 A poet in history is divine, but a poet in the next room is a joke. |
| Robert Benchley has a style that is weak and lies down frequently to rest. |
| It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor. |
| People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo. |
| 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. |
| Emotion is the surest arbiter of a poetic choice, and it is the priest of all supreme unions in the mind. |
| The worst enemy of human hope is not brute facts, but men of brains who will not face them. |
| A smile is the universal welcome. |
| 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 liberal mind is a mind that is able to imagine itself believing anything. |
| Dogs laugh, but they laugh with their tails. |
| Laughter is, after speech, the chief thing that holds society together. |
| The defining function of the artist is to cherish consciousness. |
| Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully. |
| 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. |
| Classic art was the art of necessity: modern romantic art bears the stamp of caprice and chance. |
