Read The Book of Great Funny One-Liners for Free Online Page B

mastered everything except language; as a novelist he can do everything except tell a story. As an artist he is everything except articulate.
    Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright and wit on British novelist George Meredith
    There are two ways of disliking poetry. One is to dislike it. The other is to read Pope.
    Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright and wit
    You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God, the British journalist, but seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to.
    Humbert Woolf, British writer
    I believe that I could write like Shakespeare, if I had a mind to try it.
    William Wordsworth, British poet
    Time is the only critic without ambition.
    John Steinbeck, American writer
    This film wasn’t released. It escaped.
    James Caan, American actor
    The only trouble with Seamus O’Sullivan is that when he’s not drunk he’s sober.
    W.B. Yeats on his fellow Irish poet
    Being published by the Oxford University Press is rather like being married to a duchess; the honour is greater than the pleasure.
    G.M. Young, British historian
    There’s no need for you to apologize at all. After all, I’ve never bored you half as much as you’ve bored me.
    British actor and dramatist Noel Coward to British journalist Gilbert Harding who fell asleep during one of Coward’s plays.
    Her Victoria made me feel that Albert had married beneath his station.
    Noel Coward, commenting on an actress playing the part of Queen Victoria
    It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art.
    Oscar Wilde, Irish playwright and wit

Stages, Screens and
Boxes
    I suppose he looks all right, if your taste runs to septuagenarians with blow waves and funny stretch marks around the ears.
    British journalist Lynn Barber on the American actor Kirk Douglas
    In California, they don’t throw their garbage away—they make it into TV shows.
    Woody Allen, American film maker, comic and writer
    Elizabeth Sitwell is like a high altar on the move.
    Elizabeth Bowen, Anglo-Irish novelist
    Getting the costumes right on Cleopatra was like polishing the fish knives on the Titanic.
    Julian Barnes, American critic
    I don’t have ulcers. I give them.
    Harry Cohn, American producer
    The impact of the play was like the banging together of two damp dishcloths.
    Brendan Behan, Irish dramatist
    Peter O’Toole delivers every line with a monotonous tenor bark as if addressing an audience of deaf Eskimos.
    Michael Billington, British drama critic
    A day away from Tallulah Bankhead is like a month in the country.
    Anonymous comment on the American actress
    Bette and I are very good friends. There’s nothing I wouldn’t say to her face—both of them.
    Tallulah Bankhead on Bette Davis
    Mr Lorre’s idea of playing a he-man was to extend his chest and then follow it slowly around stage.
    Heywood Broun, American journalist
    This film cost $31 million. With that I could have invaded some country.
    Clint Eastwood, American actor and director
    It’s great to be with Bill Buckley, because you don’t have to think. He takes a position and you automatically take the opposite one and you know you’re right.
    J.K. Galbraith, Canadian American economist
    William F. Buckley looks and sounds not unlike Hitler—but without the charm.
    American writer Gore Vidal on the politically conservative television personality
    Anyone who lies about Gore Vidal is doing him a kindness.
    William F. Buckley Jnr, American critic
    With the collapse of vaudeville new talent has no place to stink.
    George Burns, American comedian
    British broadcaster Gilbert Harding was to interview American actress Mae West on the radio. During preparations Mae West’s manager asked Harding to try to sound ‘sexier’ when he interviewed her. To which end Gilbert replied:
    If, sir, I were endowed with the power of conveying unlimited sexual attraction through the potency of my voice, I would not be reduced to accepting a miserable pittance for the BBC for interviewing a faded female