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Quotes about comedy

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The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one – particularly if he plays golf, which he usually does.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Introduction to The New Generation (1930)
- Family
They say rather than cursing the darkness, one should light a candle. They don’t mention anything about cursing a lack of candles.
George Carlin1937–2008When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)
I suspect that there are just two sorts of lawyers: those who spend their efforts making life easy for other people⁠—and parasites.
Robert A. Heinlein1907–1988Friday (1982), Chapter 24 (p. 257)
- Clever Jabs
- Laws
Has it ever struck you that there’s a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there’s a statue inside every block of stone?
George Orwell1903–1950Coming Up for Air, Part 1, Ch. 3
I hope you have not been leading a double life, pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.
Oscar Wilde1854–1900The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), Act IIIn context
Then there was a maiden speech, so inaudible, that it was doubted whether, after all, the young orator really did lose his virginity.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881The Young Duke (1831), Book I, Chapter 6.
- Talking
There is no such thing as preaching patience into people, unless the sermon is so long that they have to practise it while they hear.
Henry Ward Beecher1813–1887Life Thoughts (1858), p. 61
- Religion
My visions of the future are always pretty much standard issue. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer… and there are flying cars.
Joss Whedonborn 1964TV Guide (27 December – 2 January 2004), and Foreword to Fray
Truth is, I’ve always been selling out. The difference is that in the past, I looked like I had integrity because there were no buyers.
Lily Tomlinborn 1939Modern Scream (1975)
Critics must have been created on the seventh day. Because if God had created them on the first day, what on earth would they have done?
Goncourt brothersMarch 8, 1863; translation from Robert Baldick Dinner at Magny’s (London: Victor Gollancz, 1971) p. 77.
- Clever Jabs
Let him go abroad to a distant country; let him go to some place where he is not known. Don’t let him go to the devil, where he is known.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Life of Johnson (Boswell) (1773)
When our first parents were driven out of Paradise, Adam is believed to have remarked to Eve: “My dear, we live in an age of transition.”
William Ralph Inge1860–1954Assessments and Anticipations (1929), p. 261
- Change
Self-pity? I see no moral objections to it, the smell drives people away, but that’s a practical objection, and occasionally an advantage.
E. M. Forster1879–1970Commonplace Book (1985), p. 50
It is as absurd to expect members of philosophy departments to be philosophers as it is to expect members of art departments to be artists.
Leo Strauss1899–1973“What Is Liberal Education?”, in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968), p. 7
- Clever Jabs
- Philosophy
He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.
Sydney Smith1771–1845Lady Holland’s Memoir (1855), Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 310
- Clever Jabs