Evan esar quotes

Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose.

A man is known by the company he keeps, but a woman is known by the company she keeps waiting.

Experience is a great teacher, and sometimes a pretty teacher is a great experience.

Conscience gets a lot of credit that really belongs to cowardice.

The tongue is the only muscle in the human body that never gets tired [talking].

The saddest thing in life is to marry a woman who looks like a cook--and isn't.

An instrument that sometimes expresses thought, sometimes obscures thought, but most often replaces thought.

The girl with a future avoids a man with a past.

A home in the country is what a city man hopes to buy and a farmer hopes to sell.

The best way to spoil a good story is by sticking to the facts.

The most popular form of altruism is giving to others the advice you cannot use yourself.

All work and no pay makes a housewife.

A dollar saved is a dollar earned but seldom vice versa.

If you want to be different nowadays, just act normal.

It takes far more courage to violate a custom than a law.

The lazy man claims he is too heavy for light work and too light for heavy work.

The trouble with the world is that laziness is seldom curable and never fatal.

The mint makes it first, it is up to you to make it last.

There's only one thing worse than to live without working, and that is to work without living.

Worry makes people thin, except when they worry about being fat.

Divorce has become so easy nowadays that women have stopped crying at weddings.

Some taxpayers close their eyes, some stop their ears, some shut their mouths, but all pay through the nose.

The computer saves man a lot of guesswork, but so does the bikini.

It takes hundreds of nuts to hold a car together, but it takes only one of them to scatter it all over the highway.

A wedding is the formality a man has to go through before going to work for a new boss.

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.

Nothing ages your car as much as the sight of your neighbor's new one.

Washington is the place where nobody believes a rumor until it has been officially denied.

Children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of parenthood.

Conscience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.

[Statistics] The science that can prove everything except the usefulness of statistics.

America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.

The little boy who goes to the store and forgets what his mother sent him for, will probably grow up to be a congressman.

The best time to give advice to your children is while they're still young enough to believe you know what you're talking about.

The difference between two men is usually a woman.

A bright eye indicates curiosity; a black eye, too much.

Consistency is a jewel, but too much jewelry is vulgar.

Life is a game played on us while we are playing other games.

The only thing more certain than the hatred of enemies is the envy of friends.

A special skill, like speaking several languages, or keeping your mouth shut in one.

A corporation has all the powers and privileges of an individual: all it lacks is a conscience.

The word impossible is peculiar because if you examine it closely, you'll find that most of it is possible.

Some people would never get any exercise at all if they didn't have to walk to their cars.

Compare what you want with what you have, and you'll be unhappy; compare what you deserve with what you have, and you'll be happy.

Housework is what a woman does that nobody notices unless she hasn't done it.

Ego: The only thing that can keep growing without nourishment.

A hamburger by any other name costs twice as much.

Congress would give the people what they wanted if the people knew what they wanted, and if Congress could give it to them.

A bureaucrat is an official who is clothed with power and whom it doesn't fit.

Sometimes the unexpected happens when you don't expect a person to come up to expectations.

Admiration: Our feeling of delight that another person resembles us.

Women diet to retain their girlish figures or their boyish husbands.

Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration,and inspiration.

The difference between us and other people is that their money looks bigger and their troubles smaller.

The trouble with dieting is that a pound of will power takes off only an ounce of weight.

Diets show to what great lengths women will go so as not to go to great widths.

There's only one kind of common sense but a thousand varieties of stupidity.

Walking isn't a lost art: one must, by some means, get to the garage.

With a braggart, it's no sooner done than said.

Family: A social unit where the father is concerned with parking space, the children with outer space, and the mother with closet space.

When laziness attacks a woman, it always avoids her tongue.

If you can't bear to have your face stepped on, don't try to climb the ladder of success.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy - and Jill a wealthy widow.

Adam and Eve were the first of all unions to defy management.

Adolescence begins when children stop asking questions-because they know all the answers.

Many a girl who can't dance well makes up for it during intermission.

The diamond is the hardest stone -- to get.

Somebody is always doing something that somebody else said couldn't be done.

Definition of Statistics: The science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures.

Common sense is usually lack of imagination, and imagination is usually lack of common sense.

A bore finds it easy to start talking, and even easier to get others to stop listening.

Do a little more every day than you are expected to do, and soon you will be expected to do more.

The cat: an animal that's so unpredictable, you can never tell in advance how it will ignore you the next time.

The first requisite for a good cup of coffee in the morning is to get your wife out of bed.

The car was invented as a convenient place to sit out traffic jams

Anger is the feeling that makes your mouth work faster than your mind.

You can always tell the golfer who's winning: he's the one who keeps telling his opponent that it's only a game.

When you make your mark in the world, watch out for the envious with erasers.

The man who has a girl in every port is not a sailor but a wholesaler.

In a democracy, you believe it or not; in a dictatorship, you believe it or else.

Laugh and the world laughs with you; cry -- and the world laughs harder.

All things come to him who waits, but they are mostly leftovers from those who didn't wait.

Public speaking is the art of diluting a two-minute idea with a two-hour vocabulary.

The only place where you can find equality is in the cemetery.

A dictator's chief problem is keeping the stomachs of his subjects full while keeping their heads empty.

The reason why men who mind their own business succeed is that they have so little competition.

[A mathematician is a] scientist who can figure out anything except such simple things as squaring the circle and trisecting an angle.

A word to the wise is -- unnecessary.

All men are born equal, but some of them outgrow it.

There are two kinds of leaders: those who are interested in the flock, and those who are interested in the fleece.

Etymology: from Latin ad-, "to" + visum, past participle of videre, "to see". Advice is what you get from your parents when you are growing up, and from your children when you are growing old.

The secret of successful writing lies in striking the right keys on the typewriter.

The only medicine that needs no prescription, has no unpleasant taste, and costs no money is laughter.

Play: Work that you enjoy doing for nothing.

There would be no population explosion if people who are trying to keep the wolf from the door wouldn't let the stork fly in through the window.

Communism is a form of society where the less people have to eat, the more they have to swallow.

A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name.

Under dictatorship, the people in prison are always superior to the people who put them there.

Egocentricity: The vanity that makes you wonder what people are thinking about you when they are really wondering what you are thinking about them.

Some women get divorces on the grounds of incompatibility; others, on just the first two syllables.

The disadvantage of becoming wise is that you realize how foolish you've been.

Only one man has the right to boast, and that's the man who never does.

All men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with a mighty urge to become otherwise.

Think twice before you speak, and then you may be able to say something more insulting than if you spoke right out at once.

Many a man works himself to death by burying himself in his work.

The man who avoids debt doesn't have to worry about avoiding his creditors.

You are not fully dressed until you wear a smile.

[Statistics] Fiction in its most uninteresting form.

Don't be a hog: the only time a hog helps the community is when he dies.

Formerly when a man worked ten hours a day, it was called economic slavery; nowadays it is called moonlighting.

Hard work never hurt anyone who hired someone else to do it.

Some couples divorce because of a misunderstandin g; others, because they understand each other too well.

The best way to make a long story short is to stop listening.

Times change: it was once the custom to take a bath weekly and religion daily.

If you want to be successful, you must either have a chance or take one.

Hope is tomorrow's veneer over today's disappointment.

If you don't like to make excuses or apologies, stop making promises.

An expert is someone who takes something you already know and makes it sound confusing.

You can't judge the ability of a doctor by the amount of praise the undertakers give him.

This may be the age of automation, but love is still being made by hand.

Many a wedding takes place when a man can't afford to go steady with a girl any longer.

A bacteriologist is a man whose conversation always start with the germ of an idea.

If it required some effort to go from today to tomorrow, some people would always remain in yesterday.

We can't do much about the length of our lives, but we can do plenty about it's width and depth.

You can tell a man's taste in literature by his judgment in knowing what not to read.