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EPIGRAMS, WISECRACKS AND JOKES

A man says to another man: “I’d certainly like to steal your girl.” Second man: “I’d give her to you, but she’s part of a set.”

“Has D. P. injured you any way?” “No, but don’t remind her. Maybe she hasn’t done her bad deed for the day.”

The movies are the only court where the judge goes to the lawyer for advice.

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

Not a word in the Roosevelt inaugural was as logical as Zangara saying he shot at Roosevelt because he had a stomach ache.

Agility (vitality)—pleasing people you perversely shouldn’t please and can’t reach.

Her unselfishness came in pretty small packages well wrapped.

After all, the portrait of an old shoe by Van Gogh hangs in the Louvre, but where is there a portrait of Van Gogh by an old shoe?

Berry Wall. He doesn’t dare go back. He was drafted for the Civil War and he doesn’t know it’s over.

Optimism is the content of small men in high places.

She’s bashful. She has small-pox. She stumbles so she couldn’t get up.

Wouldn’t a girl rather have half of him than a whole Spic with a jar of pomade thrown in? Life was so badly arranged—better no women at all than only one woman.

One of those tragic efforts like repainting your half of a delapidated double house.

Bryan to Darrow. Fellow Apes of the Scopes trial.

Trying to support a large and constantly increasing French family who jokingly referred to themselves as “our servants.”

Sent a girl flowers on Mothers’ Day.

You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say.

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is in your mind. There’s no other definition of it.

Get a man for Elspeth, a man for Elspeth, was the cry. This was difficult because Elspeth had had so many men. Two of her sisters rode, so to speak, Elspeth’s discarded mounts.

Switzerland is a country where very few things begin, but many things end.

Cotton manufacturer who worries because African chiefs go in for rayon.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

Ye Old Hooke Shoppe.

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest—that would be like a blind man willing to see.

Hospitality is a wonderful thing. If people really want you, they’ll have you even if the cook has just died in the house of small-pox.

Suddenly he turned in bed and put his arms around her arm. Her free hand touched his hair.

“You’ve been bad,” she said.

“I can’t help it.”

She sat with him silently for half an hour; then she changed her position so that her arm was under his head. Stooping over him, she kissed him on the brow. (See Two Wrongs.)

Any walk through a park that runs between a double line of mangy trees and passes brazenly by the ladies’ toilet is invariably known as “Lover’s Lane.”

Gynecologist to trace his pedigree.

Women are going to refuse to build with anything but crushed brick.

Shy beaten man named Victor.

Clumsy girls named Grace.

Great truck drivers named Earl and Cecil.

She was one of those people who would just as soon starve in a garret with a man—if she didn’t have to.

Beatrice Lillie broke up the British Empire with March to the Roll of the Drums.

Mencken forgives much to the Catholic church—perhaps because it has an index.

All my characters killed each other off in the first act because I couldn’t think of any more hard boiled things for them to say.

They thought a child would be nice, too, because they had a nursery and the Harold Lloyds had one.

They have more money. (Ernest’s wisecrack.)*

She’s got to be a loyal, frank person if she’s got to bitch everyone in the world to do it.

For a statesman—any school child knows that hot air rises to the top.

Suicide and wife arrive in Cuba.

Debut: the first time a young girl is seen drunk in public.

He repeated to himself an old French proverb that he had made up that morning.

A sleeping porch is a back room with no pictures on the walls. It should contain at least one window.

Forgotten is forgiven.

If all your clothes are worn to the same state, it means you go out too much.

American actresses now use European convents as a sort of female Muldoon’s.

The guy that played Sergeant Quirt in Romeo and Juliet.

Three men better known as Christ’s nails.

The spiritual stomach of the race was ruined those fifty years when Mid-Western women didn’t go to the toilet.

To bring on the revolution it may be necessary to work inside the Communist Party.

They try to be Jesus (Forsythe)* while I only attempt to be God, which is easier.

To most women art is a form of scandal.

Impersonating 46 presidents at once.

“What kind of man was he?”

“Well, he was one of those men who come in a door and make any woman with them look guilty.”

Grown up, and that is a terribly hard thing to do. It is much easier to skip it and go from one childhood to another.

Dieticians: They have made great progress in the last few years. They know pretty definitely that bichloride of mercury or arsenic in the right dose will kill you and that food should probably be eaten rather than taken in gas form or over the radio.

Honi soit qui Malibu.

Trained nurses who eat as if they didn’t own the food but it was just lent them.

Parked his pessimism in her sun-parlour.

No such thing as graceful old age.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

What is the point at which loan becomes property of loanee and at the offer of a refund one says, “But I don’t like to take your money”? What is the point when one accepts return of loan with most profuse thanks?

The inevitable shallowness that goes with people who have learned everything by experience.

Somebody’s specimen hijacked on way to doctor’s.

The biggest temptation we can offer people to let us talk is to cry “say” (or dîtes) to them.

This isn’t the South. This is the center of the country. We’re only polite half the time.

I’m going through the crisis of my life like railroad ties.

For Esther M.: In memory of an old friendship or a prolonged quarrel that has gone on so long and accumulated so much moss that it is much the same thing.

Mr. and Mrs. Jay O’Brien moving like the center of population.

“I can’t pay you much,” said the editor to the author, “but I can give you some good publicity.”

“I can’t pay you much,” said the advertiser to the editor, “but I can give you some beautiful ads.”

When he buys his ties he has to ask if gin will make them run.

Very bad jokes should be known as “employer’s jokes” or “creditor’s jokes.” The listener has to laugh, so it seems wasteful to use up a good story on him.

The kiss originated when the first male reptile licked the first female reptile, implying in a subtle, complimentary way that she was as succulent as the small reptile he had for dinner the night before.

You are contemplating a gigantic merger between J. P. Morgan and the Queensboro Bridge.

Beware of him who would give his last sou to a beggar in the street. He would also give it to you and that is something you would not be able to endure.

Fashion’s Blessing: Think how many flappers would have been strangled like Porphyria except for bobbed hair.

Don’t get thinking it’s a real country because you can get a lot of high school kids into gym suits and have them spell out “bananas” for the news reels.

I used to whip you up to a nervous excitement that bore a resemblance to intelligence.

It grows harder to write, because there is much less weather than when I was a boy and practically no men and women at all.