I don't know why it is we are in such a hurry to get up when we fall down. You might think we would lie there and rest for a while.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

A joke is not a thing but a process, a trick you play on the listener's mind. You start him off toward a plausible goal, and then by a sudden twist you land him nowhere at all or just where he didn't expect to go.

A smile is the universal welcome.

Robert Benchley has a style that is weak and lies down frequently to rest.

I don't know why it is we are in such a hurry to get up when we fall down. You might think we would lie there and rest for a while.

A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke.

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.

Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together.

A liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything.

Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails.

The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness.

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.

The worst enemy of human hope is not brute facts, but men of brains who will not face them.

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.

Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind.

Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance.

Dogs laugh but they laugh with their tails.

Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind.

Patriotism is one of the unalterable facts of man's nature. It is a virtue if you like it, and a vice if you don't like it.

I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.

The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.

Simple ideas lie within the reach only of complex minds.

The Gorillaz cartoons seem more real to me than the actual people on TV. Because at least you know that there's some intelligence behind the cartoons, and there's a lot of work that's gone into it, so it can't all be just a lie.

Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.

Many have said of Alchemy, that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines.

I don't like guys who will lie down and take it. I want someone who'll fight back. I like people who can argue well.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.

The lie is a condition of life.

When I was 21, I got into a motorcycle accident while traveling in Europe and I had to lie around a lot in the aftermath, which was really the first time in my life that I became really focused and inspired to write.

No lie ever reaches old age.

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

If you take a lie and allow your desire for the truth, you'll end up with some truth - not fact, but something that gets you closer to the truth. That's what we want. When we go to a play, we need to be assured that the experience we're having.

It is all right for the lion and the lamb to lie down together if they are both asleep, but if one of them begins to get active, it is dangerous.

I can't believe that we would lie in our graves wondering if we had spent our living days well. I can't believe that we would lie in our graves dreaming of things that we might have been.

When we don't have information, we go to the simplest outlook, to black and white. But then we have to lie to ourselves. Black is never as black as you're painting it and white is never as white.

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

As of today, we do not need expert reports by the authoritative analytical institutions to realise that the reasons for such a situation in our community lie in global inequality, poverty and illiteracy.

When Shakespeare was writing, he wasn't writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.

A soil, exhausted by the long culture of Pagan empires, was to lie fallow for a still longer period.

Even a secret agent can't lie to a Jewish mother.

A great lie is like a great fish on dry land; it may fret and fling and make a frightful bother, but it cannot hurt you. You have only to keep still, and it will die of itself.

I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

Look, all administrations, all governments lie, all officials lie and nothing they say is to be believed. That's a pretty good rule.

Look, if America - if being an American means anything, it means not having to lie under oath, not even for the president.

Never chase a lie. Let it alone, and it will run itself to death.

Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.