Good English
Political Wit and Wisdom:
"It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose your own." Ronald Reagan said it, but Harry Truman said it first! Reagan was perhaps a little more original when he was asked how a meeting with South Africa's Bishop Desmond Tutu had gone, and he replied: "So so."A verbal barb directed by Benjamin Disraeli at the "G O M" (Grand Old Man) his rival in politics at the time was that G O M probably meant "God's Only Mistake".
"The French do not have a word for 'entrepreneur'" George W Bush
Bush was also described by Kurt Vonnegut as: "So dumb that it wouldn't surprise me if he thought Peter Pan was a washbasin in a house of ill-repute."
"She looked like the sort of lady who would keep a manicure appointment on the morning of Armageddon." Probably the best description of Jacqueline Kennedy, by a crew member, when she first went on board the yacht Christina.
Said by Winston Churchill at the Yalta conference of 1945 when he argued that the world must not be totally dominated by the victors of World War II:
"The eagle should permit the small birds to sing, and care not wherefor they sang."
"A couple of very tall penguins came into the shop this morning, on reflection they may well have been short nuns, because one of them said in a lovely Irish accent: 'We are from the Sisters of Poverty and were wondering if you would be prepared to make a donation.' I replied: 'I'm afraid that I am subject to a higher authority, though not as high as your Higher Authority, and I am not permitted to give away the company's money.' They left quite happily. Of course they may have been German parachutists with a punctuality problem."
Simon Richelieu Hard Liquor, Soft Sell.
"For an instant the years fell away from the Hon Galahad Threepwood, and something that was not of this world went whispering through the garden."
P G Wodehouse. Heavy Weather.
Galahad was in the gardens of Blandings Castle with the daughter of his first great love. When he was a young man the family had sent him away to South Africa to prevent him marrying her because she was a "theatrical".
Show Business:
On being asked if he had ever played the Glasgow Empire Max Miller replied: "I'm a comic not a missionary."
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work.... I want to achieve it through not dying." Woody Allen
Valentine Dyall, the well known English actor "The Man in Black" eventually appeared in court, petitioning for bankruptcy. When asked by the examining judge as to what he ascribed his fall from grace, he is said to have replied: "Two and a half mile handicap hurdle races."
Streetwise and Legal:
(incorporating Carman's Corner and Luxury One-Liners)
George Carman:
'Chaque a son gout.' (pause) 'as the farmer said when he kissed the pig.'
David Mellor, 'behaved like an ostrich and put his head in the sand, thereby exposing his thinking parts'.
Ken Dodd's taxmen: 'Some accountants are comedians, but comedians are never accountants.'
