The Book of Great Funny One-Liners Read online

  Alec Douglas-Home, British politician

  I am to cricket what Dame Sybil Thorndyke is to non-ferrous welding.

  Frank Muir, British writer

  Women playing cricket should treat it as a matter between consenting females in private.

  Michael Parkinson, British television personality

  I never play cricket. It requires one to assume such indecent postures.

  Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright and wit

  Michael Chang has all the fire and passion of a public service announcement, so much so that he makes Pete Sampras appear fascinating.

  Alex Ramsay, American sports writer

  Pancho Gonzales was the most even-tempered man I ever knew. Always mad.

  Ben Thomas, Australian actor

  If you want to take long walks, take long walks. If you want to hit things with a stick, hit things with a stick. But there’s no excuse for combining the two and putting the results on TV. Golf is not so much a sport as an insult to lawns.

  Dave Barry, American author and humorist

  It’s a marriage. If I had to choose between my wife and my putter—I’d miss her.

  Gary Player, American golfer

  Jack Nicklaus isn’t really a golfer. He’s just been on a thirty-year lucky streak.

  Henry Beard, American humorist

  My back swing off the first tee put the pro in mind of an elderly woman of dubious morals trying to struggle out of dress too tight around the shoulders.

  Patrick Campbell, Irish journalist

  Give me a man with big hands, big feet and no brains and I will make a golfer out of him.

  Walter Hagen, American golfer

  Golf is an ineffectual attempt to direct an uncontrollable sphere into an inaccessible hole with instruments ill adapted to the purpose.

  Winston Churchill, British statesman

  The reason the pro tells you to keep your head down is so you can’t see him laughing.

  Phyllis Diller, American comedian

  Steve Ballesteros drives into territory Daniel Boone couldn’t find.

  Fuzzy Zoeller, American golfer

  Colin Montgomerie is a few fries short of a Happy Meal. His mind goes on vacation and leaves his mouth in charge.

  David Feherty, Irish golfer

  A caddy is someone who accompanies the golfer and didn’t see the ball either.

  Joe Francis, American footballer

  I owe everything to golf. Where else would a guy with an IQ like mine earn so much money?

  Hubert Green, American golfer

  Driving Mark McCormack’s getaway car is the best job in golf.

  George Low, American manager

  Golf is so popular simply because it is the best game in the world at which to be bad.

  A.A. Milne, British writer

  Hubert Green swings like a drunk trying to find a keyhole in the dark.

  Jim Murray, American sports writer

  Gerald Ford doesn’t realise he can’t hit a ball through a tree trunk.

  Jack Nicklaus on the American president’s famous clumsiness

  Gerald Ford made golf a contact sport.

  The principle difference between Baba Zahanas and myself is that I hit the ball like a girl and she hits the ball like a man.

  I once played a round with Jack Nicklaus and I asked him what most impressed him about my golf. ‘Your score keeping,’ he replied.

  Arnold Palmer has won about as much money playing golf as I’ve paid on lessons.

  Bob Hope, American comedian who was an enthusiastic rather than skilful golfer

  I’ve seen better swings than Bob Hope’s in a condemned playground.

  American golfer Arnold Palmer on the comedian

  Arnold Palmer turned golf into a game of ‘Hit it hard, go find it and hit it hard again!’

  John Schulian, American writer

  Arnold Palmer would go for the flag from the middle of an alligator’s back.

  I’m not saying my game is bad at the moment, but if I grew tomatoes, they’d come up sliced.

  My swing is so bad I look like a caveman killing his lunch.

  No one who ever had lessons would have a swing like mine. If it wasn’t for golf, I don’t know what I’d be doing. If my I.Q. had been two points lower, I’d have been a tree somewhere.

  Lee Trevino, American golfer

  In the US first-class golfers take as long to choose a wife as a club. Sometimes they make the wrong choice in each case.

  Dai Rees, British golfer

  For most amateurs the best wood in the bag is the pencil.

  Chi Chi Rodriguez, American golfer

  It’s hard to tell whether Americans have become such liars because of golf or income tax.

  Will Rogers, American humorist

  Golf is a game in which the ball lies poorly and the players well.

  Art Rosenbaum, American artist

  If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork like they do a golf club, they’d starve to death.

  Sam Snead, American golfer

  I’m using a new putter because the old one didn’t float too well.

  Craig Stadler, American golfer

  Ocean racing is like standing under a cold shower tearing up five-pound notes.

  Edward Heath, British politician

  A fishing rod is a stick with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.

  Samuel Johnson, English writer and lexicographer

  There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

  Steven Wright, American comedian

  I’ve seen George Foreman shadow boxing and the shadow won.

  Sonny Liston is so ugly that when he cries, the tears run down the back of his head.

  Muhammad Ali, American boxer

  Jack Dempsey hits like an epiliptic pile driver.

  Harry C. Witwert, American boxer

  Jake LaMotta and I fought six times. We almost got married.

  Sugar Ray Robinson, American boxer

  Rocky Marciano didn’t know enough boxing to know what a feint was. He never tried to out-guess you. He just kept trying to knock your brains out.

  Archie Moore, American boxer

  Sure there have been injuries and deaths in boxing but none of them serious.

  Alan Minter, British boxer

  In the World Darts Championships in 1982, Jocky Wilson missed when attempting to shake hands with an opponent.

  Craig Brown, satirist

  Someone threw a petrol bomb at Alex Higgins once and he drank it.

  Frank Carson, British comedian

  I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out.

  Rodney Dangerfield, American comedian

  Ice hockey is a form of disorderly conduct in which a score is kept.

  Doug Larson, British racer

  Bryant Gumbel’s ego has applied for statehood. If it’s accepted it will be the fifth largest.

  American weather presenter Willard Scott on the sportscaster who spent 15 years anchoring the Today show.

  Mountain climbers rope themselves together to prevent the sensible ones going home.

  Earl Wilson, American journalist

  Jogging is for people who aren’t intelligent enough to watch breakfast television.

  British comedian Victoria Wood

  The only man who makes money following horses is the one who does it carrying a broom and shovel.

  Elbert Hubbard, American writer

  I am a jockey because I was too small to be a window cleaner and too big to be a garden gnome.

  Adrian Maguire, Irish jockey

  People say that sailing is an expensive sport, but to own a racehorse is the equivalent of burning a yacht on the front lawn every year.

  Adam Nicholson, British writer

  Smorgasbord of

  Insults

  Do they ever shut up on your planet?

  Don’t go away. I want to forget you exactly as you are.

 
; I refuse to star in your psychodrama.

  I’m already visualizing the duct tape over your mouth.

  I’d like to leave you with this thought: If I’ve said anything to insult you, I’ve tried my utmost—believe me.

  Learn from your parents’ mistakes. Use birth control!

  Let’s go some place were we can each be alone.

  May I have the pleasure of your absence?

  Next time you give your clothes away, stay in them.

  Save your breath. You’ll need it to blow up your date.

  The more I think of you, the less I think of you.

  Slit your wrists, it will lower your blood pressure.

  The only thing your conversation needs is a little lockjaw.

  The sooner I never see you again, the better it’ll be for both of us when we meet.

  You’re about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

  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.