Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue.

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

Honestly, I just go to restaurants to eat so I won’t die. If there was a pill I could take in January and then I wouldn’t have to eat again for the rest of the year, I would take it. Of course, I wouldn’t want to sacrifice my chocolate cake and ice cream.

When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, ‚Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.‘

I sing and play the guitar, and I’m a walking, talking bacterial infection.

Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner’s inquest.

I remember straightening my hair because I wanted to be like everybody else, and now the fact that anybody would emulate what I do? It’s just funny.

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

The funny thing is people won’t let me pay for things. I’ll be in a restaurant and the manager will say, ‚Oh no, it’s on the house.‘

To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That’s why I don’t listen to anything that’s anonymous. But it’s hard; when there’s something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art.

Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

It’s never happened in history that every region in the world could affect every other region simultaneously. The Roman empire and the Chinese empire didn’t know much about each other and had no means of interacting. Now we have every continent able to reach every other.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

People are always asking me in interviews, ‚What do you think of foreign affairs?‘ I just say, ‚I’ve had a few.‘

Y’all are so cute and y’all talk so proper over here. I love England.

There used to be an old bad joke. I hope it’s not so much a good joke anymore. ‚Everybody’s from Scranton; no one’s in Scranton.‘

Any fact that needs to be disclosed should be put out now or as quickly as possible, because otherwise the bleeding will not end.

I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

Just talk to me as a father – not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?

God and I have a great relationship, but we both see other people.

If your man is a sports enthusiast, you may have to resign yourself to his spouting off in a monotone on a prize fight, football game or pennant race.

In this experiment, made on the 9th of October, 1876, actual conversation, backwards and forwards, upon the same line, and by the same instruments reciprocally used, was successfully carried on for the first time upon a real line of miles in length.

There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they laugh at.

Write in such a way as that you can be readily understood by both the young and the old, by men as well as women, even by children.

Do you think that when they asked George Washington for ID that he just whipped out a quarter?

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

Discretion of speech is more than eloquence, and to speak agreeably to him with whom we deal is more than to speak in good words, or in good order.

There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

There is one way to have a short but exciting conversation with me, and that is to move too slow.

I think we’re still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate.

I’ll tell you one thing, since I’m married, single people look absolutely ridiculous to me.

Those who write clearly have readers, those who write obscurely have commentators.

The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it’s usually lousy.

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

Frazier is so ugly that he should donate his face to the U.S. Bureau of Wild Life.

You have to be careful about how much you reveal to people that look up to you so much.

I know some of the best Dolly Parton jokes. I made ‚em up myself.

A friend of mine jokes that I have a painstaking royalty complex. Like maybe I was a duke in a past life.

I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it’s humorous, all the attention to it, because it’s hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that’s happened to me.

I laugh and joke, but I don’t get distracted very easily.

There is but one way for a president to deal with Congress, and that is continuously, incessantly, and without interruption. If it is really going to work, the relationship has got to be almost incestuous.

A lot of times, you could play me just the laughs from my set, and I could tell you, from the laugh, what the joke was. Because they match.

A lot of my rhymes are just to get chuckles out of people. Anybody with half a brain is going to be able to tell when I’m joking and when I’m serious.