Evan Esar Quotes

“The personal comparative is marked by epigrammatic self-satire. It implies that everyone thinks himself better than anyone else, but only the egoist says so.”

“Many a man who falls in love with a dimple make the mistake of marrying the whole girl.”

“When Marilyn Monroe, the American Venus, visited England, one London correspondent wrote that she looked like a million dollars. Fortunately, he did not write that she looked like a million pounds.”

“Play: Work that you enjoy doing for nothing.”

“An epigram is the marriage of wit, and wisdom; a wisecrack, their divorce.”

“The history of humorous writing discloses everchanging trends. Our fast-paced modern living is too impatient for the lengthy light verse and the leisurely essays of our forefathers.”

“An alert copyreader on a newspaper couldn’t believe it when he read a reporter’s account of the theft of 2025 pigs. That’s a lot of pigs, he thought, and called the farmer to check the copy. “Is it true that you lost 2025 pigs?” he asked. “Yeth,” lisped the farmer. “Thanks,” returned the copyreader, and corrected the story to read “two sows and 25 pigs.””

“It is the uncensored sense of humor of a people which is the ultimate therapy for man in society.”

“Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.”