ROBERTSON DAVIES
in Our Living Tradition
I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.
—FRANK A. CLARK
Humor is a hole that lets the sawdust out of a stuffed shirt.
—JAN MCKEITHEN
Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.
—LANGSTON HUGHES
A humorist is a fellow who realizes, first, that he is no better than anybody else, and, second, that nobody else is either.
—HOMER MCLIN
Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.
—SID CAESAR
Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
—PETER USTINOV
Always laugh at yourself first—before others do.
—ELSA MAXWELL
R.S.V.P.: Elsa Maxwell’s Own Story
A laugh at your own expense costs you nothing.
—MARY H. WALDRIP
in Advertiser (Dawson County, Georgia)
Happy is the person who can laugh at himself. He will never cease to be amused.
—HABIB BOURGUIBA
Humor is a spontaneous, wonderful bit of an outburst that just comes. It’s unbridled, it’s unplanned, it’s full of surprises.
—ERMA BOMBECK
Humor is a reminder that no matter how high the throne one sits on, one sits on one’s bottom.
—TAKI
You cannot hold back a good laugh any more than you can the tide. Both are forces of nature.
—WILLIAM ROTSLER
It has always seemed to me that hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.
—NORMAN COUSINS
Anatomy of an Illness
When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.
—JAMES M. BARRIE
No symphony orchestra ever played music like a two-year-old girl laughing with a puppy.
—BERN WILLIAMS
in National Enquirer
A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself.
—DOUG LARSON
WIT OUGHT TO BE A GLORIOUS TREAT . . .
Wit ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar. Never spread it about like marmalade.
—NOËL COWARD
Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
—DOROTHY PARKER
in The Paris Review
Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food.
—WILLIAM HAZLITT
Wit is educated insolence.
—ARISTOTLE
A caricature is always true only for an instant.
—CHRISTIAN MORGENSTERN
Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.
—PEGGY NOONAN
What I Saw at the Revolution
The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others than in showing a great deal yourself.
—JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
THE ONLY WAY TO KEEP YOUR HEALTH . . .
The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.
—MARK TWAIN
The only way for a rich man to be healthy is, by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor.
—PAUL DUDLEY WHITE
So many people spend their health gaining wealth, and then have to spend their wealth to regain their health.
—A. J. REB MATERI
Our Family
It would be a service to mankind if the pill were available in slot machines and the cigarette were placed on prescription.
—MALCOLM POTTS, MD
in The Observer (London)
The best cure for hypochondria is to forget about your own body and get interested in someone else’s.
—GOODMAN ACE
Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.
—EDWARD STANLEY
It is part of the cure to wish to be cured.
—SENECA
You know you’ve reached middle age when a doctor, not a policeman, tells you to slow down, all you exercise are your prerogatives and it takes you longer to rest than to get tired.
—Friends News Sheet
(Royal Perth Hospital, Australia)
An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.
—HENRY DAVID THOREAU
As with liberty, the price of leanness is eternal vigilance.
—GENE BROWN
Your body is the baggage you must carry through life. The more excess baggage, the shorter the trip.
—ARNOLD H. GLASOW
You can’t lose weight by talking about it. You have to keep your mouth shut.
—The Old Farmers Almanac
You know it’s time to diet when you push away from the table and the table moves.
—Quoted in The Cockle Bur
Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes than the first four hours of a diet.
—DAN BENNETT
If it weren’t for the fact that the TV set and the refrigerator are so far apart, some of us wouldn’t get any exercise at all.
—JOEY ADAMS
TAKING MY PROBLEMS ONE AT A TIME . . .
It’s not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line.
—ASHLEIGH BRILLIANT
He who can’t endure the bad will not live to see the good.
—YIDDISH PROVERB
It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
—ISAAC ASIMOV
Foundation
When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always be worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better.
—MALCOLM S. FORBES
The Sayings of Chairman Malcolm
I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.
—ANNE FRANK
The Diary of a Young Girl
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
—HELEN KELLER
Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.
—JAMES BALDWIN
A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with the wind.
—JOHN NEAL
What I’m looking for is a blessing that’s not in disguise.
—KITTY O’NEILL COLLINS
People need resistance, for it is resistance which gives them their awareness of life.
—KARL RITTER
That some good can be derived from every event is a better proposition than that everything happens for the best, which it assuredly does not.
—JAMES K. FEIBLEMAN
The worst thing in your life may contain seeds of the best. When you can see crisis as an opportunity, your life becomes not easier, but more satisfying.
—JOE KOGEL
Storms make trees take deeper roots.
—CLAUDE MCDONALD
in The Christian Word
Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.
—AFRICAN PROVERB
It is the wounded oyster that mends its shell w
ith pearl.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
—JOHN VANCE CHENEY
Some people are always grumbling that roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses.
—ALPHONSE KARR
He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity.
—BEN JONSON
Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
—HENRY FIELDING
You’ll never find a better sparring partner than adversity.
—WALT SCHMIDT
in Parklabrea News (Los Angeles)
A gem is not polished without rubbing, nor a man perfected without trials.
—CHINESE PROVERB
Drag your thoughts away from your troubles—by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it. It’s the healthiest thing a body can do.
—MARK TWAIN
Borrow trouble for yourself if that’s your nature, but don’t lend it to your neighbors.
—RUDYARD KIPLING
Rewards and Fairies
Don’t meet trouble halfway. It is quite capable of making the entire journey.
—BOB EDWARDS
Simple solutions seldom are.
—Forbes magazine
No one has completed his education who has not learned to live with an insoluble problem.
—EDMUND J. KIEFER
Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows.
—HELEN KELLER
When you can’t solve the problem, manage it.
—REV. ROBERT H. SCHULLER
Most problems precisely defined are already partially solved.
—HARRY LORAYNE
Memory Makes Money
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
—ABRAHAM MASLOW
Nothing lasts forever—not even your troubles.
—ARNOLD H. GLASOW
in Rotary “Scandal Sheet” (Graham, Texas)
People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.
—ANN LANDERS
The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
—DOLLY PARTON
The human capacity to fight back will always astonish doctors and philosophers. It seems, indeed, that there are no circumstances so bad and no obstacles so big that man cannot conquer them.
—JEAN TETREAU
How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.
—WILHELM VON HUMBOLDT
All blessings are mixed blessings.
—JOHN UPDIKE
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Life would not be life if a sorrow were sad, and a joy merry, from beginning to end.
—GERMAINE GUEVREMONT
En Pleine Terre
Night is the blotting paper for many sorrows.
—LITAUISCH
The darkest hour has only 60 minutes.
—MORRIS MANDEL
When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. And swing!
—LEO BUSCAGLIA
Every problem contains within itself the seeds of its own solution.
—EDWARD SOMERS
in National Enquirer
Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow.
—SWEDISH PROVERB
Little things console us because little things afflict us.
—BLAISE PASCAL
For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat and wrong.
—H. L. MENCKEN
A Mencken Chrestomathy
Inside every small problem is a large problem struggling to get out.
—PAUL HUGHES
People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.
—NEIL POSTMAN
The first step in solving a problem is to tell someone about it.
—JOHN PETER FLYNN
Some people suffer in silence louder than others.
—MORRIE BRICKMAN
Untold suffering seldom is.
—FRANKLIN P. JONES
Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three—all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.
—EDWARD EVERETT HALE
An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.
—G. K. CHESTERTON
IT IS THE LOOSE ENDS . . .
It is the loose ends with which men hang themselves.
—ZELDA FITZGERALD
Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.
—PAUL VALÉRY
Nothing is really lost. It’s just where it doesn’t belong.
—SUZANNE MUELLER
One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.
—A. A. MILNE
More things grow in the garden than the gardener sows.
—SPANISH PROVERB
Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it’s not all mixed up.
—A. A. MILNE
When one finds himself in a hole of his own making, it is a good time to examine the quality of workmanship.
—JON REMMERDE
in The Christian Science Monitor
WHEN LUCK ENTERS . . .
When luck enters, give him a seat!
—JEWISH PROVERB
A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
—JEAN DE LA FONTAINE
Fortune brings in some boats that are not steered.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
—MARK TWAIN
It’s hard to detect good luck—it looks so much like something you’ve earned.
—FRANK A. CLARK
Luck is the residue of design.
—BRANCH RICKEY
The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck.
—HECTOR BERLIOZ
Luck never gives; it only lends.
—SWEDISH PROVERB
Good luck is with the man who doesn’t include it in his plan.
—Graffiti
Thorough preparation makes its own luck.
—JOE POYER
The Contra
Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.
—OPRAH WINFREY
Miracles sometimes occur, but one has to work terribly hard for them.
—CHAIM WEIZMANN
Luck is not chance, it’s toil. Fortune’s expensive smile is earned.
—EMILY DICKINSON
One half of life is luck; the other half is discipline—and that’s the important half, for without discipline you wouldn’t know what to do with your luck.
—CARL ZUCKMAYER
With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well, too.
—YIDDISH PROVERB
Some people have all the luck. And they’re the ones who never depend on it.
—BOB INGHAM
There is no substitute for incomprehensible good luck.
—LYNNE ALPERN AND ESTHER BLUMENFELD
Oh, Lord, I Sound Just Like Mama
Serendipity is looking in a haystack for a needle and discovering the farmer’s daughter.
—Quoted by JULIUS H. COMROE JR. in Retrospectroscope
It is an all-too-human frailty to suppose that a favorable wind will blow forever.
—RICK BODE
First You Have to Row a Little Boat
It is perhaps a more fortunate destiny to have a taste for collecting shells than to be born a millionaire.
—ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Superstition is foolish, childish, primitive and irrational—but how much does it cost you to knock on wood?
—JUDITH VIORST
Love & Guilt & the Meaning of Life, Etc.
THE LIMITS OF THE POSSIBLE . . .
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Quotable Quotes Page 19