I had some eyeglasses. I was walking down the street when suddenly the prescription ran out.

Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

There are people who want to make men’s lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?

I sometimes have a tendency to walk on the dark side.

I do all my own stunts. I’m kidding.

Joe Frazier is so ugly that when he cries, the tears turn around and go down the back of his head.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

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

What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.

If I studied all my life, I couldn’t think up half the number of funny things passed in one session of congress.

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

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‚O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.‘ And God granted it.

I often joke that 100 years from now I hope people are saying, ‚Dang, she looks good for her age!‘

In 1969, I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

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.

I feel lucky that I can have people laugh solidly for a whole hour by just saying what I think and getting paid for it.

He is winding the watch of his wit; by and by it will strike.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.

The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again.

Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.

A lot of people think I’m a comedian.

I am odd-looking. I sometimes think I look like a funny Muppet.

I must confess, I was born at a very early age.

It doesn’t make a difference what temperature a room is, it’s always room temperature.

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.

When I walk outside, people have something to say about it.

I would never win an award for not loving pizza.

It’s a funny thing that when a man hasn’t anything on earth to worry about, he goes off and gets married.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

When things are really dismal, you can laugh, or you can cave in completely.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

The great thing about having a bunch of kids is they just remind you that you’re the person who takes them to go poop!

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

I don’t know who I touch and who I don’t. I work hard trying to make people laugh. I try to do the kind of stuff that made me laugh growing up. I don’t have any secrets. I don’t know the reasons I’ve been so well received.

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.

Take my wife… Please!

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.

We’re a phenomenally snobby society, and it’s such a rich seam. The middle class is so funny: it’s the class I know best, and it’s the class where you find the most pretension, so that’s what makes the middle classes so funny.

Don’t be getting sloppy drunk and telling them dirty jokes.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.

I make fun of situations and try and find the humor in things, but it’s never at the expense of the other guy.

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.

Someone once threw me a small, brown, hairy kiwi fruit, and I threw a wastebasket over it until it was dead.

A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.

Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they’re eating sandwiches.

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

What’s with you men? Would hair stop growing on your chest if you asked directions somewhere?

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

I’m not a serious person, and I don’t like serious people.

I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.