A Little Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations

But there, everything has its drawbacks, as the man said when his mother-in-law died, and they came down upon him for the funeral expenses.

Jerome K. Jerome 1859–1927 English writer

Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

Samuel Johnson 1709–84 English poet, critic, and lexicographer

ex-President Eisenhower’s death prevented her photograph appearing on the cover of Newsweek:

Fourteen heart attacks and he had to die in my week. In my week.

Janis Joplin 1943–70 American singer

on how he would kill himself:

With kindness.

George S. Kaufman 1889–1961 American dramatist

Death is the most convenient time to tax rich people.

David Lloyd George 1863–1945 British Liberal statesman

Either he’s dead, or my watch has stopped.

Groucho Marx 1890–1977 American film comedian

Death and taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them.

Margaret Mitchell 1900–49 American novelist

One dies only once, and it’s for such a long time!

Molière 1622–73 French comic dramatist

on being told by Robert Benchley that Calvin Coolidge had died:

How can they tell?

Dorothy Parker 1893–1967 American critic and humorist

Waldo is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.

Saki 1870–1916 Scottish writer

Death is always a great pity of course but it’s not as though the alternative were immortality.

Tom Stoppard 1937– British dramatist

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.

James Thurber 1894–1961 American humorist

after his obituary appeared prematurely:

The report of my death was an exaggeration.

Mark Twain 1835–1910 American writer, usually quoted as, ‘Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated’

Death is very sophisticated. It’s like a Noel Coward comedy. You light a cigarette and wait for it in the library.

Theadora Van Runkle 1928–2011 American costume designer

of Truman Capote’s death:

Good career move.

Gore Vidal 1925–2012 American novelist and critic

Just think who we’d have been seen dead with!

Rebecca West 1892–1983 English novelist and journalist, on discovering that her name, with Noël Coward’s, had been on the Nazi blacklist for arrest and probable execution

at the mention of a huge fee for a surgical operation:

Ah, well, then, I suppose that I shall have to die beyond my means.

Oscar Wilde 1854–1900 Irish dramatist and poet

of the wallpaper in the room where he was dying:

One of us must go.

Oscar Wilde 1854–1900 Irish dramatist and poet

Debt

see alsoMONEY, POVERTY

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

Charles Dickens 1812–70 English novelist

Good news rarely comes in a brown envelope.

Henry D’Avigdor-Goldsmid 1909–76 British businessman and Conservative politician

In the midst of life we are in debt.

Ethel Watts Mumford 1878–1940 American humorist

I feel these days like a very large flamingo. No matter what way I turn, there is always a very large bill.

Joseph O’Connor 1963– Irish novelist

The National Debt is a very Good Thing and it would be dangerous to pay it off, for fear of Political Economy.

W. C. Sellar 1898–1951 and R. J. Yeatman 1898–1968 British writers

If I hadn’t my debts I shouldn’t have anything to think about.

Oscar Wilde 1854–1900 Irish dramatist and poet

Definitions

definition of an acquaintance:

A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.

Ambrose Bierce 1842–c.1914 American writer

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

William Ralph Inge 1860–1954 English writer

Doorman: a genius who can open the door of your car with one hand, help you in with the other and still have one left for the tip.

Dorothy Kilgallen 1913–65 American journalist

Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

Miles Kington 1941–2008 English humorist