This list features some of our favourite jokes. Some of these have appeared on the PSG Jokeline and some have not. Many were contributed by our friends, most of whom have wisely exercised their right to remain anonymous. Please contribute any more clean jokes that you know. See the contact page for details of how to submit jokes.
Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember. -- Oscar Levant
Men are amused by almost any idiot thing -- that is why professional ice hockey is so popular -- so buying gifts for them is easy. But you should never buy them clothes. Men believe they already have all the clothes they will ever need, and new ones make them nervous. For example, your average man has 84 ties, but he wears, at most, only three of them. He has learned, through humiliating trial and error, that if he wears any of the other 81 ties, his wife will probably laugh at him ("You're not going to wear that tie with that suit, are you ?"). So he has narrowed it down to three safe ties, and has gone several years without being laughed at. If you give him a new tie, he will pretend to like it, but deep inside he will hate you.
Be careful of reading health books, you might die of a misprint. -- Mark Twain
Resisting temptation is easier when you think you'll probably get another chance later on.
There's only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I'll get married again. -- Clint Eastwood
Fudd's First Law of Opposition: Push something hard enough and it will fall over.
The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep. -- W. C. Fields
It is generally agreed that "Hello" is an appropriate greeting because
if you entered a room and said "Goodbye," it could confuse a lot of
people.
-- Dolph Sharp, I'm O.K., You're Not So Hot
There is no substitute for good manners, except, perhaps, fast reflexes.
The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues. -- Elizabeth Taylor
Politician, n.: From the Greek "poly" ("many") and the French "tete" ("head" or "face," as in "tete-a-tete": head to head or face to face). Hence "polytetien", a person of two or more faces. -- Martin Pitt
Murphy's Law of Research: Enough research will tend to support your theory.
Bug, n.: An aspect of a computer program which exists because the programmer was thinking about Jumbo Jacks or stock options when s/he wrote the program.
Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied: "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this ? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka !" (I found it !) but "That's funny ..." -- Isaac Asimov
Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.
I don't believe in astrology. But then I'm an Aquarius, and Aquarians don't believe in astrology. -- James R. F. Quirk
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of
Western Civilization ?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
All you have to do to see the accuracy of my thesis is look around you. Look, in particular, at the people who, like you, are making average incomes for doing average jobs -- bank vice presidents, insurance salesman, auditors, secretaries of defence -- and you'll realise they all dress the same way, essentially the way the mannequins in the Sears menswear department dress. Now look at the real successes, the people who make a lot more money than you -- Elton John, Captain Kangaroo, anybody from Saudi Arabia, Big Bird, and so on. They all dress funny -- and they all succeed. Are you catching on ? -- Dave Barry, How to Dress for Real Success
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness. -- Beckett
Furious activity is no substitute for understanding. -- H. H. Williams
After [Benjamin] Franklin came a herd of Electrical Pioneers whose names have become part of our electrical terminology: Myron Volt, Mary Louise Amp, James Watt, Bob Transformer, etc. These pioneers conducted many important electrical experiments. For example, in 1780 Luigi Galvani discovered (this is the truth) that when he attached two different kinds of metal to the leg of a frog, an electrical current developed and the frog's leg kicked, even though it was no longer attached to the frog, which was dead anyway. Galvani's discovery led to enormous advances in the field of amphibian medicine. Today, skilled veterinary surgeons can take a frog that has been seriously injured or killed, implant pieces of metal in its muscles, and watch it hop back into the pond just like a normal frog, except for the fact that it sinks like a stone. -- Dave Barry, What is Electricity ?
Love is a word that is constantly heard,
Hate is a word that is not.
Love, I am told, is more precious than gold.
Love, I have read, is hot.
But hate is the verb that to me is superb,
And Love but a drug on the mart.
Any kiddie in school can love like a fool,
But Hating, my boy, is an Art.
-- Ogden Nash
If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow enobled and none dare criticise it.
There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted. -- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour
MacDonald has the gift on compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thoughts. -- Winston Churchill
Call on G-d, but row away from the rocks. -- Indian proverb
A lady with one of her ears applied
To an open keyhole heard, inside,
Two female gossips in converse free --
The subject engaging them was she.
"I think", said one, "and my husband thinks
That she's a prying, inquisitive minx !"
As soon as no more of it she could hear
The lady, indignant, removed her ear.
"I will not stay," she said with a pout,
"To hear my character lied about !"
-- Gopete Sherany
Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff. -- Peter de Vries
There are some goyisha names that just about guarantee that someone isn't Jewish. For example, you'll never meet a Jew named Johnson or Wright or Jones or Sinclair or Ricks or Stevenson or Reid or Larsen or Jenks. But some goyisha names just about guarantee that every other person you meet with that name will be Jewish. Why is this ?
Who knows ? Learned rabbis have pondered this question for centuries and have failed to come up with an answer, and you think you can find one ? Get serious. You don't even understand why it's forbidden to eat crab -- fresh cold crab with mayonnaise -- or lobster -- soft tender morsels of lobster dipped in melted butter. You don't even understand a simple thing like that, and yet you hope to discover why there are more Jews named Miller than Katz ? Fat Chance.
-- Arthur Naiman, Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish
Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.
The trouble with being punctual is that people think you have nothing more important to do.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. -- Mark Twain
O give me a home,
Where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard
A discouraging word,
'Cause what can an antelope say ?
But the greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison, who was a brilliant inventor despite the fact that he had little formal education and lived in New Jersey. Edison's first major invention in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. But Edison's greatest achievement came in 1879, when he invented the electric company. Edison's design was a brilliant adaptation of the simple electrical circuit: the electric company sends electricity through a wire to a customer, then immediately gets the electricity back through another wire, then (this is the brilliant part) sends it right back to the customer again.
This means that an electric company can sell a customer the same batch of electricity thousands of times a day and never get caught, since very few customers take the time to examine their electricity closely. In fact the last year any new electricity was generated in the United States was 1937; the electric companies have been merely re-selling it ever since, which is why they have so much free time to apply for rate increases.
-- Dave Barry, What is Electricity ?
For those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like. -- Abraham Lincoln
A limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean,
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.
A computer, to print out a fact,
Will divide, multiply, and subtract.
But this output can be
No more than debris,
If the input was short of exact.
-- Gigo
Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, and a dark side, and it holds the universe together ... -- Carl Zwanzig
Lassie looked brilliant, in part because the farm family she lived with was made up of idiots. Remember ? One of them was always getting pinned under the tractor, and Lassie was always rushing back to the farmhouse to alert the other ones. She'd whimper and tug at their sleeves, and they'd always waste precious minutes saying things: "Do you think something's wrong ? Do you think she wants us to follow her ? What is it, girl ?", etc., as if this had never happened before, instead of every week. What with all the time these people spent pinned under the tractor, I don't see how they managed to grow any crops whatsoever. They probably got by on federal crop supports, which Lassie filed the applications for. -- Dave Barry
I wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence. There's a knob called "brightness", but it doesn't work. -- Gallagher
The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
Which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
In such a fix to be so fertile.
-- Ogden Nash
Brady's First Law of Problem Solving: When confronted by a difficult problem, you can solve it more easily by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger have handled this ?"
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know. -- Mark Twain
As the poet said, "Only G-d can make a tree" -- probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on. -- Woody Allen
The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep. -- Woody Allen
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean. -- G. K. Chesterton
Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child -- if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender. -- W. C. Fields
I cannot overemphasise the importance of good grammar.
What a crock. I could easily overemphasise the importance of good grammar. For example, I could say: "Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America," or "Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II."
-- Dave Barry, An Utterly Absurd Look at Grammar
The men sat sipping their tea in silence. After a while the klutz said, "Life is like a bowl of sour cream."
"Like a bowl of sour cream ?" asked the other. "Why ?"
"How should I know ? What am I, a philosopher ?"
It's a damn poor mind that can only think of one way to spell a word. -- Andrew Jackson
But scientists, who ought to know
Assure us that it must be so.
Oh, let us never, never doubt
What nobody is sure about.
-- Hilaire Belloc
Tact is the ability to tell a man he has an open mind when he has a hole in his head.
Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable. -- Plato
Text processing has made it possible to right-justify any idea, even one which cannot be justified on any other grounds. -- J. Finnegan, USC.
Breast Feeding should not be attempted by fathers with hairy chests, since they can make the baby sneeze and give it wind. -- Mike Harding, The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac
Speaking of love, one problem that recurs more and more frequently these days, in books and plays and movies, is the inability of people to communicate with the people they love; Husbands and wives who can't communicate, children who can't communicate with their parents, and so on. And the characters in these books and plays and so on (and in real life, I might add) spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to Shut Up ! -- Tom Lehrer, That Was the Year that Was
He's the kind of guy, that, well, if you were ever in a jam he'd be there ... with two slices of bread and some chunky peanut butter.
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased. -- Kehlog Albran, The Profit
The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on. It is never any use to oneself. -- Oscar Wilde
All science is either physics or stamp collecting. -- E. Rutherford
People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them that Benjamin Franklin said it first.
In a forest a fox bumps into a little rabbit, and says, "Hi, junior, what are you up to ?" "I'm writing a dissertation on how rabbits eat foxes," said the rabbit. "Come now, friend rabbit, you know that's impossible !" "Well, follow me and I'll show you." They both go into the rabbit's dwelling and after a while the rabbit emerges with a satisfied expression on his face. Comes along a wolf. "Hello, what are we doing these days ?" "I'm writing the second chapter of my thesis, on how rabbits devour wolves." "Are you crazy ? Where is your academic honesty ?" "Come with me and I'll show you." As before, the rabbit comes out with a satisfied look on his face and a diploma in his paw. Finally, the camera pans into the rabbit's cave and, as everybody should have guessed by now, we see a mean-looking, huge lion sitting next to some bloody and furry remnants of the wolf and the fox. The moral: It's not the contents of your thesis that are important -- it's your PhD advisor that really counts.
Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. -- Groucho Marx
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
A baby is G-d's opinion that the world should go on. -- Carl Sandburg
A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths. -- Steve Wright
A Mexican newspaper reports that bored Royal Air Force pilots stationed on the Falkland Islands have devised what they consider a marvelous new game. Noting that the local penguins are fascinated by airplanes, the pilots search out a beach where the birds are gathered and fly slowly along it at the water's edge. Perhaps ten thousand penguins turn their heads in unison watching the planes go by, and when the pilots turn around and fly back, the birds turn their heads in the opposite direction, like spectators at a slow-motion tennis match. Then, the paper reports, "The pilots fly out to sea and directly to the penguin colony and overfly it. Heads go up, up, up, and ten thousand penguins fall over gently onto their backs." -- Audobon Society Magazine
A tautology is a thing which is tautological.
According to Arkansas law, Section 4761, Pope's Digest: "No person shall be permitted under any pretext whatever, to come nearer than fifty feet of any door or window of any polling room, from the opening of the polls until the completion of the count and the certification of the returns."
Don't be humble ... you're not that great. -- Golda Meir
What I think is that the F-word is basically just a convenient nasty-sounding word that we tend to use when we would really like to come up with a terrifically witty insult, the kind Winston Churchill always came up with when enormous women asked him stupid questions at parties. -- Dave Barry, $#$%%%#%%%!%%%&@%%%@!
Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that offers whiter teeth and fresher breath. -- Dave Barry, Kids Today: They Don't Know Dum Diddly Do
Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an art. -- Charles McCabe
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house. -- Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love
Anyone who uses the phrase "easy as taking candy from a baby" has never tried taking candy from a baby. -- Robin Hood
Aphorism, n.: A concise, clever statement.
Afterism, n.: A concise, clever statement you don't think of
until too late.
-- James Alexander Thom
"As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life -- so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls." -- Matt Cartmill
Arithmetic is being able to count up to twenty without taking off your shoes. -- Mickey Mouse
Apathy is not the problem, it's the solution
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. -- Oscar Wilde
At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer.
Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's "St. Matthew Passion" on a ukelele.
Your home electrical system is basically a bunch of wires that bring electricity into your home and take if back out before it has a chance to kill you. This is called a "circuit". The most common home electrical problem is when the circuit is broken by a "circuit breaker"; this causes the electricity to back up in one of the wires until it bursts out of an outlet in the form of sparks, which can damage your carpet. The best way to avoid broken circuits is to change your fuses regularly.
Another common problem is that the lights flicker. This sometimes means that your electrical system is inadequate, but more often it means that your home is possessed by demons, in which case you'll need to get a caulking gun and some caulking. If you're not sure whether your house is possessed, see "The Amityville Horror", a fine documentary film based on an actual book. Or call in a licensed electrician, who is trained to spot the signs of demonic possession, such as blood coming down the stairs, enormous cats on the dinette table, etc.
- Dave Barry, The Taming of the Screw
Electricity is actually made up of extremely tiny particles, called electrons, that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking. Electrons travel at the speed of light, which in most American homes is 110 volts per hour. This is very fast. In the time it has taken you to read this sentence so far, an electron could have traveled all the way from San Francisco to Hackensack, New Jersey, although G-d alone knows why it would want to.
The five main kinds of electricity are alternating current, direct current, lightning, static, and European. Most American homes have alternating current, which means that the electricity goes in one direction for a while, then goes in the other direction. This prevents harmful electron buildup in the wires.
-- Dave Barry, The Taming of the Screw
"G-d gives burdens; also shoulders" - Jimmy Carter cited this Jewish saying in his concession speech at the end of the 1980 election. At least he said it was a Jewish saying; I can't find it anywhere. I'm sure he's telling the truth though; why would he lie about a thing like that ? -- Arthur Naiman, Every Goy's Guide to Yiddish
G-d may be subtle, but He isn't plain mean. -- Albert Einstein
Gosh that takes me back ... or is it forward ? That's the trouble with time travel, you never can tell. -- Doctor Who Androids of Tara
Churchill's Commentary on Man: Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -- Mark Twain
Dear Miss Manners: My home economics teacher says that one must never place one's elbows on the table. However, I have read that one elbow, in between courses, is all right. Which is correct ?
Gentle Reader: For the purpose of answering examinations in your home economics class, your teacher is correct. Catching on to this principle of education may be of even greater importance to you now than learning correct current table manners, vital as Miss Manners believes that is.
Conscious is when you are aware of something and conscience is when you wish you weren't.
Dear Mister Language Person: What is the purpose of the apostrophe ?
Answer: The apostrophe is used mainly in hand-lettered small business signs to alert the reader than an "s" is coming up at the end of a word, as in We do not except personal cheque's, or Not responsible for any item's. Another important grammar concept to bear in mind when creating hand-lettered small business signs is that you should put quotation marks around random words for decoration, as in "Try" our hot dog's, or even Try "our" hot dog's.
-- Dave Barry, Tips for Writer's
"Deep" is a word like "theory" or "semantic" -- it implies all sorts of marvelous things. It's one thing to be able to say "I've got a theory", quite another to say "I've got a semantic theory", but, ah, those who can claim "I've got a deep semantic theory", they are truly blessed. -- Randy Davis
I took a course in speed reading and was able to read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It's about Russia. -- Woody Allen
First, a few words about tools.
Basically, a tool is an object that enables you to take advantage of the laws of physics and mechanics in such a way that you can seriously injure yourself. Today, people tend to take tools for granted. If you're ever walking down the street and you notice some people who look particularly smug, the odds are that they are taking tools for granted. If I were you, I'd walk right up and smack them in the face.
-- Dave Barry, The Taming of the Screw
Here is a simple experiment that will teach you an important electrical lesson: On a cool, dry day, scuff your feet along a carpet, then reach your hand into a friend's mouth and touch one of his dental fillings. Did you notice how your friend twitched violently and cried out in pain? This teaches us that electricity can be a very powerful force, but we must never use it to hurt others unless we need to learn an important electrical lesson.
It also teaches us how an electrical circuit works. When you scuffed your feet, you picked up batches of "electrons", which are very small objects that carpet manufacturers weave into carpets so they will attract dirt. The electrons travel through your bloodstream and collect in your finger, where they form a spark that leaps to your friend's filling, then travels down to his feet and back into the carpet, thus completing the circuit.
Amazing Electronic Fact: If you scuffed your feet long enough without touching anything, you would build up so many electrons that your finger would explode ! But this is nothing to worry about unless you have carpeting.
-- Dave Barry, What is Electricity ?
Notes for a ballet, "The Spell": ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman -- unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is careful not to make any poultry jokes ...
-- Woody Allen
If you're like most homeowners, you're afraid that many repairs around your home are too difficult to tackle. So, when your furnace explodes, you call in a so-called professional to fix it. The "professional" arrives in a truck with lettering on the sides and deposits a large quantity of tools and two assistants who spend the better part of the week in your basement whacking objects at random with heavy wrenches, after which the "professional" returns and gives you a bill for slightly more money than it would cost you to run a successful campaign for the U.S. Senate.
And that's why you've decided to start doing things yourself. You figure, "If those guys can fix my furnace, then so can I. How difficult can it be ?"
Very difficult. In fact, most home projects are impossible, which is why you should do them yourself. There is no point in paying other people to screw things up when you can easily screw them up yourself for far less money. This article can help you.
-- Dave Barry, The Taming of the Screw
Plumbing is one of the easier of do-it-yourself activities, requiring only a few simple tools and a willingness to stick your arm into a clogged toilet. In fact, you can solve many home plumbing problems, such as annoying faucet drip, merely by turning up the radio. But before we get into specific techniques, let's look at how plumbing works.
A plumbing system is very much like your electrical system, except that instead of electricity, it has water, and instead of wires, it has pipes, and instead of radios and waffle irons, it has faucets and toilets. So the truth is that your plumbing systems is nothing at all like your electrical system, which is good, because electricity can kill you.
-- Dave Barry, The Taming of the Screw
Today's scientific question is: What in the world is electricity ? And where does it go after it leaves the toaster ? -- Dave Barry, What is Electricity ?
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" - bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez - tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. -- Mark Twain
... A solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity. -- Mark Twain
"... an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite often picturesque liar." -- Mark Twain
Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. -- Mark Twain
I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up. -- Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. -- Mark Twain
In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
-- Mark Twain
It is by the fortune of G-d that, in this country, we have three benefits: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the wisdom never to use either. -- Mark Twain
The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner. -- Mark Twain
The man who sets out to carry a cat by its tail learns something that will always be useful and which never will grow dim or doubtful. -- Mark Twain.
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice. -- Mark Twain
Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him until he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
-- Mark Twain Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
The surest protection against temptation is cowardice. -- Mark Twain
The birds are singing, the flowers are budding, and it is time for Miss Manners to tell young lovers to stop necking in public.
It's not that Miss Manners is immune to romance. Miss Manners has been known to squeeze a gentleman's arm while being helped over a curb, and, in her wild youth, even to press a dainty slipper against a foot or two under the dinner table. Miss Manners also believes that the sight of people strolling hand in hand or arm in arm or arm in hand dresses up a city considerably more than the more familiar sight of people shaking umbrellas at one another. What Miss Manners objects to is the kind of activity that frightens the horses on the street ...
The polite thing to do has always been to address people as they wish to be addressed, to treat them in a way they think dignified. But it is equally important to accept and tolerate different standards of courtesy, not expecting everyone else to adapt to one's own preferences. Only then can we hope to restore the insult to its proper social function of expressing true distaste.
-- Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behaviour
Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don't think.
Despising machines to a man,
The Luddites joined up with the Klan,
And ride out by night
In a sheeting of white
To lynch all the robots they can.
-- C. M. and G. A. Maxson
Etymology, n.: Some early etymological scholars came up with derivations that were hard for the public to believe. The term "etymology" was formed from the Latin "etus" (eaten), the root "mal" (bad), and "logy" (study of). It meant "the study of things that are hard to swallow." -- Mike Kellen
Frisbeetarianism, n.: The belief that when you die, your soul goes up the on roof and gets stuck.
No, "Eureka" is Greek for "This bath is too hot." -- Dr. Who
"Well, that was a piece of cake, eh K-9 ?"
"Piece of cake, Master ? Radial slice of baked confection ... coefficient of relevance to Key of Time: zero."
-- Dr. Who
It's kind of fun to do the impossible -- Walt Disney
He played the king as if afraid someone else would play the ace. -- John Mason Brown, drama critic
He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes ...
Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
Here is the fact of the week, maybe even the fact of the month. According to probably reliable sources, the Coca-Cola people are experiencing severe marketing anxiety in China. The words "Coca-Cola" translate into Chinese as either (depending on the inflection) "wax-fattened mare" or "bite the wax tadpole".
Bite the wax tadpole. There is a sort of rough justice, is there not ? The trouble with this fact, as lovely as it is, is that it's hard to get a whole column out of it. I'd like to teach the world to bite a wax tadpole. Coke -- it's the real wax-fattened mare. Not bad, but broad satiric vistas do not open up.
-- John Carrol, San Francisco Chronicle
I am not sure what this is, but an `F' would only dignify it. -- English Professor
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top. -- English Professor, Ohio University
I can't understand why a person will take a year or two to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars. -- Fred Allen
changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights instead! Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is standing still ... -- Steven Wright
I could dance with you till the cows come home. On second thought, I'd rather dance with the cows till you come home. -- Groucho Marx
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same G-d who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use. -- Galileo Galilei
My mother loved children -- she would have given anything if I had been one. -- Groucho Marx
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend: and inside a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx
I for one cannot protest the recent M.T.A. fare hike and the accompanying promises that this would in no way improve service. For the transit system, as it now operates, has hidden advantages that can't be measured in monetary terms.
Personally, I feel that it is well worth 75 cents or even $1 to have that unimpeachable excuse whenever I am late to anything: "I came by subway." Those four words have such magic in them that if Godot should someday show up and mumble them, any audience would instantly understand his long delay.
I get up each morning, gather my wits.
Pick up the paper, read the obits.
If I'm not there I know I'm not dead.
So I eat a good breakfast and go back to bed.
Oh, how do I know my youth is all spent ?
My get-up-and-go has got-up-and-went.
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin,
And think of the places my get-up has been.
-- Pete Seeger
I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it. -- Groucho Marx
I have great faith in fools -- self confidence my friends call it. -- Edgar Allan Poe
I often quote myself; it adds spice to my conversation. -- G. B. Shaw
I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realised who was telling me this. -- Emo Phillips
I went to a job interview the other day, the guy asked me if I had any questions , I said yes, just one, if you're in a car traveling at the speed of light and you turn your headlights on, does anything happen ?
He said he couldn't answer that, I told him sorry, but I couldn't work for him then. -- Steven Wright
i'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart. -- e. e. cummings
I'm returning this note to you, instead of your paper, because it (your paper) presently occupies the bottom of my bird cage. -- English Professor, Providence College
If you want to know what G-d thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. -- Dorothy Parker
In Africa some of the native tribes have a custom of beating the ground with clubs and uttering spine chilling cries. Anthropologists call this a form of primitive self-expression. In America we call it golf.
... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs. -- Robert Firth
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper. -- Rod Serling
It was a book to kill time for those who liked it better dead.
It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to have to paint it. -- Steven Wright
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one. -- Phil White
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Last night, I came home and realised that everything in my apartment had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate. I told this to my friend -- he said, "Do I know you ?" -- Steven Wright
Life is like a simile.
Candy
Is dandy
But liquor
Is quicker.
-- Ogden Nash
Some primal termite knocked on wood.
And tasted it, and found it good.
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlour floor today.
-- Ogden Nash
Nice boy, but about as sharp as a sack of wet mice. -- Foghorn Leghorn
That boy's about as sharp as a pound of wet liver -- Foghorn Leghorn
No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in that kind of
paper.
-- Mike Royko on the Chicago Sun-Times after it was
taken over by Rupert Murdoch
Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none. -- Shakespeare
Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love. -- Charlie Brown
Of course fast cars and alcohol don't mix. Everyone knows that fast cars aren't soluble in alcohol ...
Old soldiers never die. Young ones do.
Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. -- Nikita Khrushchev
Pope Goestheveezl was the shortest reigning pope in the history of the Church, reigning for two hours and six minutes on 1 April 1866. The white smoke had hardly faded into the blue of the Vatican skies before it dawned on the assembled multitudes in St. Peter's Square that his name had hilarious possibilities. The crowds fell about, helpless with laughter, singing
Half a pound of tuppenny rice
Half a pound of treacle
That's the way the chimney smokes
Pope Goestheveezl
The square was finally cleared by armed carabineri with tears of laughter streaming down their faces. The event set a record for hilarious civic functions, smashing the previous record set when Baron Hans Neizant Bompzidaize was elected Landburgher of Koln in 1653.
-- Mike Harding, The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac
Q: What's a light-year ?
A: One-third less calories than a regular year.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
(Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.)
Reporter (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western
Civilization ?
Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.
The older I grow, the less important the comma becomes. Let the reader catch his own breath. -- Elizabeth Clarkson Zwart
The Psblurtex is an 18-inch long anaconda that hides in the gentlemen's outfitting departments of Amazonian stores and is often bought by mistake since its colours are those of the London Reform Club. Once tied around its victim's neck, it strangles him gently and then claims the insurance before running off to Germany where it lives in hiding. -- Mike Harding, The Armchair Anarchist's Almanac
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy ... neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
When you have shot and killed a man you have in some measure clarified your attitude toward him. You have given a definite answer to a definite problem. For better or worse you have acted decisively. In a way, the next move is up to him. -- R. A. Lafferty
When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite. -- Winston Churchill, On formal declarations of war
The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. Instead of altering their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views ... which can be very uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering. -- Doctor Who, Face of Evil
There once was a girl named Irene
Who lived on distilled kerosene
But she started absorbin'
A new hydrocarbon
And since then has never benzene.
There once was an old man from Esser,
Who's knowledge grew lesser and lesser.
It at last grew so small,
He knew nothing at all,
And now he's a College Professor.
There was a young man who said "G-d,
I find it exceedingly odd,
That the willow oak tree
Continues to be,
When there's no one about in the Quad."
"Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd,
For I'm always about in the Quad;
And that's why the tree,
Continues to be,"
Signed "Yours faithfully, G-d."
Vila: I think I have just made the biggest mistake of my life.
Orac: It is unlikely. I would predict there are far greater mistakes
waiting to be made by someone with your obvious talent for it.
We've sent a man to the moon, and that's 29,000 miles away. The center of the Earth is only 4,000 miles away. You could drive that in a week, but for some reason nobody's ever done it. -- Andy Rooney
You can't teach people to be lazy - either they have it, or they don't. -- Dagwood Bumstead
Wouldn't the sentence 'I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign' have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips ?
How happy is the moron
He doesn't give a damn
I wish I was a moron
Good grief, perhaps I am
He looked like a man who knew that the answer was blowing in the wind, but had forgotten what the question was. Alan Plater, The Beiderbecke Tapes
Fantastic web page (c) 1996 PSG Inc Plc etc etc