O. Henry on comedy

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.

History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.

It ain’t the roads we take; it’s what’s inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.

Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Those are my principles. If you don’t like them I have others.

Groucho Marx1890–1977

A guy could have one major limb lying on the ground a full ten feet from the rest of his body, and he’d claim it was ‘just a sprain’.

Dave Barryborn 1947

• Dave Barry