in God, and I fancy that then I’ll be robbed and cuckolded less.

Le sens commun est fort rare .

Toutes les histoires anciennes, comme le disait un de nos beaux esprits, ne sont que des fables convenues .

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

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

Il meglio, è l’inimico del bene .

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

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

[ 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

[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.

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

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