Talk:Comedy/Archive 1

Moved from article as off-topic

Moved from article as off-topic: Some people are like slinkies, pointless, but you can't help but smile when they fall down the stairs.

Rmhermen 23:00, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC) Pessimistic Quotations

The problem with pessimists is that they're right too much

If you think you're better than me, you probably are

Virtue is one thing that doesn't seem to become worth more when less is in circulation

If you don't use your mind, someone else will

Today is the last day of some of your life

Always look down because mother earth is the only one who thinks you're attractive

Every time you say the word happiness, you say the word penis

Money can turn woe into whoa

People call pain a gift because it's so much fun to give

Life is like a package from the Unabomber... ya never know what your gonna get

Don't let anyone tell you you're pretty on the inside until after they've cut you open

The deep things in life suck

The more you suffer, the more you suffer more

Dreams expand at the rate reality contracts

Death is a once in a lifetime experience

Another one

Another one moved for being off-topic:

• "If your parents never had children, chances are ... neither will you." - Dick Cavett

~ MosheZadka (Talk) 22:38, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Unsourced moved from main page to talk page

Could be added back in later if/when sourced. Cirt (talk) 17:35, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Unsourced

• Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
  • Peter Ustinov

• Why is a American household a Monarchy?
  • Anonymous

• I do not find humour funny, I can not laugh at it.
  • Steve Sayles

• Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.
  • Jack Handey

• From the sublime to the ludicrous may take one step, but to be a great humorist takes a lifetime.
  • Leonid S. Sukhorukov

• The secret to humor is surprise.
  • Aristotle

• To explain the nature of laughter…is to account for the condition of human life.
  • William Hazlitt

• Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
  • Mel Brooks

• We are not amused.
  • Queen Victoria in Laffirmations by Joel Goodman 1995

• The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.
  • George Jean Nathan

Jacob Appel

• Always warm up the audience with a joke....If you are not a particularly funny person, make sure that you inform them that it's a joke....
  • Jacob Appel, American bioethicist, Sphinx Society lecture, Brown University, April 3, 2003 (as reported in the Brown Daily Herald).

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Moved from main page to talk page, as sourcing info is not sufficient. Further, is this individual notable? Cirt (talk) 07:49, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

I contacted Professor Appel about the quote and he wrote back the following:

Hi Alice. If you say I said that, I'm sure I did say it--and you are welcome to use it for your Wikiquote. Good luck! JMA - Hide quoted text -

On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 2:44 PM, Alice Crayne <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear Professor Appel,

I am writing to find out whether you would be willing to confirm having made the following quote and whether we can use it, "Always warm up the audience with a joke....If you are not a particularly funny person, make sure that you inform them that it's a joke...." from your lecture at Brown University in 2003 in Wikiquote?

Thank you so much.

Alice Crayne

The speech was really on April 2, 20003, but the BDH covered it on Friday April 3, 'Appel offers riddles in Sphinx' p. 2. I can't find copies going back that far online, but I do have a paper copy. I can probably scan it in if you need me to for a source, but i don't know how to do that on Wikiquote. —This unsigned comment is by TheA-Crayne (talk • contribs) .

• If you can, scan it and email it to me at bd2412 (at) hotmail.com. Cheers! BD2412 T 02:15, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
  • It would be best to stick to secondary sources please. Further, there appears to be no article over at en.wiki on w:Jacob Appel. Not sure of notability here. Cirt (talk) 06:06, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Some more insufficiently sourced quotes

This quotes also are insufficiently sourced - moved from main page to talk page. Cirt (talk) 20:49, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

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• Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
  • E. B. White, Some Remarks on Humor, introduction

• Humour is, by its nature, more truthful than factual.
  • P. J. O'Rourke in Parliament of Whores

• Humor is, however, nearer right than any emotion we have. Humor is the atmosphere in which grace most flourishes.
  • Henry Ward Beecher, 1874 sermon titled "Unjust Judgments"

• Jokes are not really funny at all, but reflect the most serious of concerns; the pursuit of sobriety through the suppression of the absurd.
  • Marvin Minsky in Jokes and the Language of the Cognitive Unconscious

• Stand-up comedy is not a choice you make; it chooses you. I always felt that it had chosen me. It was forced on me, like a vocational thing.
  • Billy Connolly, Daily Express, 29th October 2008

• What do you mean funny? Funny peculiar, or funny ha-ha?
  • Ian Hay, The Housemaster, Act III