American Humorist Quotes

Mark Twain

Ben Stein

John Hodgman

Gelett Burgess

Josh Billings

Seba Smith

Robert Henry Newell

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

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

There are actual monsters in the world, but when my kids ask I pretend like there aren't.

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

There will be more words written on Twitter in the next two years than contained in all books ever printed.

Christian Rudder

"Hi," I said. She came over, licked my hand discreetly, allowed herself to be scratched for a time, chased her tail in a dignified circle, lay down again. I remember thinking: "There are times God puts a choice in front of you." I often had such thoughts back then. We took the dog.

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

Robert Henry Newell

People who can least afford to pay rent, pay rent. People who can most afford to pay rent, build up equity.

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.

The pen is mightier than the sword. The case for prescriptions rather than surgery.

My mother tries to explain that I need support and that I'm just going through a period of adjustment. "Like puberty," she says.

According to child-experts—and every child is an expert on something—the function of a parent is to provide information, entertainment, transportation, and spot cash on demand.

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.

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.

[Geologist] A scientist whose life is less sedentary than sedimentary.

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.

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

As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.

You want to know what I make? I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor and an A-minus feel like a slap in the face.

I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

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

James Montgomery Bailey

If you have not seen it, FOOTBALL is a game in which men shove one another back and forth for no reason. They do not choose how, when, or whom they shove. They are doing this in order to please one angry old man on the sidelines. This old man is called the 'coach' or 'yelling surrogate' dad who will never be happy.

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