Quip Quotes

Nothing you can't spell will ever work.

When someone abuses me I can defend myself, but against praise I am defenceless.

I don't quite hear what you say, but I beg to differ entirely with you.

He [Earl Scruggs] was really cool because he was very quiet, and he wouldn't say much, but then he would come out with a quip that was like so perfect and so brilliant, very smart.

Because I am about to be devoured by poodles," I quip. "Remember me always, my love.

As a matter of fact, I am an uncle. I have nine nephews and nieces. I'm not sure if they think I'm all that quick with a quip. But I'm quick with a spank.

When I worked with Chevy Chase, Michael Ritchie would say, "Just ad lib and try to break me up. Just insult me. Anything." When we were doing his close-up, or when my back was to the camera, I would come up with jokes or quips or anything, to get a real reaction out of him. He was smart enough to know that was gold. So it was great fun working with him and Michael, and getting to see how the two worked together. I think Fletch and Clark Griswold were Chevy's two best roles. He's so incredibly talented and still vastly underused.

The brain is an island in an osmotically homogeneous sea.

COLD. Healthier than heat.

People are clever, but almost no one ever devises an optimal quip precisely at the needed moment. Therefore, virtually all great one-liners are later inventions - words that people wished they had spouted, but failed to manufacture at the truly opportune instant.

Newton said, "If I have seen further than others, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants." These days we stand on each other's feet!

Supposing is good, but finding out is better.

If I have seen further than others, it is because I am surrounded by dwarfs.

Radical transparency has an enormous impact on our personal lives. We can no longer share thoughts, quips, photos or personal opinions anywhere on the web without being mindful that they may turn up where we least expect it (notably job interviews, divorce proceedings or public media).

Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles, Nods and Becks and wreathèd Smiles.

Can you nominate in order now the degrees of the lie? I will name you the degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth; the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct. All these you may avoid but the Lie Direct; and you may avoid that too, with an If. . . . Your If is the only peace-maker; much virtue in If.

She [Gypsy Rose Lee] was a sophisticated self-satirist with a contagious delight in the comedy of sex. She was coy; she was sly; she always had a witty quip; she had an intensely dramatic presence.

I like quips. I like whiffs of cynicism and I think they can be witty. But I don't really know where wittiness is constructive.

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.

I think actual death will be a lot easier than dying on stage. Cause - you know - if you do [actual death] right, you can go looking good. Maybe with a little quip [like]: 'I loved everybody.' But dying on stage...Oh, God!

Some libs took offense at my David Broder quip earlier. In my own defense, I was taught in college it's OK to disrespect dead white males.

Ralph Keyes calls quotation collectors "quotographers," the men and women who gather catchwords, watchwords, war words, winged words, maxims, mottos, sayings, and quips into books of a thousand pages. Through the centuries quotation collectors have saved quotations that would otherwise be lost.

Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful Jollity, Quips, and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, Nods, and Becks, and wreathed Smiles, Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter holding both his sides.

If Big Brother (of Orwell's 1984) comes to America, he will not be a fearsome, foreboding figure with a heart-chilling, omnipresent glare as in 1984. He will come with a smile on his face, a quip on his lips, a wave to the crowd, and a press that (a) dutifully reports the suppressive measures he is taking to save the nation from internal chaos and foreign threat; and (b) gingerly questions whether he will be able to succeed.

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground-floor. But if a man hasn't got plenty of good common sense, the more science he has, the worse for his patient.

I have a lot of very close girlfriends and sisters - I'm from an all female family. My father often quips that even the cat was neutered!

One of my most often repeated quips was the one I made when former Presidents Carter, Ford and Nixon stood by each other at a White House event. 'There they are,' I said. 'See no evil, hear no evil, and . . . evil.'

A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow. When innovations are in the exploration stage, they need a champion to take them through the rest of the developmental stages. Otherwise the bureaucracy, politics, and people who can only see the fledgling and potential innovation through today's glasses will smother it or let it quietly die from malnourishment.

Ser Jaime?" Even in soiled pink satin and torn lace, Brienne looked more like a man in a gown than a proper woman."I am grateful, but...you were well away. Why come back?" A dozen quips came to mind, each crueler than the one before, but Jaime only shrugged. "I dreamed of you," he said.

For me, Twitter works best as a way of taking pictures of being stuck in traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. If people really want to read really funny quips about life, parenting, and pop culture, then by all means read Michael Ian Black's tweets.

If you ask the fish whether they'd rather have an oil spill or a season of fishing, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd vote for another blowout.

Time goes too quickly. This is the advice that my mother should have given me from her hospital bed. Instead of vague, unknowable quips like "Be careful what you wish for," she should have told me time slides away on a hillside of loose shale and takes everything in its path - dreams, opportunities, hopes. And youth. It takes that fastest of all.

In France everything is a matter for jest. People make quips about the scaffold, about Napoleon's defeat on the banks of The Beresina, and about the barricades of our revolutions. So, at the assizes of the Last Judgment, there will always be a Frenchmen to crack a joke.

DOCTOR. Always preceded by 'The good'. Among men, in familiar conversation, 'Oh! balls, doctor!' Is a wizard when he enjoys your confidence, a jack-ass when you're no longer on terms. All are materialists: 'you can't probe for faith with a scalpel.'

Right at the core, the mainstream has it backwards. Warren Buffett often quips that the first rule of investing is to not lose money, and the second rule is to not forget the first rule. Yet few investors approach the world with such a strict standard of risk avoidance.

The Canteen Boy, the reason you feel bad for him and you can laugh is because he, and I guess a lot of my characters, they don't notice they're getting made fun of. So they'll say something back that's not that great a quip, but in their mind they won the argument.

I may chance have some odd quirks and remnants of wit broken on me, because I have railed so long against marriage: but doth not the appetite alter? a man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age. Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of the brain awe a man from the career of his humour? No, the world must be peopled. When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.

Whether you like it or not, the digital age has produced a new format for modern romance, and natural selection may be favoring the quick-thumbed quip peddler over the confident, ice-breaking alpha male.

I intend to live forever, or die trying.

I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience.