All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standin...g on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A sense of humour keen enough to show a man his own absurdities as well as those of other people will keep a man from the commissi...on of all sins, or nearly all, save those that are worth committing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We used chamber-pots a good deal.... My mother ... loved to repeat: "When did the queen reign over China?" This whimsical and harm...less scatological pun was my first introduction to the wonderful world of verbal transformations, and also a first perception that a joke need not be funny to give pleasure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think my wife ... is sure of my loyalty.... She knows how hard I work. She knows how tired I am every night. She knows I have fi...fty or sixty reporters watching me day and night.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Remember that the wit, humour, and jokes of most mixed companies are local. They thrive in that particular soil, but will not ofte...n bear transplanting.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I could heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is ...the characteristic of folly and ill manners; it is the manner in which the mob express their silly joy at silly things; and they call it being merry. In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter. True wit, or sense, never yet made any body laugh; they are above it. They please the mind, and give a cheerfulness to the countenance. But it is low buffoonery, or silly accidents, that always excite laughter; and that is what people of sense and breeding should show themselves above.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »