19th-century Humorist Quotes

Mark Twain

Jaroslav Hašek

Jerome K. Jerome

Gelett Burgess

Josh Billings

Seba Smith

Robert Henry Newell

Simplified spelling is all right, but, like chastity, you can carry it too far.

We mingle in society not so much to meet others as to escape ourselves.

The world is full of corruption, and deceit, and deviltry chock full of it.

James Montgomery Bailey

And somewhere from the dim ages of history the truth dawned upon Europe that the morrow would obliterate the plans of today.

Jaroslav Hašek

A new life begins for us with every second. Let us go forward joyously to meet it. We must press on, whether we will or not, and we shall walk better with our eyes before us than with them ever cast behind.

Jerome K. Jerome

Without bigots, eccentrics, cranks and heretics the world would not progress.

The self-assured porcupine, endearingly grotesque, waddles up the road in broad daylight. He looks as if he had slept in his rumpled spiky clothes, and he probably has.

We seem to exist in a hazardous time, Driftin' along here through space; Nobody knows just when we begun, Or how fur we've gone in the race.

Benjamin Franklin King, Jr.

As a national emblem, it is significant of our higher cause, the cause of a superior race, and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity, and barbarism. Another merit in the new flag is, that it bears no resemblance to the now infamous banner of the Yankee vandals.

William Tappan Thompson

The cold winds sweeping the mountain-height,
And pathless was the dreary wild,
And 'mid the cheerless hours of night
A mother wandered with her child:
As through the drifting snows she press'd,
The babe was sleeping on her breast.

America has no north, no south, no east, no west. The sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains, the compass just points up and down, and we can laugh now at the absurd notion of there being a north and a south. We are one and undivided.

Surely as cometh the Winter, I know
There are Spring violets under the snow.

Robert Henry Newell

The Moral is that gardeners pine, Whene'er no pods adorn the vine. Of all sad words experience gleans, The saddest are: It might have beans.

Guy Wetmore Carryl