22 English quotes
Witty one-liners from famous humorists. A good test of your English: each joke is explained.
– Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
Meaning: The joke is that temptation is the only thing you ever need to resist, so saying you can resist everything else means you have no self-control at all.
– Mark Twain, New York Journal (1897)
Meaning: A newspaper wrongly reported that Twain was dying, so he calmly replied that he was very much alive. The humour comes from describing something completely false as just "an exaggeration". It is usually misquoted as "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
– Often attributed to Albert Einstein
Meaning: The joke is that human stupidity is so huge it seems even more certainly endless than the universe.
“I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member.”
– Groucho Marx, Groucho and Me (1959)
Meaning: A joke about low self-esteem: if a club is willing to accept someone like him, it can't be a very good club.
“I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”
– Oscar Wilde, The Remarkable Rocket (1888)
Meaning: The speaker thinks he is brilliant, but actually admits that he talks nonsense. Wilde is laughing at people who are proud of sounding clever.
“It's not that I'm afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens.”
– Woody Allen, Without Feathers (1975)
Meaning: He pretends he's not scared of death, but of course you can't die without being there, so he is clearly very scared.
– J. M. Barrie, The Admirable Crichton (1902)
Meaning: Young people often think they know everything. By saying he is "not young enough", the speaker jokes that wisdom actually means knowing how much you don't know.
– P. G. Wodehouse, The Man Upstairs (1914)
Meaning: A cheeky "rule" that sounds logical but is really an excuse never to say sorry. Good people don't need an apology, and bad people will use it against you, so why bother?
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.”
– Mark Twain, More Maxims of Mark (1927)
Meaning: "Clothes make the man" is an old saying meaning that how you dress affects how people see you. Twain takes it literally: people with no clothes on aren't taken seriously at all.
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”
– Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt (2002)
Meaning: He says he loves deadlines, but the joke is that he always misses them. He imagines a deadline flying past him like a fast car.
– Terry Pratchett, Diggers (1990)
Meaning: "An open mind" means being willing to consider new ideas. Pratchett pictures it as a real open container that annoying people keep trying to fill with their opinions.
“Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else.”
– Will Rogers, The Illiterate Digest (1924)
Meaning: We laugh easily at other people's bad luck, but the same thing doesn't seem funny at all when it happens to us.
“When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad, I'm better.”
– Mae West, I'm No Angel (1933)
Meaning: She cheekily suggests that being "bad" (naughty and flirtatious) is even more fun, and she's even better at it.
– Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope (1926)
Meaning: A short, rhyming joke poem about the old stereotype that men don't flirt with women who wear glasses because they look too serious.
“All my life, I've always wanted to be somebody, but I see now I should have been more specific.”
– Lily Tomlin, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (1985)
Meaning: "To be somebody" means to be important or successful. The joke takes it literally: she is already a somebody (a person), so she should have chosen exactly who to be.
“If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning.”
– Catherine Aird, His Burial Too (1973)
Meaning: If people can't learn from your good behaviour, at least they can learn from your mistakes by seeing what not to do.
– Jerry Seinfeld
Meaning: If people fear public speaking more than dying, then logically they would rather be the dead person at a funeral than the one giving the speech.
– George Carlin, Carlin on Campus (1984)
Meaning: Every driver thinks their own speed is perfect and judges everyone else. The joke shows how we always see ourselves as the reasonable one.
– Often attributed to Steven Wright
Meaning: Page numbers are the easiest part of a book and don't count as writing. He has done nothing real, but says it as if it were progress.
– Mitch Hedberg
Meaning: "Follow your dreams" means work hard toward your goals. Hedberg treats dreams like friends going out, and lazily decides to meet them there later instead.
“A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.”
– Emo Philips
Meaning: The computer is smarter at chess, but it can't fight. He comforts himself by "winning" at something the computer can't do at all.
– Rita Rudner
Meaning: It starts like a romantic line about finding "the one", then surprises us: the special person is someone to annoy, not just to love.
