The Book of Great Funny One-Liners (8 page)
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Authors: Frank Allen
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You’re someone who would make a perfect stranger. Start being one now.
First left, go along the corridor. You’ll see a door marked Gentlemen, but don’t let that deter you.
Anonymous
He was the sort of man who would throw a drowning man both ends of a rope.
Arthur Baer, American boxer
If only these old walls could talk, how boring they would be.
Robert Benchley, American humorist
His mind is so open that the wind whistles through it.
Heywood Broun, American journalist
He knew everything about literature except how to enjoy it.
Joseph Heller, American novelist
All modern men are descended from wormlike creatures, but it shows more on some people.
Will Cuppy, American humorist
Yeah, she’s beautiful, but you can’t find her IQ with a flashlight.
From
The Greatest American Hero
To call him grey would be an insult to porridge.
Nicholas Fairburn on Scottish judge Lord Hope
Behrman—forgotten but not gone.
George S. Kaufman on the fellow American playwright who would outlive him by 12 years
Such time as he can spare from the adornment of his person he devotes to the neglect of his duties.
Samuel Johnson, English writer and lexicographer
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright and wit
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
W.C. Fields, American actor
I have been friendly with Brendan Behan only in the hope that I would be free from the horror of his acquaintanceship.
British writer Patrick Kavanaugh on the Irish dramatist
He looked at me as if I was a side dish he hadn’t ordered.
Ring Lardner, American sports columnist
Egotism is the anaesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity.
Frank Leahy, American football coach
Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean.
Scout Finch in Harper Lee’s
To Kill a Mockingbird
I am going to memorise your name and throw my head away.
Oscar Levant, American musician and wit
Under my flabby exterior lies an enormous lack of character.
Oscar Levant, American musician and wit
You’re taking psychology? Are you like the example for the class or something?
Natalie Mark, American comedian
Don’t look now, but there’s one too many in this room and I think it’s you.
Groucho Marx, American actor and comedian
I regard you with an indifference bordering on aversion.
Robert Louis Stevenson, Scottish writer
I would not want to put him in charge of snake control in Ireland.
American politician Eugene McCarthy on an anonymous rival. [Note: Ireland has no snakes].
Failure has gone to his head.
Wilson Mizner, American playwright
He knows so little and knows it so fluently.
Ellen Glasgow, American writer
He had almost every quality you could wish to have, except that he had the average brain of an average English gentleman. He lacked that little extra cubic centimetre which produces genius.
British admiral and statesman Louis Mountbatten on Earl Alexander of Tunis
Why don’t you bore a hole in yourself and let the sap run out?
Groucho Marx, American actor and comedian
He was humble for a fortnight, but nobody noticed.
Katherine Whitehorn, British journalist
He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.
Joseph Heller, American writer
His bounty and generosity always creates more horses asses’ than there are horses to attach them to.
Thomas Perry, American writer
From the silence that prevails I conclude that Lauderdale has been telling a joke.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, British playwright
Some folks are wise and some are otherwise.
Tobias George Smollett, Scottish writer
I could dance with you until the cows come home. On second thought I’d rather dance with the cows until you come home.
Groucho Marx, American actor and comedian
He is an old bore. Even the grave yawns for him.
Herbert Beerbohm Tree, British actor
British painter William Morris spent a lot of time in the various restaurants in the Eiffel Tower, so much so that one day one of the waiters said to him: ‘You’re obviously impressed with the tower, monsieur.’ To which Morris replied:
Impressed? The only reason I’m in here is that it’s the one place in Paris where I can avoid seeing this damned thing.
Get the facts straight first and then you can distort them as much as you please.
He is useless on top of the ground; he aught to be under it, inspiring the cabbages.
He was a solemn, unsmiling, sanctimonious old iceberg who looked like he was waiting for a vacancy in the Trinity.
His ignorance covers the world like a blanket, and there’s scarcely a hole in it anywhere.
I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight.
Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?
Mark Twain, American writer
He is so mean, he won’t let his little baby have more than one measle at a time.
Eugene Field, American writer
He was trying to save both his faces.
John Gunther, American journalist
He is a fine friend. He stabs you in the front.
Leonard Louis Levinson, American humorist
A healthy male adult bore consumes each year one and a half times his own weight in other people’s patience.
John Updike, American novelist
What were you when you were alive?
Henny Youngman, American comedian
An extraordinary man! There’s only one art he doesn’t understand—the art of dialogue.
Voltaire’s comment after being subjected to Denis Diderot’s incessant monologue
It is said of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never put dots over her ‘i’s, to save ink.
Horace Walpole, British writer
He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.
Raymond Chandler, American writer
Why be disagreeable, when with a little effort you can be impossible.
Douglas Woodruff, British editor
No shirt is too young to be stuffed.
Larry Zolf on fellow Canadian politician Joe Clark
An exchange between a pompous and self-absorbed young man and British politician John Wilkes:
Young man: I was born between twelve and one o’clock on 1st January. Isn’t that strange?
Wilkes: No not at all. You could only have been conceived on 1st April.
I think he’s the most over-rated human being since Judas Iscariot won the
AD
31 Best Disciple Competition.
If your parents got a divorce would they still be brother and sister?
You’re obviously from the shallow end of the gene pool.
You’re like one of those ‘idiot savants,’ except without the ‘savant’ part.
Anonymous
She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake.
British aristocrat and socialite Margot Asquith
He is like a mule, with neither pride of ancestry nor hope of progeny.
Robert G. Ingersoll
At his most detestable, he was no hypocrite, but rather his own worst enemy, prey to a moral blindness which was instinctive rather than reasoned. How he would have hated himself had he been able to view some of his acts objectively...
American writer Kenneth W. Porter on capitalist John Jacob Astor
He hasn’t a single redeeming vice.
Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright and wit
He had all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
Winston Churchill, British prime minister
He has not one single redeeming defect.
Benjamin Disraeli on fellow British prime minister William Gladstone
She was like a sinking ship firing on the rescuers.
Alexander Woollcott, American critic
He is as good as his word—and his word is no good.
Seamus MacManus, Irish humorist
He must have killed a lot of men to have made so much money.
Moliere, French playwright
What has a tiny brain, a big mouth, and an opinion nobody cares about? You!
From the television sitcom
Murphy Brown
A wit with dunces, and a dunce with wits.
Alexander Pope on a fellow British writer
He’s the only man I ever knew who had rubber pockets so he could steal soup.
You’re a mouse studying to be a rat.
Wilson Mizner, American playwright
He was so crooked, you could have used his spine for a safety pin.
Dorothy L. Sayers, British writer
It’s a pity that Marie Stope’s mother had not thought of birth control.
Muriel Spark, Scottish writer
An exchange between George Bernard Shaw and a fellow guest at a dinner party. He asked the lady if she would go to bed with a man for five hundred pounds.
Guest: That would depend on how good-looking he was.
Shaw: Would you do it for ten bob then?
Guest: What do you take me for?
Shaw: We have already settled that. All we are now doing is agreeing on the price.
On another occasion a society hostess invited Shaw to a dinner stating that she would be ‘at home’ on a certain date.
‘G.B.S also,’ he replied.
Shaw could n’t even be nice to people who paid him a compliment. A particularly beautiful woman once suggested that they have a child together.
‘Imagine a child with my body and your brain!’ she said.
‘Yes, but what if it had my body and your brain?’ he countered.
You take the lies out of him, and he’ll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he’ll disappear.
Mark Twain, American writer
The food was so tasteless you could eat a meal of it and belch and not be reminded of anything.
Red Foxx, American comedian
He is alive, but only in the sense that he cannot be legally buried.
Geoffrey Madan
I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all of the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.
American oil baron and billionaire John D. Rockefeller, who did in fact seem to spend every waking moment making money.
It would have been twice as bad if they had sent the dog.
British prime minister Harold MacMillan commenting on the huge crowds in London gathered to honour the first man in space Yuri Gagarin.
Visitors: Good morning, we are Jehovah’s witnesses.
George Bernard Shaw: Good morning. I’m Jehovah. How are we doing?
I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.
Groucho Marx, American actor and comedian
If only he’d wash his neck, I’d wring it.
British academic John Sparrow on a colleague
Poor old Mortlake, who had only two topics of conversation, his gout and his wife. I never could quite make out which of the two he was talking about.
Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright and wit
Exchange between Winston Churchill, who fell asleep on a train with his flies undone, and a female passenger who enters his compartment.
Passenger: Sir! Your penis is sticking out!
Churchill: Madam, you flatter yourself. It is merely hanging out.
An exchange between British actress Beatrice Lillie and an anonymous woman at a dinner table. The woman asked Lillie if the pearls on her necklace were real. When Lillie replied ‘yes’, the woman reached across the table, grabbed the pearls and tried to run them across her teeth.
Woman: The pearls are not real! They’re cultured.
Lillie: How would you know, with false teeth?
He was a bit like a corkscrew. Twisted, cold and sharp.
Kate Cruise O’Brien, Irish writer
Bumpers
I used to be schizophrenic, but we’re OK now. Allow me to introduce my selves.
A day without sunshine is like night.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a cash advance.
Above all else, sky.
Adjure obfuscation.
Alcohol and calculus don’t mix. DON’T DRINK AND DERIVE!
All I ask is the chance to prove that money can’t make me happy.
All men are idiots, and I married their King.
Always Avoid Alliteration.
An Apple a day keeps Windows away.
Anything not worth doing is not worth doing well.
As long as there are tests, there will be prayer in public schools.
Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.
Beer doesn’t make you fat. It makes you lean (against doors, tables, walls).
Beer: It’s not just for breakfast anymore.
Being ‘over the hill’ is much better than being under it!
Come to the dark side—we have cookies.
Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.
Constipation causes people not to give a crap.
Does anal-retentive have a hyphen?
Don’t believe everything you think.
Don’t treat me any differently than you would the Queen.
Double your drive space. Delete Windows.
Driver carries no cash. He’s married.
Dyslexics Untie!
EARTH FIRST! We’ll strip-mine the other planets later.
Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?
Every time you open your mouth, some idiot starts talking.
Excess is never too much in moderation.
First National Bank of Dad; Sorry, closed.
First things first; but not necessarily in that order.
Fishermen don’t die; they just smell that way.
Forget world peace; visualize using your turn signal.
Getting on your feet means getting off your butt.
Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks.
God is my co-pilot, but the Devil is my bombardier.
God made us sisters; Prozac made us friends.