Humorists Quotes

“Science has many uses. Its chief one, however, is to provide long words to cover the errors of the rich: ‘Kleptomania’ for example.”
― Paul Johnson, Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward – Captivating Biographical Portraits of the Western World's Greatest Wits

“Twain had it too and Alexander Woollcott. Stephen Spender and Barbara Skelton insisted Cyril Connolly had it, on rare occasions, when the word for it was “magnificent,” but I only heard faint echoes of this gigantic gift. Sir Isaiah Berlin had it, and I heard him: but the trouble was, once he got really going on a line of fantastic humor, he began to speak so fast, and his accent became so impenetrable, that the sense wasdifficult to grasp, though his evident delight in his fun was so furious that you laughed all the same.”
― Paul Johnson, Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward – Captivating Biographical Portraits of the Western World's Greatest Wits

“In Germany, as in parts of Yorkshire, laughing—at least among people with pretensions to rank—was regarded as a form of weakness. Goethe, whose own laughter was seldom observed, thought a lady might laugh where a gentleman should keep a straight face. Frederick the Great might laugh with a Frenchman, such as Voltaire, but “would not so condescend” with his compatriots.”
― Paul Johnson, Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward – Captivating Biographical Portraits of the Western World's Greatest Wits

“Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke, the leading nineteenth-century Prussian strategist, was said to have laughed only twice: once when told that a certain French fortress was impregnable, and once when his mother-in-law died. Martin Heidegger, whom some regard as the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century but many find incomprehensible, was even more sparing of his mirth. He is recorded to have laughed only once, at a picnic with Ernst Jünger in the Harz Mountains. Jünger leaned over to pick up a sauerkraut and sausage roll, and his lederhosen split with a tremendous crack. Heidegger let out a shout of glee, but immediately checked himself, “and his facial expression reverted to its habitual ferocity.”
― Paul Johnson, Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward – Captivating Biographical Portraits of the Western World's Greatest Wits

“The British oligarch does not rest, as so many oligarchies do, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor. Or even on the kindness of the rich to the poor. It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich.” “To be clever enough to get all that money, you must be stupid enough to want it.” “Gold in banks is unreality. But coins in your pocket are a kind of truth.” And: “The man who does not look at his change is no true poet.”
― Paul Johnson, Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward – Captivating Biographical Portraits of the Western World's Greatest Wits

“He is recorded to have laughed only once, at a picnic with Ernst Jünger in the Harz Mountains. Jünger leaned over to pick up a sauerkraut and sausage roll, and his lederhosen split with a tremendous crack. Heidegger let out a shout of glee, but immediately checked himself, “and his facial expression reverted to its habitual ferocity.”
― Paul Johnson, Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward – Captivating Biographical Portraits of the Western World's Greatest Wits

“Morecambe and Wise, the famous team of Northern comedians, used to complain about the propensity of Yorkshire audiences to “zip their teeth up,” as they put it. Eric Morecambe claimed one man in Leeds said to him, “Ee, lad, thou wert so funny tonight I almost had to laff.”
― Paul Johnson, Humorists: From Hogarth to Noel Coward – Captivating Biographical Portraits of the Western World's Greatest Wits