"If we can't laugh at ourselves and each other, we're indulging in false pride and missing the essence of tolerance and understanding." - Gaius Phlebitus - Roman Bartender
Time to lighten up and enjoy a few more curmudgeonly quotes. People still ask me why I'm called a curmudgeon. Do I resent it? No, and besides it would not do any good anyway. That's what I am.
And while I'm not a churlish old man, I do detest hypocrisy and pretense, as all curmudgeons do and am compelled to expose such at every opportunity!
But I'm in good company. I think you'll recognize most of these fellow curmudgeons from whom I'm borrowing the following material. Not all are humorous. Some bite pretty hard. But sadly, some of the funniest quotes I've collected are from women but are unprintable here:
"I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin." Oscar Levant
"A grouch escapes so many little annoyances that it almost pays to be one." Kim Hubbard
"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." Florynce Kennedy
"Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves." Ambrose Bierce
"Archbishop: A Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ." H.L. Mencken
"Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others." Oscar Wilde
"Nature has given women so much power that the law cannot afford to give her more." Samuel Johnson
"Virtue has never been as respectable as money." Mark Twain
"I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your intelligence." William F. Buckley
"Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing." Voltaire
"That all men are created equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent." Aldous Huxley
"If you must choose between living with your mother-in-law and blowing out your brains, don't hesitate - blow out hers." Victorien Sardou
"Women should be obscene and not heard." Groucho Marx
"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing; a confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished." Wolfgang Von Goethe
"Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible." Margaret Mead
"I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients." Oscar Levant
"Teddy Kennedy? Every country should have at least one King Farouk." Gore Vidal
"Ireland has the honor of being the only country which never persecuted the Jews - because she never let them in." James Joyce
"So-called psychoanalysis is the occupation of lascivious rationalists who reduce everything in the world to sexual causes, with the exception of their occupation." Karl Kraus
"Lady Astor: 'If you were my husband, Winston, I'd put poison in your tea.' Winston Churchill: 'If I were your husband, Nancy, I'd drink it.'" Winston Churchill
"A husband is what's left of the lover once the nerve has been extracted." Helen Rowland
"She got her good looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon." Groucho Marx
A famous British stage actress once proposed marriage to George Bernard Shaw in a letter which said, "Dear Mr. Shaw, you and I should marry. Just think of the fabulous child we could produce with your brains and my looks," to which Shaw replied, "Thank you madam for the compliment but have you considered the consequences should the child have my looks and your brains?"
Of all the curmudgeons from whom I've collected these bits of wisdom, George Bernard Shaw was by far the most prolific. But often his sayings are more cynical than curmudgeonly and the same can be said, but to a lesser extent, of H.L. Mencken, Gore Vidal and Aldous Huxley.
While a genuine curmudgeon is blessed (or cursed) with abundant foresight and reasoning skills, analyzing human nature in ways oblivious to most people, and can easily fall into the traps of cynicism or pessimism, he or she must always maintain an underlying sense of humor and optimism within the bounds of realism no matter how despairing conditions appear to be.
Now, while I'm certainly not on a par with those quoted above since I'm yet to originate any quotable sayings, but nonetheless am your dedicated curmudgeon, I'll keep trying my best to alert you good citizens to what's really going down in the fields of politics, education and the mainstream media. Stay tuned.
Bob Thomas is a Carson City businessman, local curmudgeon and former member of the Carson City School Board and Nevada State Assembly.