Will Cuppy Quotes (119 quotes, page 2) | Quotes of famous people

From a letter to Max Eastman, 1936, about Eastman's book, The Enjoyment of Laughter ISBN 0-38413-740-7 (reprint). Eastman mss. http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/html/eastman.html, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.

“The moral of the story of the Pilgrims is that if you work hard all your life and behave yourself every minute and take no time out for fun you will break practically even, if you can borrow enough money to pay your taxes.”

Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Miles Standish

“I am billed as a humorist, but of course I am a tragedian at heart.”

Will Cuppy

Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft (eds.), Twentieth Century Authors, New York: H.W. Wilson Company, 1942, p. 342.

“Taking elephants across the Alps is not as much fun as it sounds. The Alps are difficult enough when alone, and elephants are peculiarly fitted for not crossing them.”

Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal

“[Footnote] The first of Caesar's three marriages — to Cornelia, a very rich girl — resulted tragically. Sylla, Caesar's enemy, confiscated her dowry soon after the wedding.”

Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Cleopatra

“On the fourth voyage, Columbus sailed along the coast of Central America trying to find the mouth of the Ganges River. It wasn't there, somehow.”

Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Christopher Columbus

“[Footnote:] Aristotle maintains that the neck of the Lion is composed of a single bone. Aristotle knew nothing at all about Lions, a circumstance which did not prevent him from writing a good deal on the subject.”

Will Cuppy

The Lion
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)

“Charlemagne lived away back in the Dark Ages when people were not very bright. They have been getting brighter and brighter ever since, until finally they are like they are now.”

Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part III: Strange Bedfellows, Charlemagne

“The male is colored much more gorgeously than the female so that he can be shot and made into feather embroidery.”

Will Cuppy

The Hummingbird
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)

“As Catherine learned later that night [her wedding night], Russia makes strange bedfellows. Peter got into bed with his boots on, played with his collection of dolls for an hour or so, and told the Grand Duchess about his new mistresses. [Footnote: He had no mistresses, really, but he thought he had. It was all in his head. ]”

Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part IV: A Few Greats, Catherine the Great

“[Footnote] It's easy to see the faults in people, I know; and it's harder to see the good. Especially when the good isn't there.”

Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part IV: A Few Greats, Frederick the Great

“Borrowing has a bad name, but you would be surprised how it helps in a pinch.”

Will Cuppy

[Scribner's Magazine, 1937, CII, 6, 19-21, I'm Not the Budget Type, Will Cuppy]

“I borrow to pay my honest debts and not to squander foolishly. What's more, I confine my borrowing to those who can well afford it. I don't go around sponging on widows and orphans unless they have plenty.”

Will Cuppy

[Scribner's Magazine, 1937, CII, 6, 19-21, I'm Not the Budget Type, Will Cuppy, http://www.unz.org/Pub/Scribners-1937dec-00019, PDF] Retrieved on June 25, 2012.

“The fact is that building a pyramid is fairly easy, aside from the lifting. You just pile up stones in receding layers, placing one layer carefully upon another, and pretty soon you have a pyramid. You can't help it. In other words, it is not in the nature of a pyramid to fall down.”

Will Cuppy

Footnote: It probably could not fall down if it tried.
The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part I: It Seems There Were Two Egyptians, Cheops, or Khufu

“To the seeing eye life is mostly Sparrows.”

Will Cuppy

The Sparrow
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)

“He [Philip II] subdued the Greeks after they had knocked themselves out in the Peloponnesian War and appointed himself Captain General so that he could uphold the ideals of Hellas. The main ideal of Hellas was to get rid of Philip, but he didn't count that one.”

Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Alexander the Great

“I hear so many things about who I am supposed to be I hardly know what to believe. I am willing to tell all, but what Is it? Doubtless all these myths and legends will be straightened out eventually, but It may take years.”

Will Cuppy

Comic interview with Jo Ranson, "Living from Can to Mouth," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn Eagle Magazine, November 24, 1929, p. 5.

“[Footnote:] Three million alligators were killed in Florida between 1880 and 1900. Goody!”

Will Cuppy

The Alligator
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“The Zebra is striped all over so that the Lion can see him and eat him. Some people say he is striped so that the Lion can not see him. These people believe that the stripes of the Zebra simulate the bars of sunlight falling through the tall jungle grasses and that therefore the Zebra is invisible and that the earth is flat.”

Will Cuppy

The Zebra
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)

“As Darwin puts it in The Descent of Man, "Male snakes, though appearing so sluggish, are amorous." Isn't that just like Darwin? It was one of his main ideas, you know, that the males of almost all animals have stronger passions than the females. Since then we've learned a thing or two. At any rate, the female snake is right there when spring arrives in the woods.”

Will Cuppy

Own Your Own Snake
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“The Franks had all been German at first, but some of them had taken to eating frogs and snails and were gradually turning into Frenchmen, a fact not generally known at the time because there were no French as yet.”

Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part III: Strange Bedfellows, Charlemagne

“We do not really know why the Woolly Mammoth became extinct. Early Man killed some of them, of course. But most of the time Early Man stayed right in his cave, holding hands with Early Woman. I wouldn't know what the Woolly Mammoth did about that sort of thing. Not nearly enough, I suspect.”

Will Cuppy

The Woolly Mammoth
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“[Footnote:] To give the Beaver his due, he does things because he has to do them, not because he believes that hard work per se will somehow make him a better Beaver -- the Beaver may be dumb, but he is not that dumb! The Beaver was made to gnaw, and gnaw he does. There you have him in a nutshell.”

Will Cuppy

The Beaver
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)

“[Footnote] The Phoenicians employed an alphabet of twenty-one consonants. They left no literature. You can't be literary without a few vowels.”

Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal

“The Aztecs were very sore, because Montezuma had no business giving the national treasury to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wanted it. So Montezuma appeared on the roof of the palace and told them that Mexico had definitely turned the corner and everything would be all right from then on if they would just leave it to him. And one of the Aztecs picked up a big rock and hit Montezuma on the head with it, and that was the last of Montezuma II.”

Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Montezuma

“During the Cretaceous Period many of the inland seas dried up, leaving the Plesiosaurs stranded without any fish. Just about that time Mother Nature scrapped the whole Age of Reptiles and called for a new deal. And you can see what she got.”

Will Cuppy

Footnote: Here we see the working of another Law of Nature: No water, no fish.
The Plesiosaur
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“Other countries may boast of this and that, but nobody can touch the United States for poisonous snakes. We have about twenty species, most of them deadly, and Europe has only five or six, none of them much good. We have fifteen kinds of Rattlesnakes alone and nobody else has even one.”

Will Cuppy

Footnote: There is a species in Central and South America, but it probably came from here.
The Rattlesnake
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“The colonists, it seems, had to "pay taxes to which their consent had never been asked."”

Will Cuppy

Footnote: Today we pay taxes but our consent has been asked, and we have told the government to go ahead and tax us all they want to. We like it.
The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part V: Merrie England, George III

“The father guards the nest and fans it with his pectoral fins until the children are able to shift for themselves. Then he eats them.”

Will Cuppy

Footnote: He does this because of his altruistic (parental) instinct. The higher one rises in the vertebrate scale the more altruistic one becomes. The higher vertebrates are just one mass of altruism.
The Three-Spined Stickleback
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“The Modern Man or Nervous Wreck is the highest of all mammals because anyone can see that he is. There are about 2,000,000,000 Modern Men, or too many. The Modern Man's highly developed brain has made him what he is and you know what he is.”

Will Cuppy

Footnote: It is because of his brain that he has risen above the animals. Guess which animals he has risen above.
The Modern Man
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)