The Book of Great Funny One-Liners Read online

When I eventually met Mr Right, I had no idea his first name was ‘Always’.

  Rita Rudner, American comedian

  Men carry their brains lower than women do, so when they’re scratching their crotches they’re not being gross—they’re just thinking.

  Diana Jordan, American comedian

  Men should be like Kleenex—soft, strong and disposable.

  Cher, American singer and actor

  The only reason I would take up jogging is so I could hear heavy breathing again.

  Erma Bombeck, American humorist

  My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion; a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

  Colette, French author

  I believe in large families; everyone should have at least three husbands.

  Zsa Zsa Gabor, Hungarian-American actor

  Never trust a man with testicles.

  The useless piece of flesh at the end of a man’s penis is called the man.

  Jo Brand, British comedian

  Men aren’t attracted to me by my mind. They are attracted to me by what I don’t mind.

  Gypsy Rose Lee, American stripper

  Every woman needs at least three men: one for sex, one for money and one for fun.

  Bess Myerson, first Jewish woman to win the Miss America Pageant (1945)

  A sexagenarian! At his age! I think that’s disgusting.

  Gracie Allen, American comedian

  There is so little difference between husbands that you might as well keep the first.

  Adela Rogers Saint-Johns, American writer

  Give a man a free hand and he’ll run it all over you.

  Mae West, American actor

  Men have simple needs. They can survive the whole weekend with only three things—beer, boxer shorts and batteries for the remote control.

  Diana Jordan, American comedian

  My mother-in-law is so fat, she has her own ZIP code.

  Phyllis Diller, American comedian

  I love men, not because they are men, but because they are not women.

  Queen Christina of Sweden

  Beware of the man who picks your dresses; he wants to wear them.

  Erica Jong, American author

  She would be a nymphomaniac if they could only calm her down a little.

  Judy Garland, American singer and actor

  Never marry a man with a big head, because you’re going to give birth to that man’s child and you want a baby with a narrow head.

  Jilly Goolden, British media personality

  Sleeping with Aldous Huxley was like being crawled over by slugs.

  Nancy Cunard, American socialite

  When a man makes a woman his wife, it’s the highest compliment he can pay her, and it’s usually the last.

  Helen Rowland, American journalist

  Whatever else can be said about sex, it cannot be called a dignified performance.

  Helen Lawrenson, American journalist

  Men and Women on

  Boys and Girls

  I don’t want to adopt. Not with my genes. I have award-winning genes.

  Woody Allen, American film maker, comic and writer

  When you are eight years old, nothing is any of your business.

  Lenny Bruce, American comedian

  Tired mothers find that spanking takes less time than reasoning and penetrates sooner to the seat of memory.

  Will Durant, American historian

  Madam, there’s no such thing as a tough child—if you boil them first for a few hours, they always come out tender.

  W.C. Fields, American actor

  As a housewife, I feel that if the kids are still alive when my husband comes home from work, then hey, I’ve done my job.

  Roseanne Barr, American comedian

  Insanity is hereditary. You can catch it from your kids.

  Erma Bombeck, American humorist

  Don’t bother discussing sex with small children. They rarely have anything to add.

  Fran Leibowitz, American wit

  One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is.

  Erma Bombeck, American humorist

  Try flying in a plane with a baby if you want a sense of what it must have been like to be a leper in the fourteenth century.

  Nora Ephron, American film director

  There are few things more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own.

  Doug Larson, British racer

  The worst eternal triangle known is: teenager, parent and telephone.

  Lavonne Mathison, American writer

  My schooldays were the happiest days of my life—which gives you some idea of the misery I’ve endured over the past twenty-five years.

  Paul Merton, British actor

  We had bad luck with our kids—they all grew up.

  Christopher Morley, American editor and author

  Never underestimate a child’s ability to get into more trouble.

  Martin Mull, American actor

  I decided to have a vasectomy after a family vote on the matter. The kids voted for it eleven to three.

  Brendan O’Carroll, Irish comedian

  In general, my children refused to eat anything that hadn’t danced on TV.

  Erma Bombeck, American humorist

  The only sense I can make out of having kids is that it’s a good way to become a grandparent.

  Ralph Noble, American writer

  Even young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.

  P.J. O’Rourke, American writer

  Don’t have sex, man. It leads to kissing and pretty soon you have to talk to them.

  Steve Martin, American comedian

  God invented vegetables to let women get even with their children.

  P.J. O’Rourke, American writer

  Heredity is what sets the parents of a teenager wondering about each other.

  Lawrence J. Peter, American writer famous for The Peter Principle, the management ‘law’ that states that everyone is promoted up to the point where they reach their level of incompetence.

  I never want to become pregnant, ever. To me life is hard enough without having someone kick you from the inside.

  Rita Rudner, American comedian

  No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.

  Florida Scott-Maxwell, American journalist

  One of my school reports read as follows—’This boy shows great originality, which must be crushed at all costs’.

  Peter Ustinov, British comedian and actor

  My teenage son is half-man, half-mattress.

  Val Valentine, British screenwriter

  The main purpose of children’s parties is to remind you that there are children worse than your own.

  Katherine Whitehorn, British journalist

  Parents are not interested in justice; they are interested in peace and quiet.

  Bill Cosby, American comedian

  Babies don’t need a vacation but I still see them at the beach. I’ll go over to a little baby and say, ‘What are you doing here? You’ve never worked a day in your life.’

  Steven Wright, American comedian

  To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

  Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright and wit

  My unhealthy affection for my second daughter has waned. I now despise all of my seven children equally.

  Evelyn Waugh, British novelist

  The Body Beautiful

  I can never understand why, when I was born, I was the one who ended up with the stretch marks.

  Linda Agran, American producer

  She wore a low but futile décolletage.

  Dorothy Parker, Ame
rican writer and poet

  My photographs don’t do me justice—they look just like me.

  Phyllis Diller, American comedian

  Women complain about premenstrual syndrome. But I think of it as the only time of the month I can be myself.

  Roseanne Barr, American comedian

  Women should try to increase their size rather than to decrease it, because I believe the bigger we are, the more space we’ll take up, and the more we’ll have to be reckoned with.

  Roseanne Barr, American comedian

  When I go to the beauty parlour, I always use the emergency entrance. Sometimes I just go for an estimate.

  Phyllis Diller, American comedian

  Of course William Morris was a wonderful artist and an all-round man, but the art of walking round him always made me tired.

  Max Beerbohm, British caricaturist

  Seize the moment. Think of all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.

  Erma Bombeck, American humorist

  He’s so fat, he can be his own running mate.

  Johnny Carson, American television presenter

  You couldn’t tell if she was dressed for an opera or an operation.

  Irvin S. Cobb, American writer

  Think of me as a sex symbol who doesn’t give a damn.

  Phyllis Diller, American comedian

  If her dress had pockets my wife would look like a pool table.

  Rodney Dangerfield, American comedian

  I’m so fat that when I get my shoes cleaned, I have to take the shoeshine’s word for it.

  Stubby Kaye, American comic actor

  She could very well pass for forty-three. In the dusk with the light behind her.

  W.S. Gilbert, British librettist

  Take those scales out of the bathroom; the right place for them is in front of the refrigerator.

  Richard Needham, British politician

  The tautness of his face sours ripe grapes.

  William Shakespeare, British dramatist

  A four-hundred-dollar suit on him would look like socks on a rooster.

  American politician Earl Long on an anonymous rival

  My mother-in-law’s face is her fortune. She pays no income tax.

  Les Dawson, British comedian

  Handsome? He looked like a dog’s bum with a hat on.

  Spike Milligan, British actor and comedian

  Outside every thin woman is a fat woman dying to get in.

  Katherine Whitehorn, British journalist

  I have no boobs whatsoever. On my wedding night my husband said, ‘Let me help you with those buttons’ and I told him, ‘I’m completely naked.’

  Joan Rivers, American comedian

  God knew from all eternity that I was going to be Pope. You think he would have made me more photogenic.

  Pope John XXIII

  Why don’t you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.

  P.G. Wodehouse, British writer

  She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

  Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright and wit

  Foreigners and Their

  Parts

  When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian simply said ‘Ours’.

  Vine Deloria, American anthropologist

  America is a society which believes that God is dead but Elvis is alive.

  Irving Kupcinet, American columnist

  It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence to never practice either of them.

  Mark Twain, American writer

  I went to join the New York public library. The guy told me I had to prove I was a citizen of New York, so I stabbed him.

  Emo Philips, American comedian

  There won’t be any revolution in America… the people are too clean. They spend all their time changing their shirts and washing themselves. You can’t feel fierce and revolutionary in a bathroom.

  Eric Linklater, British writer

  Britain has invented a new missile. It’s called the civil servant—it doesn’t work and it can’t be fired.

  Walter Walker, British general

  Canada could have enjoyed English government, French culture and American know-how. Instead it ended up with English know-how, French government and American culture.

  John Robert Columbo, Canadian poet

  The softer the currency in a foreign country, the harder the toilet paper.

  John Fountain, American writer

  The English winter—ending in July, to recommence in August.

  George Gordon, British academic

  The only pleasure an Englishman has is in passing on his cold germs.

  Gerald Durrell, British author

  I like the English. The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.

  Thomas Beecham, British conductor

  Those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England.

  Virginia Woolf, British writer

  The English never smash in a face. They merely refrain from asking it to dinner.

  Margaret Halsey, American writer

  British education is probably the best in the world, if you can survive it. If you can’t there is nothing left for you but the diplomatic corps.

  Peter Ustinov, British comedian and actor

  The English people on the whole are surely the nicest people in the world, and everybody makes everything so easy for everyone else, that there is almost nothing to resist at all.

  D. H. Lawrence, British author

  It is no longer true that Continentals have a sex life whereas the English have hot water bottles—the English now have electric blankets.

  George Mikes, Hungarian-British writer

  Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

  Samuel Johnson, English writer and lexicographer

  I have been trying all my life to like Scotsmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.

  Charles Lamb, English essayist

  The Irish climate is wonderful, but the weather ruins it.

  Tony Butler, British sports broadcaster

  If one could teach the English to talk and the Irish to listen, society would be quite civilised.

  Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright and wit

  The French don’t care what they do as long as they pronounce it properly.

  George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright

  When St Patrick first visited Ireland there was no word in the Irish language to express sobriety.

  Oliver St John Gogarty, Irish physician

  Given the unlikely options of attending a funeral or a sex orgy, a true Irishman will always opt for the funeral.

  John B. Keane, Irish writer

  A complete description of Belfast is given by: population 200,000; early closing day Wednesday.

  Shamus O’Shamus, Irish comedian

  Heaven is an English policeman, a French cook, a German engineer, an Italian lover and everything organised by the Swiss. Hell is an English cook, a French engineer, a German policeman, a Swiss lover and everything organised by the Italians.

  John Elliot, American songwriter

  The Swiss are not so much a people as a neat, clean, quite solvent business.

  William Faulkner, American novelist

  We had a very successful trip to Russia—we got back.

  Bob Hope, American comedian

  An Iranian moderate is one who has run out of ammunition.

  Henry Kissinger, German-American politician

  Germans are flummoxed by humour, the Swiss have no concept of fun, the Spanish think there is nothing at all ridiculous about eating dinner at midnight, and the Italians should never, ever have been let in on the invention of the motor car.

  Bill Bryson, American author

  I do not see the EEC
as a great love affair. It is more like nine middle-aged couples with failing marriages meeting at a Brussels hotel for a group grope.

  Kenneth Tynan, British writer

  The high standards of Australians are due to the fact that their ancestors were all handpicked by the best English judges.

  Douglas Copeland, Canadian novelist

  There are only two classes of persons in New South Wales—those who have been convicted and those who ought to have been.

  Lachlan Macquarie, governor of the colony of New South Wales

  Many people are surprised to hear we have comedians in Russia, but there they are. They are dead, but there they are.

  ‘Vacation’ is the word Americans use to describe going someplace different to have fun and get away from all their trials and tribulations. The English call it ‘holiday’. In Russia it’s known as ‘defecting’.

  Yakov Smirnoff, Ukranian-American comedian

  Human by

  Correspondence

  A conservative government is an organised hypocrisy.

  Benjamin Disraeli, British statesman

  If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune, and if anybody pulled him out of that, I suppose, would be a calamity.

  Benjamin Disraeli on fellow British Prime Minister William Gladstone

  He is a self-made man and worships his creator.

  British statesman John Bright on Benjamin Disraeli

  He never spares himself in conversation. He gives himself so generously that hardly anyone else is permitted to give anything in his presence.

  British politician Aneurin Bevan on Winston Churchill

  Aneurin Bevan is a thrombosis. A bloody clot that undermines the constitution.

  Winston Churchill, British statesman

  The Prime Minister has an absolute genius for putting flamboyant labels on empty luggage.

  British politician Aneurin Bevan on Harold Macmillan

  Giving money and power to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

  P.J. O’Rourke, American writer

  Tony Blair has pushed moderation to extremes.

  Robert MacLennan, Scottish politician

  This island is made mainly of coal and is surrounded by fish. Only an organising genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.

  British politician Aneurin Bevan on the Tory Party