Verbal humor Quotes

I tried to think of a witty play on Every picture tells a thousand words, but then the whole word/picture thing collapsed on me.

I could dance with you till the cows come home. Better still, I'll dance with the cows and you come home." Groucho Marx was never one to pass up an opportunity for a play on words and this occurs in his dialogue of the 1933 film Duck Soup.

My puns are not trivial. They are quadrivial

A pun is the lowest form of humor—when you don't think of it first.

Puns are little "plays on words" that a certain breed of person loves to spring on you and then look at you in a certain self-satisfied way to indicate that he thinks that you must think that he is by far the cleverest person on Earth now that Benjamin Franklin is dead, when in fact what you are thinking is that if this person ever ends up in a lifeboat, the other passengers will hurl him overboard by the end of the first day even if they have plenty of food and water.

To speak algebraically, Mr. M. is execrable, but Mr. G. is (x + 1)- ecrable.

I don't have a lot of physical comedy instincts. I'm more verbal.

When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, and maybe of India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language.

Mom," said Peter, "nobody thinks you're a lackwit, if that's what you're worried about." Lackwit? In what musty drawer of some dead English professor's dust-covered desk did you find that word? I assure you that never in my worst nightmares did I ever suppose that I was a lackwit.

My whole family can talk. They are all car salesmen. They are all funny.

If you compulsively pun you are called a paronomasiac.

For my own part I think no innocent species of wit or pleasantry should be suppressed: and that a good pun may be admitted among the smaller excellencies of lively conversation.

I have this little thing that people call Keegan-ese, where I don't speak English words at all. I just say stuff like, "You gotta toish the doish and you gotta maloish the hoish."

Puns are the highest form of literature.

Nobody can swashbuckle a quick-witted riposte like Emma Thompson. She's a writer, a real writer, and she has a relish for the well-chosen word.

I probably carry a fair amount of sarcasm in my daily life.

When your name is Twinkle, you are a bookworm, and a fat child, then you have to be ready to be made fun of. As a child, I used my fists a lot, but then the tongue seemed like a better option. So I started using words as a sword to jab fun at myself.

When I say, 'I can't stay long, I'm in-between meals,' that plays differently on the radio than it does in person. So I have to pick material that works because the words are funny, not just because of the images.

I get verbal diarrhea in the writers' room. I just tell everyone a million anecdotes and stories and craziness, and we all double up on the floor laughing.

I love British cursing - the cadence of it, the joy in the sound of the words, and the vulgarity of it.

Words played an important part in my growing up. Not only the written word... but words that flew through the air: jokes, riddles, puns.

Many species of wit are quite mechanical; these are the favorites of witlings, whose fame in words scarce outlives the remembrance of their funeral ceremonies.

Writing for radio really focuses the mind, because you can't rely on thinking "Oh, just pull a funny face at the end of this sketch." You've got to try to work on the words.

[On Italian:] One may almost call it a language that talks of itself, and always seems more witty than its speakers.

There is no kind of false wit which has been so recommended by the practice of all ages, as that which consists in a jingle of words, and is comprehended under the general name of punning.