A Little Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations

Association for the Annihilation of the Aberrant Apostrophe.

Keith Waterhouse 1929–2009 English writer

Good intentions are invariably ungrammatical.

Oscar Wilde 1854–1900 Irish dramatist and poet

Languages

see alsoLANGUAGE, WORDS

If you understand English, press 1. If you do not understand English, press 2.

Anonymous, recorded message on Australian tax helpline

Is there no Latin word for Tea? Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.

Hilaire Belloc 1870–1953 British writer and Liberal politician

You know the trouble with the French, they don’t even have a word for entrepreneur.

George W. Bush 1946– American Republican statesman

Speak in French when you can’t think of the English for a thing.

Lewis Carroll 1832–98 English writer and logician

If the King’s English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for Texas.

Miriam A. ‘Ma’ Ferguson 1875–1961 American Democratic politician

All pro athletes are bilingual. They speak English and profanity.

Gordie Howe 1928–2016 Canadian ice-hockey player

when Khrushchev began banging his shoe on the desk:

Perhaps we could have a translation, I could not quite follow.

Harold Macmillan 1894–1986 British Conservative statesman

Listen, someone’s screaming in agony—fortunately I speak it fluently.

Spike Milligan 1918–2002 Irish comedian

Waiting for the German verb is surely the ultimate thrill.

Flann O’Brien 1911–66 Irish novelist and journalist

KENNETH: If you’re so hot, you’d better tell me how to say she has ideas above her station.

BRIAN: Oh, yes, I forgot. It’s fairly easy, old boy. Elle a des idées au-dessus de sa gare.

Terence Rattigan 1911–77 English dramatist

They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they pronounce.

Mark Twain 1835–1910 American writer

I once heard a Californian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, that he would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective.

Mark Twain 1835–1910 American writer

An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

Edith Wharton 1862–1937 American novelist

There had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French.

P. G. Wodehouse 1881–1975 English writer

Last Words

see alsoDEATH

Do you know the famous last words of the Fatted Calf? ‘I hear the young master has returned.’

Monja Danischewsky 1911–94 Russian-born British screenwriter and producer

I will not go down to posterity talking bad grammar.

Benjamin Disraeli 1804–81 British Tory statesman and novelist, while correcting proofs of his last Parliamentary speech

No it is better not. She would only ask me to take a message to Albert.

Benjamin Disraeli 1804–81 British Tory statesman and novelist, near death, declining a proposed visit from Queen Victoria

on his deathbed, when someone remarked ‘Cheer up, your Majesty, you will soon be at Bognor again’:

Bugger Bognor.

George V 1865–1936 British king, the remark may have been made earlier

Leave the shower curtain on the inside of the tub.

Conrad Hilton 1887–1979 American hotelier

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.

Edmund Kean c.1787–1833 English actor

Die, my dear Doctor, that’s the last thing I shall do!

Lord Palmerston 1784–1865 British statesman

last words, as the priest was leaving her room:

One moment, Monsieur Le Curé, and we will depart together.

Madame de Pompadour 1721–64 French favourite of Louis XV

Bring down the curtain, the farce is played out.

François Rabelais c.1494–c.1553 French humanist

Put that bloody cigarette out!

Saki 1870–1916 Scottish writer, before being shot by a sniper in World War One

They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance ...

John Sedgwick 1813–64 American Union general, immediately prior to being killed by enemy fire at the battle of Spotsylvania

If this is dying, then I don’t think much of it.

Lytton Strachey 1880–1932 English biographer