Humorists Quotes - Page 7

• Walking companions, like heroes, are difficult to pluck out of the crowd of acquaintances. Good dispositions, ready wit, friendly conversation serve well enough by the fireside but they prove insufficient in the field. For there you need transcendentalists-nothing less; you need poets, sages, humorists and natural philosophers.

  Brooks Atkinson

  Hero, Friendly, Sage

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• The audience is invisible and that's good. Somewhere my voice is drifting through a swine barn and the sound of it seems to perk up the sows' appetite. Or a lady is listening on headphones as she jogs along a beach, running to my cadence. Or a dog sits in front of the radio, head cocked, and the sibilants excite him in some mysterious way. A dog's humorist, that's me.

  Garrison Keillor

  Running, Dog, Beach

  Source: jonathanlowe.wordpress.com

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• You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  People, Laughing, Tolerance

  "The Summing Up". Book by W. Somerset Maugham, 1938.

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• I don't want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I've never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn't do it. A "smartcracker" they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

  Dorothy Parker

  Distance, Sick, Unhappy

  Quoted in Paris Review, Summer 1956

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• I think that you are only obliged to be a humorist from the age of 18 until you turn 30. Past the age of 30 I don't think there is any obligation to be clever at all.

  Garrison Keillor

  Clever, Thinking, Past

  "Humor has to surprise us, otherwise it isn't funny". Interview with George Plimpton, blankonblank.org. November 28, 1994.

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• Great humorists are great insulters.

  Dick Cavett

  Dick Cavett (2010). “Talk Show: Confrontations, Pointed Commentary, and Off-Screen Secrets”, p.192, Macmillan

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• I think that all comics or humorists, or whatever we are, ask questions. That's what we're supposed to do. But I not only ask the questions, I offer solutions.

  Roseanne Barr

  Thinking, Offers, Solutions

  "Q&A: Roseanne Barr, on marijuana, the CIA, and how she is, in fact, the president". Interview with Eric Spitznagel, www.esquire.com. April 25, 2013.

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• And as Craig Brown - he's an English humorist, not a comedian but he's just a writer and humorist - I'm quite a fan of. I heard him talking in a rather similar way on the radio. He said I'm the sort of person - I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was rather interesting - he said I'm the sort of person that can be reduced to tears in an empty church and feel like I'm the CEO of the Devil's organization in a full one, and I tend to feel like that as well. I love empty churches and going into them looking around, but I'm not a churchgoer at all.

  Nick Lowe

  Talking, Organization, Interesting

  "Nick Lowe Brings His 'Quality Holiday Revue' To America". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. December 22, 2014.

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• Humorists are always pessimists. They're reactionaries: because they see that every golden cloud has a black lining.

  Christina Stead

  Clouds, Black, Golden

  Christina Stead (2012). “I'm Dying Laughing: The Humourist”, p.28, Open Road Media

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• PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called trousers by the enlightened and pants by the unworthy.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Adults, Males, Pants

  Ambrose Bierce (2012). “The Devil's Dictionary”, p.91, Courier Corporation

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• I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration.

  David Sedaris

  Writing, Tools, Use

  "David Sedaris: 'If you tell a funny story at the dinner table in front of 10 people, nine will laugh, and one will say: that's not true. I've always hated that person'". Interview With Decca Aitkenhead, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2009.

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• The American humorist sat on his couch suffering thoughts of her, trying to figure out how to win back her affections, wondering what had happened between them or just tumbling head-over-heels down into romantic oblivion where the image of a remembered kiss provokes bottomless despair and makes death seem like the right idea.He experienced the basics of love ended.

  Richard Brautigan

  Love, Kissing, Winning

  Richard Brautigan (1976). “Sombrero Fallout”, Simon & Schuster

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• I'm a classic example of all humorists - only funny when I'm working.

  Peter Sellers

  Example, Classic

  "I Am Your Father: What Every Heart Needs to Know". Book by Mark Stibbe, 2010.

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• This is not an easy time for humorists because the government is far funnier than we are.

  Art Buchwald

  Time, Government, Easy

  1987 Speech to international meeting of satirists and cartoonists. Reported in the NewYork Times, 28 Jun.

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• It is the will of God that we must have critics and missionaries and congressmen and humorists, and we must bear the burden

  Mark Twain

  God, Bears, Burden

  Mark Twain, Harriet Elinor Smith (2012). “Autobiography of Mark Twain: Reader's Edition”, p.201, Univ of California Press

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• Humorists of the 'mere' sort cannot survive. Humor is only a fragrance, a decoration.

  Mark Twain

  Humor, Fragrance, Decoration

  Mark Twain (2004). “The Portable Mark Twain”, p.13, Penguin

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• A heartwarming tale of Christmas past that's chock full of all the wit and hilarity we admire in America's favorite humorist--Mark Twain. Carlo DeVito brings us back one hundred years to a magical time in Twain's family life, revealing a house that's brimming with love and laughter, as well as the profound heartbreaks of life. A Mark Twain Christmas only deepens our understanding and respect for both the man and his work.

  Gilbert King

  Laughter, Past, Men

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• I go in for what is known in the trade as 'light writing' and those who do that - humorists they are sometimes called - are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Writing, Light, Sometimes

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• Neither conservatives nor humorists believe man is good. But left-wingers do.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Believe, Men, Left

  P. J. O'Rourke (2016). “Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of . . .”, p.7, Pan Macmillan

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• How will I be remembered? As a technician or artist? As a humorist or a visionary?

  Norman Rockwell

  Artist, Visionaries, Remembered

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• I did not intend to write a funny book, at first. I did not know I was a humorist. I have never been sure about it. In the middle ages, I should probably have gone about preaching and got myself burnt or hanged.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Book, Writing, Age

  Jerome K. Jerome (2010). “Three Men in a Boat”, p.6, Giunti Editore

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• In this land of unlimited opportunity, a place where, to paraphrase Woody Allen, any man or woman can realize greatness as a patient or as a doctor, we have only one commercial American filmmaker who consistently speaks with his own voice. That is Woody Allen, gag writer, musician, humorist, philosopher, playwright, stand-up comic, film star, film writer and film director.

  Vincent Canby

  Stars, Opportunity, Greatness

  The New York Times, July 17, 1983.

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• Today the outlandish becomes routine overnight. The humorist is trying to say that it's still outlandish.

  William Zinsser

  Trying, Routine, Today

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• I remember what J. Golden Kimball said when he came down to the stake where I was presiding. I introduced him as the 'Will Rogers' of the Church, and told the congregation that he was a great humorist. When he got up he said, 'You know, I think the Lord himself likes a joke. If he didn't, he wouldn't have made some of you folks!

  Hugh B. Brown

  Thinking, Church, Roger

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• HUMORIST, n. A plague that would have softened down the hoar austerity of Pharaoh's heart and persuaded him to dismiss Israel with his best wishes, cat-quick.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Heart, Cat, Israel

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.114, University of Georgia Press

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