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Quotes about comedy

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He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.
George Eliot1819–1880Adam Bede (1859), Chapter 33
- Clever Jabs
Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.
George Eliot1819–1880Middlemarch (1871–1872), Book I: Miss Brooke, Chapter IIn context
Mr. Aldous Huxley, who is perhaps one of those people who have to perpetrate thirty bad novels before producing a good one, has a certain natural — but little developed — aptitude for seriousness.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965“The Contemporary English Novelist”, La Nouvelle Revue française (1 May 1927)
- Clever Jabs
- Writing
Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939)
- Animals
Christmas is an awfulness that compares favorably with the great London plague and fire of 1665-66. No one escapes the feelings of mortal dejection, inadequacy, frustration, loneliness, guilt and pity.
Harlan Ellison1934–2018“No Offense Intended, But Fuck Xmas!” (1972) The Harlan Ellison Hornbook
- Christmas
My son first wanted to go to Stanford, which I thought was O.K. The weather is pretty good, and it’s a fairly short drive to the beach. But it wouldn’t be as good as let’s say, Pepperdine, which is in Malibu. And he said, ‘Dad, what about the education?’ I said, ‘Clearly, I failed as a parent.’
Larry Ellisonborn 1944
If I were reincarnated, I’d want to come back a buzzard. Nothing hates him or envies him or wants him or needs him. He is never bothered or in danger, and he can eat anything.
William Faulkner1897–1962Interview with Jean Stein, The Paris Review, No. 12 (Spring 1956)
- Animals
This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: There’s a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!
Richard Feynman1918–1988Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985), Part 5: “The World of One Physicist”, “Is Electricity Fire?”, p. 283
Hell, if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel prize.
Richard Feynman1918–1988statement (c. 1965), quoted in “An irreverent best-seller by Nobel laureate Richard Feynman gives nerds a good name”, People Magazine (22 July 1985)
- Science
Never give a sucker an even break.
W. C. Fields1880–1946According to Collier’s (28 November 1925), Fields is said to have used this line as early as 1923 in the musical comedy play Poppy
Some contemptible scoundrel stole the cork from my lunch …
W. C. Fields1880–1946You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (1939)
I slept with some nerd. I hope it was George [Lucas]. I took too many drugs to remember.
Carrie Fisher1956–2016In a Vanity Fair interview when asked how she got the part in Star Wars
- Movies
One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.
Gustave Flaubert1821–1880Letters to Madame Louise Colet, 22 October 1846
- Art
- Clever Jabs
Charles’s conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone’s ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought.
Gustave Flaubert1821–1880Madame Bovary (1857), Part I, Chapter SevenIn context
- Clever Jabs
- Talking
I vowed I wouldn’t get married until someone gave me one good reason to. No one ever did⁠—but I got married anyway.
Jane Fondaborn 1937Said to Redbook Magazine, quoted by Harold V. Cohen, At Random, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 22 July 1969
- Marriage