The HyperTexts

The Best Funny Epigrams of All Time
The Best Humorous Epigrams and Quotes of All Time

This page contains some of the greatest humorous epigrams of all time, along with information about the people who penned them. Funny epigrams include the one-liners of comics and comedians like George Carlin and Chris Rock, the "zingers" of satirists like Mark Twain and Groucho Marx, and the wise and whimsical observances of writers like Dr. Seuss and Lewis Carroll. I have worked with the interests of students young and old in mind, so if you want to learn more about epigrams, and read the exemplars, hopefully you have found the right "launching pad."

My personal top ten producers of side-splitting epigrams are: Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Groucho Marx, Jon Stewart, Robin Williams

Some honorable mentions who might surprise you include: Muhammad Ali, Woody Allen, Yogi Berra, Phyllis Diller, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Marilyn Monroe, Dolly Parton, Ronald Reagan, Mae West

Related pages: Best Political Epigrams, Best Epigrams about Sex and Marriage, Best Epigrammatists, The Best Donald Trump Jokes, Tweets and Quotations, The Best Humorous Poems of All Time

A number of the epigrams on this page employ irony (saying the opposite of what one means, or saying something obliquely for purposes of humor and/or to make a point):

An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.—Will Rogers
Make crime pay: become a lawyer.—Will Rogers
Fools call wisdom foolishness.—Euripides, translation by Michael R. Burch
Little sparks may ignite great Infernos.—Dante, translation by Michael R. Burch
If you knew how hard I worked, you wouldn't call it "genius."—Michelangelo, translation by Michael R. Burch

But what, exactly, is an epigram, and what do the producers of great epigrams have in common? Well, "in short," epigrams are brief, pithy, hard-hitting sayings, and the great epigrammatists are keen students of humanity who know how to get their points across in the form of verbal wallops. So the best epigrams are often wise or snide commentary on human nature (or both). For example:

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.—Dorothy Parker
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.—H. L. Mencken
Your children need your presence more than your presents.—Jesse Jackson
My wife is a sex object ... every time I ask for sex, she objects!—Les Dawson
The best marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.—Michel de Montaigne
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.—Oscar Wilde
I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.—Groucho Marx
Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.—Jim Carrey
I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her!―Rodney Dangerfield

Jackson's epigram is a pun, or word-play. Parker's rhyming epigram is a stellar example of raillery, which has been defined as "light, teasing banter," "gentle mockery" and "good-humored satire or ridicule." It is also an example of drollery: something whimsically comical. Raillery can be both wonderfully funny, and wonderfully effective:

If you can't be a good example, you'll just have to be a horrible warning.—Catherine the Great
There is no glory in outstripping donkeys.—Marcus Valerius Martial
As blushing may make a whore seem virtuous, so modesty may make a fool seem sensible.—Jonathan Swift
If you think you're too small to make an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito.—Edith Sitwell
A person's a person, no matter how small.—Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel)
If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.—Lewis Carroll

Was the first great poet a woman? Sappho (circa 630–570 BC) predates many of her celebrated male peers. She remains stunningly fresh and relevant today. The poem below could have been written by a modern girl or woman doubtfully eying skimpy attire:

A short revealing frock?
It's just my luck
your lips were made to mock!
―Sappho, fragment 155, translation by Michael R. Burch

The imbecile constructs cages for everyone he knows,
while the sage (who has to duck his head whenever the moon glows)
keeps dispensing keys all night long
to the beautiful, rowdy, prison gang.
—Hafiz, loose translation by Michael R. Burch

I love the wisdom and spirit of Hafiz in this subversive (pardon the pun) little epigram. I can see Trump putting refugees in cages, while Hafiz goes around letting them out for a moondance!

The stand-up comedian's one-liner is another form of epigram. Here's a current example of the genre:

Donald Trump showed his birth certificate to reporters. Who cares about his birth certificate? I want to know if that thing on his head has had its vaccinations.―Craig Ferguson

The Best Donald Trump Jokes, Tweets and Quotations

Here's a bit of rather gentle raillery of my own, called "Saving Graces":

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter ...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.
—Michael R. Burch

My epigram is dedicated to Christians who claim they'll inherit heaven at the expense of everyone else. (If you question the idea that Einstein and Gandhi will go to "hell," please read Why "hell" is vanishing from the Bible.)

Perhaps at the opposite end of the spectrum from raillery would be waggery (the wisecrack, the bald-faced jest, the ribald joke which is sexual, excretory or somehow offensive, to someone):

A man who says he can see through a woman is missing a lot.—Groucho Marx
A man's only as old as the woman he feels.—Groucho Marx
Q: What's the difference between an enzyme and a hormone? A: You can't hear an enzyme.—Dorothy Parker
Marriage is like a bank account: you put it in, you take it out, you lose interest.—Irwin Corey

Another name for Marx's method is "the zinger." The zinger requires upsetting the applecart of our polite polities. But there are many other "flavors" of epigrams. One of my favorite categories is best exemplified by the Divine Oscar Wilde, who upsets the applecart in an entirely different way:

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.—Oscar Wilde

What a wickedly scathing line! This is a wonderful example of the bon mot ("good word"), the best way of saying something. There has never been a better critic of gossip, innuendo and scandal-mongering than Oscar Wilde (perhaps because so many prudes, busybodies and gossips considered him to be scandalous, when the real scandal was that they refused to mind their own business):

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.—Oscar Wilde

Wilde is every moralist's worst nightmare, because he was wise in the ways of the world and human nature, while moralists are usually up to their eyeballs in hypocrisy. Centuries before Wilde, Aristotle proved the ancient Greeks could be scintillantly scathing:

Wit is educated insolence.—Aristotle

What’s the hardest thing of all to do?
To see clearly with your own eyes what’s ahead of you.
―from “Xenia” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The epigram is the simple, elegant black dress of literature; it leaves nearly everything bared and yet still temptingly open to the imagination. The best epigrammatists produce belle lettres ("beautiful letters" or "fine writing") en brief ("in brief"). But there is as much diversity among epigrammatists as there is in the sea. Take the one below from the master of relativity himself, Albert Einstein. Einstein, who was quite the ladies' man, was asked to explain relativity. He chose to describe the perception of time as an aspect of human nature and physical attraction:

Sit next to a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. Sit on a red-hot stove for a minute, it seems like an hour. That's relativity!—Albert Einstein

Another popular form of the epigram is the limerick. Here's one that delves into the zanier aspects of relativity:

There once was a woman named Bright
who traveled much faster than light.
She set out one day
in a relative way
and came back the previous night!
—Unknown

Einstein's epigram might be assigned any of a number of sub-terms: leg-pulling, horseplay, whimsy, a monkeyshine . . . perhaps even a hoodwink, boondoggle or snow job (since the "relativity" being discussed has little to do with physics, but much to do with physiques, body chemistry and sex). Still, Einstein's epigram, whatever we choose to call it, contains considerable wisdom. But sometimes epigrams can be entirely for amusement, such as this one of mine. I call it "Nun Fun Undone":

Abbesses'
recesses
are not for excesses!
—Michael R. Burch

An epigram like mine that is entirely for the sake of humor might earn sobriquets like: tomfoolery, buffoonery, mummery, a chestnut, a gag, a ha-ha, a jape, a jest, a lark, a rib, a sally, a quirk, a whim, a vagary. A somewhat similar epigram, at least in intent, is the comic's one-liner, or quip. One of the most famous one-liners is:

Take my wife . . . please!—Rodney Dangerfield

One of the funnier types of epigram is the spoonerism, a genre of the pun, or word-play:

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.
—Dorothy Parker

Other types of epigrams play on words. A similar category is the chiasmus, which repeats the same or very similar words in a different order, often to scintillating effect:

It's not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, it's the size of the fight in the dog.—Dwight D. Eisenhower
It's not the men in your life that count, it's the life in your men.—Mae West
I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.—Ronald Reagan

In effect, a spoonerism is an aural chiasmus: the sounds of words are reversed, rather than the same or similar words being reversed. Then there is short light verse: poetry too un-serious about itself and its aims to assume literary airs. In its silliest and least "literary" forms, light verse may be called doggerel. Masters of English light verse include Lord Byron (the author of "Don Juan") and my personal favorite, Ogden Nash:

The turtle lives 'twixt plated decks
which practically conceal its sex.
I think it clever of the turtle
in such a fix to be so fertile.
—Ogden Nash

Here's a humorous epigram by a "serious" poet:

Was it for this I uttered prayers,
And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,
That now, domestic as a plate,
I should retire at half-past eight?
—Edna St. Vincent Millay

Epigrams can be found in every genre of writing. Here's one I love, by a sports columnist:

If you win, you’re colorful. If you lose, you’re incompetent.—David Climer

A poem of praise is an example of encomium (for instance, a eulogy). The opposite type of epigram, when offered as invective, is the epithet. An epithet defines or characterizes someone or something. In Homer's day epithets were often complimentary. But today epithets are generally non-complimentary, if not insulting or downright offensive. Modern epithets often descend into derogatory slang and racial invective. But in the hands of a master epigrammatist like Will Rogers, they can still be sublime in effect:

An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.—Will Rogers
Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.—Will Rogers
A fool and his money are soon elected.—Will Rogers

Political epigrams can be equally scathing, whether aimed at liberals, conservatives or politicians in general:

I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.—Will Rogers
A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.—Franklin D. Roosevelt
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.—Groucho Marx
As a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up.—Henry David Thoreau

A sub-genre of the epithet consists of racial, ethnic or cultural ribbing. Southerners often poke fun at themselves and their neighbors with "hillbilly humor":

You know you're a redneck if your family tree don't fork.—Unknown
You know you're a redneck if your cars sit on blocks and your house has wheels.—Unknown

Another genre of epigrams engages in parody and lampooning. Here's one I hope to someday include it in a book of poems to be titled Why I Left the Religious Right:

I've got Jesus's name on a wallet insert
and "Hell is for Queers" on the back of my shirt
and I uphold the Law,
for grace has a flaw:
the Church must have someone to drag through the dirt.
—Michael R. Burch

Miguel de Cervantes defined a proverb as "a short sentence based on long experience." There are, it seems, a bazillion other names for such bits of homey wisdom: adage, moral, homily, bromide, aphorism, apophthegm, axiom, dictum, maxim, motto, folk wisdom, platitude, motto, precept, saw, saying, truism, catchphrase, formula, gnome, pithy saying, etc. But alas!, many proverbs are boring and some are untrue, to boot. How many men got up early every morning, were poor as dirt, and died early deaths? Surely multitudes! But many epigrams contain both vital wisdom and sparkling humor. Sometimes the epigram is the salvo a brilliant, battle-savvy epigrammatist launches against human ignorance, intolerance, cruelty and insanity:

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.—Mark Twain

To determine the truth of Twain's remark, just inquire with any black American slave, or any Native American who walked the Trail of Tears, or any Palestinian who's been herded inside the walled ghetto of Gaza and had the gates slammed shut in his face. None of them will praise the white man's self-avowed "democratic ideals" or his "Judeo-Christian ethics." If you don't agree with Twain, please be assured that he is the keener observer and savvier student of history and human nature. But if you read his epigrams, you may quickly close the gap! And I believe Einstein was in general agreement with Twain when he said ironically:

I don't know what weapons will be used in World War III, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.—Albert Einstein

One has only to be able to put two and two together, to understand why Twain's remark relates to Einstein's. Just consider the millions of Palestinians who suffer inside squalid refugee camps and walled ghettoes, thanks to the "democracies" of the USA, Great Britain and Israel, while 1.5 billion Muslims see and share their agony. If we don't understand why denying other people freedom, human rights and dignity will cause us to end up fighting with sticks and stones after a nuclear Armageddon . . . well, we're just not as observant or wise as Twain and Einstein. But we certainly can't say they didn't warn us, as did an American president who was a master of the chiasmus:

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.—John F. Kennedy, Jr.

When we consider the expensive, bloody follies of the U.S. government in the Middle East, we can only wish our politicians had heeded Will Rogers:

If there is one thing that we do worse than any other nation, it is try and manage somebody else's affairs.― Will Rogers

Following in the same vein of questioning whether human beings are using their advanced brains to "think" when they do such things as wage war, here are two related, ironic epigrams by one of my favorite contemporary writers:

Thinking is often claimed but seldom proven.— T. Merrill
It must be hard being brilliant with no way to prove it.— T. Merrill

Have we remained savages, while only claiming to be an intelligent species? Mark Twain investigated the "wisdom" of Christian dogma and said:

I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.—Mark Twain

The great epigrammatists often arise from the ranks of the disaffected and oppressed. Oscar Wilde, perhaps the greatest epigrammatist of them all, served time in Reading Gaol for "indecency" (he had the temerity to be flamboyantly gay). Twain wrote volumes exposing and expounding on the massive illogic of orthodox Christianity (he had the temerity to be a heretic, but had to hold up the publication of his anti-Christian opus Letters from the Earth for fifty years after his death, in order to protect his family from fire-breathing Christian fundamentalists). Einstein produced many of his epigrams against the backdrop of Nazi Germany (he had the temerity to be a brilliant Jew).  Today many of our best epigrammatists are women who combine sharp minds with even sharper tongues:

Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.—Maryon Pearson
A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who never owned a car.—Carrie Snow
The phrase "working mother" is redundant.—Jane Sellman
If high heels were so wonderful, men would still be wearing them.—Sue Grafton
If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.—Margaret Thatcher
Grace Kelly did everything Fred Astaire did: walking backwards, in high heels!—Unknown

Here's a similar epigram that I absolutely love, although it creates something of a dichotomy:

When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.—Elayne Boosler

Female politicians like Margaret Thatcher may be somewhat at odds (or loose ends) with female comedians like Elayne Boosler, since Thatcher wasn't above an invasion herself (of the Falkland Islands). But Boosler hammers the human funnybone nonetheless. She doesn't have to be perfect, just witty and succinct enough to make us blink, then think.

The stupendous epigrams above prove women's brains are every bit as good as men's, as they extract Eve's revenge at the expense of men's prehistoric prejudices. Here's my favorite epigram in this genre:

Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.—Charlotte Whitton

A great female epigrammatist can use her razor-sharp wit to deflate bigotry:

I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I'm not dumb, and also I'm not blonde.—Dolly Parton

Has anyone ever made a better case for the combinatory advantages of brains, wigs and peroxide? (I will refrain from mentioning Dolly's other, even more glamorous advantages.)

Phyllis Dillerisms

His finest hour lasted a minute and a half. — Phyllis Diller
I have a tremendous sex drive. My boyfriend lives forty miles away. — Phyllis Diller
A bachelor is a guy who never made the same mistake once. — Phyllis Diller
Any time three New Yorkers get into a cab without an argument, a bank has just been robbed. — Phyllis Diller

Housework can't kill you, but why take a chance? —  Phyllis Diller
Best way to get rid of kitchen odors: Eat out. —  Phyllis Diller
The only time I ever enjoyed ironing was the day I accidentally got gin in the steam iron. — Phyllis Diller
I want my children to have all the things I couldn't afford. Then I want to move in with them. — Phyllis Diller
Children threaten to run away from home. That's the only thing that keeps some parents going. — Phyllis Diller
Tranquilizers work only if you follow the advice on the bottle: keep away from children. — Phyllis Diller
Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing. — Phyllis Diller
We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve years telling them to sit down and shut up. — Phyllis Diller

Old age is when the liver spots show through your gloves. — Phyllis Diller
My photographs don't do me justice, they just look like me. — Phyllis Diller
You know you're old if they have discontinued your blood type. — Phyllis Diller
I thought getting old would take longer. — Phyllis Diller
Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age. As your beauty fades, so will his eyesight. — Phyllis Diller
The reason women don't play football is because 11 of them would never wear the same outfit in public. — Phyllis Diller

What I don't like about office Christmas parties is looking for a  job the next day. — Phyllis Diller
The reason the golf pro tells you to keep your head down is so you can't see him laughing. — Phyllis Diller

Socrates suggested that we define our terms, so for my purposes here I will use the primary term "epigram" and define it with Webster as a "terse, sage or witty and often paradoxical saying." Paradox can be both enlightening and amusing. Here's a stellar example by a contemporary writer:

Nowadays we make quick work of our courtships; it's our divorces that we spend a lot of time on.—Richard Moore

Paradoxical, indeed! But some epigrams are so paradoxical they seem to be best taken for purposes of amusement and bemusement only:

You can observe a lot just by watching.—Yogi Berra
There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em.—Yogi Berra
Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded.—Yogi Berra
The future ain't what it used to be.—Yogi Berra
I didn't really say all the things I said.—Yogi Berra

To give us the most possible good material to work with, I will construe the term "epigram" to include one-liners, zingers, spoonerisms, witticisms, aphorisms, saws, pithy sayings, epitaphs, epithets, proverbs, doggerel, the chiasmus (I decline to use the strange plural: chiasmi), brief quotes, short poems, hillbilly humor, maxims, truisms, the wisdom of the ages, etc. I will take as my motto and my guiding light:

Brevity is the soul of wit.—William Shakespeare

One takes one's literary life into one's own hands when one attempts to go beyond the Masters, but then again "nothing ventured, nothing gained" (an epigram and a perfectly good truism), so please allow me to suggest that:

If brevity is the soul of wit
then brevity and levity
are the whole of it.
—Michael R. Burch

But then a good epigrammatist won't let us wriggle easily off the hook of a quick assumption:

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.—Dorothy Parker

The great epigrammatists will invariably do one of two things: they will either amuse and bemuse us into wisdom, or they will scathe us into wisdom. Let me give some quick examples to illustrate what I mean, before we launch this Enterprise off for the stars, to battle the Klingons (pun on "cling-ons"):

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.—Unknown

To be safe on the Fourth,
Don't buy a fifth on the third.
—James H Muehlbauer

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.
—Dorothy Parker

The epigrams above certainly amuse and bemuse, and while most people are unlikely to heed them, they point out the perils of drinking too much: the loss of brain cells, hangovers, fireworks that explode in our hands, etc. Other epigrams may be less overtly funny, but still entertaining and enlightening:

I can resist everything except temptation.—Oscar Wilde
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.—Oscar Wilde
Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.—William Blake
There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.—Mark Twain
To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind for it.—Michel de Montaigne
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.—Mark Twain
Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.—Mark Twain

What some of the world's greatest writers and wits seem to be telling us, if I apprehend them correctly, is that orthodox morality is dubious at best, if it is morality at all. The great wits listen to sermons about sex being a "sin" and roll their eyeballs toward the heavens, then write scathing epigrams as a way of possibly curing man of his folly. They know the preacher who lectures his flock on the "evils" of sex is just as randy as the rest of them, and probably less inhibited (unless he's a septuagenarian and his hormones have "petered" out, pun intended). Wilde, Blake and Twain understood human nature and were honest about it, and themselves. Twain pointed out that any red-blooded man would give up any possible shot at heaven for a few blissful seconds with the Eve of his dreams. Anyone who claims the Holy Spirit cures human beings of sexual desire is obviously wrong, because human sexuality is not a "disease." But I digress. To continue . . . on these pages you will find some of the wittiest, funniest, pithiest and scathingest things human beings have said, to this late date, on our planet.

My favorite epigrammatists are Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain. Other famous wits sampled herein include Aristotle, Ambrose Bierce, Martial, Ogden Nash and Plato, just to drop a few good names. You won't find many platitudes like "neither a borrower nor a lender be" because my preference is for wince-and-wisdom-inducing humor. After all, Shakespeare was undoubtedly poking fun at Polonius, the banal moralist, whose own children were basket cases. T. S. Eliot "got it," as evidenced by his Prufrock. Most readers don't. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

One of my all-time favorite epigrams consists of this exchange of repartee between Winston Churchill and Lady Astor:

Lady Astor: "Winston, you're drunk!"
Winston Churchill: "But I shall be sober in the morning and you, madam, will still be ugly."
Lady Astor: "Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your tea."
Winston Churchill: "Madam, if I were your husband, I'd drink it."

Robert Frost, probably America's last major poet, said "poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom." I would like to paraphrase him, if I may, and say:

Epigrams delight us into wisdom.—Michael R. Burch

Which is not to say that they invariably make us happy! Below is my favorite among my own epigrams; it illustrates, perhaps, how much can be squeezed into a tight compartment while still leaving breathing room for "special effects" like meter, rhyme and alliteration:

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.
—Michael R. Burch

In brief, the epigram is the Harry Houdini of literature.

An Epigram about Epigrams, giving Honor where Honor is Due
 
If, with the literate, I am
Impelled to try an epigram,
I never seek to take the credit;
We all assume that Oscar said it.
—Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker is both succinct and correct: If I hear a really good epigram and can't immediately identify its source, my first guess will almost invariably be the Divine Oscar Wilde. So without further ado, let's kick off this show by surrendering the stage to the greatest epigrammatist of them all.

The Oscar Goes to Wilde: Humorous Epigrams by the Divine Oscar Wilde

One should always play fairly, when one has the winning cards.
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
I believe God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.
Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
Always forgive your enemies: nothing annoys them so much.
The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable we are compelled to alter it every six months.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decencies without civilization in between.
To disagree with three-fourths of the British public is one of the first requisites of sanity.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Do not speak ill of society . . . only people who can't get in do that.
It is a much cleverer thing to talk nonsense than to listen to it.
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.
Woman begins by resisting a man's advances and ends by blocking his retreat.
Women are made to be loved, not understood.
A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
How marriage ruins a man! It is as demoralizing as cigarettes, and far more expensive.
It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Men always want to be a woman's first love; women like to be a man's last romance.
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.
To get back my youth I would do anything except exercise, get up early, or be respectable.
I want my food dead. Not sick, not dying, dead.
I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read.

If every witty thing that’s said was true,
Oscar Wilde, the world would worship You!
—Michael R. Burch

The Twain Well Met: Humorous Epigrams by Mark Twain

It's not the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that bother me, it's the parts I do understand.
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and less trouble.
Always do right. That will gratify some of the people, and astonish the rest.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man's, I mean.
I don't like to commit myself about heaven and hell; I have friends in both places.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.
Denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.
Facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you do know that ain't so.
Don't tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don't tell them where they know the fish.
It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.
Anyone who can only think of only one way to spell a word lacks imagination.
If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do, you are misinformed.
Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Familiarity breeds contempt, and children.
What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.
There is probably no distinctly American criminal class, except Congress.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. Now suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I've done it thousands of times.
Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.
Good breeding means concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of others.
There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man's notion that he is less savage than the other savages.
It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
If at first you don't succeed, try again. Then quit; there's no use being a damn fool about it.
In our country we have three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

The Elegant Epigrams and Side-Splitting Spoonerisms of Dorothy Parker

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.
If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.
I've never been a millionaire but I just know I'd be darling at it.
This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B. [Speaking of Katharine Hepburn]
The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant―and let the air out of the tires.

Pierced by Bierce: Epigrams by Ambrose Bierce

Applause, n. The echo of a platitude.
Bigot, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
Love, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate.

The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Wilson Reagan

I do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.
I know it's hard when you're up to your armpits in alligators to remember you came here to drain the swamp.
We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.
I've always stated that the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth is a government program.
I did turn 75 today — but remember, that's only 24 Celsius.
I have wondered at times what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
Detente — isn't that what a farmer has with his turkey — until Thanksgiving?
There are advantages to being elected President. The day after I was elected, I had my high school grades classified "top secret."
I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.
The difference between them and us is that we want to check government spending and they want to spend government checks.
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

Epigrams about Epigrams

What is an epigram? A dwarfish whole;
Its body brevity, and wit its soul.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief.
—William Shakespeare

To write an epigram, cram.
If you lack wit, scram!
—Michael R. Burch

Humor Equals Wit Times Genius Squared: The Epigrams of Albert Einstein

Whoever set himself up as a judge of Truth is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the former.
I don't know about World War III, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax.
Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn one's living at it.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.
To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.
Sit next to a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. Sit on a red-hot stove for a minute, it seems like an hour. That's relativity.

Epigrams Reign: Michel de Montaigne

Man cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen.
A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
No man is a hero to his own valet.
Marriage: a market which has nothing free but the entrance.
It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

The Church Gets the Burch Rod

Life’s saving graces are love, pleasure, laughter ...
wisdom, it seems, is for the Hereafter.
—Michael R. Burch

If God has the cattle on a thousand hills, why does he need my tithes?—Michael R. Burch

Abbesses'
recesses
are not for excesses!
—Michael R. Burch

If God
is good
half the Bible
is libel.
—Michael R. Burch

Epigrammatic Poems about Poets and Poetry:

I'm tired of Love: I'm still more tired of Rhyme.
But Money gives me pleasure all the time.
—Hilaire Belloc

Poets aren't very useful
Because they aren't consumeful or produceful.
—Ogden Nash

Readers and listeners praise my books;
You swear they're worse than a beginner's.
Who cares? I always plan my dinners
To please the diners, not the cooks.
—Marcus Valerius Martial, translated by R. L. Barth

Though Edgar Poe writes a lucid prose
Just and rhetorical without exertion,
It loses all lucidity, God knows,
In the single, poorly rendered English version.
—Thom Gunn

Celebrity Inebriety

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me
than a frontal lobotomy.
—Dorothy Parker

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.—Unknown

Lady Astor: "Winston, you're drunk!"
Winston Churchill: "But I shall be sober in the morning and you, madam, will still be ugly."
Lady Astor: "Mr Churchill, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your tea."
Winston Churchill: "Madam, if I were your husband, I'd drink it."

To be safe on the Fourth,
Don't buy a fifth on the third.
—James H Muehlbauer

Dowager Power

Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission.—Eleanor Roosevelt
If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.—Catherine the Great
In politics, if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.—Margaret Thatcher

Here lies my wife: here let her lie!
Now she's at rest—and so am I.
—John Dryden

Take my wife . . . please!—Henny Youngman, later adopted by Rodney Dangerfield

The Death of Class

I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
—Alexander Pope

He first deceased; she for a little tried
To live without him, liked it not, and died.
—Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639), on the death of Sir Albert Morton's wife

Her whole life is an epigram: smack smooth, and neatly penned,
Platted quite neat to catch applause, with a sliding noose at the end.
—William Blake

Type Cast

a politician is an arse upon
which everyone has sat except a man
—e. e. cummings

This Humanist whom no beliefs constrained
Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.
—J. V. Cunningham

A Word to the Wise, by the Wordwise

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.—Aristotle
Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.—Adlai Stevenson

Sagely Aging

Old age ain't no place for sissies.—Bette Davis
I can't afford to die. It would wreck my image.—Jack LaLane (a fitness guru)
Being "over the hill" is much better than being under it.—Unknown
The reward of suffering is experience.—Aeschylus
I refuse to think of them as chin hairs. I think of them as stray eyebrows.—Janette Barber
The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.—Helen Hayes
Some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them.—Unknown
Adults are just obsolete children.—Dr. Seuss
Inside every older lady is a younger lady . . . wondering what the hell happened.—Cora Armstrong

Sports Shorts

You can observe a lot just by watching.—Yogi Berra
There are some people who, if they don't already know, you can't tell 'em.—Yogi Berra
Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded.—Yogi Berra
The future ain't what it used to be.—Yogi Berra
So I'm ugly. So what? I never saw anyone hit with his face.—Yogi Berra
I didn't really say all the things I said.—Yogi Berra

A Smidgen of Religion

Don’t give up. Moses was once a basket case.—Unknown
Forbidden fruit creates many jams.—Unknown
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.—Voltaire
Some people attend church three times in their lives: when they're hatched, when they're matched, and when they're dispatched.—Unknown

Women and We Men (Wee Men?)

A man's got to do what a man's got to do. A woman must do what he can't.—Rhonda Hansome
Behind every successful man is a surprised woman.—Maryon Pearson
A male gynecologist is like an auto mechanic who never owned a car.—Carrie Snow
The phrase "working mother" is redundant.—Jane Sellman
If high heels were so wonderful, men would still be wearing them.—Sue Grafton
I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man, I keep his house.—Zsa Zsa Gabor
I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on.—Roseanne Barr
If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.—Margaret Thatcher
When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.—Elayne Boosler
I'm not offended by dumb blonde jokes because I'm not dumb, and I'm also not blonde.—Dolly Parton
Whatever women must do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.—Charlotte Whitton

Greek Speak

Wit is educated insolence.—Aristotle
Money is the wise man's religion.—Euripides
By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.—Socrates

Where there's a Will there's a Way: the Epigrams of Will Rogers

An economist's guess is liable to be as good as anybody else's.
Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.
A fool and his money are soon elected.
Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock.
I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.
The U.S. Senate opens with a prayer and closes with an investigation.
Congress in session is like when the baby gets hold of a hammer.
You can't say civilization don't advance...in every war they kill you in a new way.
America is becoming so educated that ignorance will soon be a novelty.
An ignorant person is one who doesn't know what you have just found out.
An onion can make people cry but there's never been a vegetable that can make people laugh.
Buy land. They ain't making any more of the stuff.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Everything is changing. People are taking comedians seriously and politicians as a joke.
Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier 'n puttin' it back in.
The only way you can beat the lawyers is to die with nothing.
The United States never lost a war or won a conference.
There ought to be one day, just one, when there is open season on senators.

Woody Allen

How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?
I can't listen to Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like a large deposit in a Swiss bank.
Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.
Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering ... and it's all over much too soon!
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.
Most of the time I don't have much fun. The rest of the time I don't have any fun at all.
My education was dismal. I went to a series of schools for mentally disturbed teachers.
Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.
To you I'm an atheist; to God, I'm the Loyal Opposition.
Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?
You can live to be 100 if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be 100.
The lion and the lamb shall lie down together but the lamb won't get much sleep.
It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.
If it turns out that there is a God, I don't think that he's evil. The worst you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.

Jonathan Swift

He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Promises and pie-crusts are made to be broken.
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.

Douglas Adams

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
You live and learn. Or at any rate, you live.
I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.
Anyone capable of getting made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news.

John Adams

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.

Nota Bene: the Notable Epigrams of Ben Franklin

A man between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
Fish and visitors smell after three days.
Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.
To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.
We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

Miscellanea

Quoting one is plagiarism; quoting many is research.—Unknown
Space is a dangerous place . . . especially if it's between your ears!—Unknown
The man who can't make mistakes, can't make anything.—Abraham Lincoln
Success comes in cans, not can't s.—Unknown
When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.—Franklin D. Roosevelt
I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.—Jennifer Whenifer
Every time I close the door on reality, it comes in through the windows.—Jennifer Whenifer

More Epigrams of Richard Moore:

I am very concerned that the new formalism will revert to the old stodginess.
It is a terrible limitation on poets, just to write about poets. How are other people going to be interested in their poems?
When I read Homer, I sometimes have the feeling that we have been starving to death for 3000 years.

Government and the arts, alas, they just don't mix.
Your bed of roses, bureaucrat, is full of pricks.

Related pages: Best Political Epigrams, Best Epigrams about Sex and Marriage, Best Epigrammatists, The Best Donald Trump Jokes, Tweets and Quotations, The Best Humorous Poems of All Time

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