Expand your sense of humor with fast quotes, quick wit, convenient clichés, wisdom, fun and clever ideas.

Enjoy hundreds of select quips from comics, classics, editorials, bumper stickers and anonymous sayings.

Discover the most snarky, smiley, sanctimonious, sentimental, sacred, irreverent, tender, cheeky and enduring short funny punches. These off-beat quotes, pithy adages and short humorous poems cover every imaginable topic, vision and viewpoint.

Escape now into the world of SMIRK.

Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

If you’re too open-minded, your brains will fall out.

Junk is something you’ve kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.

If you’re going to do something wrong, at least enjoy it!

Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused.

The violent physical actions characteristic of slapstick usually inflict no permanent damage. Old fashioned Punch and Judy puppet shows and the Three Stooges all demonstrate this art, with no bloodshed, but lots of slaps and punches…followed by lots of laughter.

Wisecracks are fast and fun, too. “She has more money than she can afford.” Shakespeare projected use of the word “crack”, with “break” used in his jests. A witcracker was consequently a person who made jests or cracked jokes. Most of us feel that wisecracks are even-tempered insults or witticisms that exaggerate. Ridicule of someone’s unique traits by using an absurd illustration feels OK. The nonsensical becomes the ordinary through fantasy…truth has no importance here. Dorothy Parker, on the other hand, a lady who knew what she was snarling about, described wisecracks as being calisthenics. AF 7/7′10

Train yourself to see humor? Yes, I think you can. Turn things upside down. Ask yourself what would happen if things were the other way ‘round.

“English usage is sometimes more than mere taste, judgment and education sometimes it’s sheer luck, like getting across the street.” Wrote E.B. White, a man who knew quite a bit about words and crossing city streets. Just look at some of the stuff he and William Strunk give us in that handy, dandy Elements of Style reference.
There’s always some wise guy who has a funnier way of saying something than the rest of us might. You know, like the aspiring politico who quoted Rose King, “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. And that is sufficient.” Advertisement writers, somewhat related to those political wise guys, use a great little tag to pinpoint a target audience for special products and prices. One tag name that annoys the heck out of a great many mature consumers is being called “Senior Citizens.” Could those copywriters be a tad more imaginative? Wouldn’t this audience merit being called a bunch of Vintage Persons? They might prefer to be linked with fine wine, instead of a wing at the hospital. Merchants are fond of using words that stand out amid the advertising clutter and disharmony. There are countless made-up names for products, like Kodak, Xerox, and Q-Tip, not to mention advertising slogans proclaiming that Cocoa Krispies cereal is “cocolossal,” Mr. Salty pretzels are “crisplier” and 7Up has been the “uncola.”
What the heck! Say things the way they sound best to you, don’t you think that’s OK ?

Right now I’m writing a book about how humor gets the way it is and how the funny stuff works. Care to share a predicament at work, at home or among friends that was tidied up by using a joke, a trick, a few weird words or some rancid sarcasm? It could be perfect for one of the chapters in “What’s so %$#! Funny?” and your name would get credit in my book. In case you prefer to remain anonymous, that’s OK.

I, for one, have bought an energy bar because the wrapper said it was fortified with optimism. The nutritional value was secondary. Do you respond to that sort of an ad? What wonders has humor worked in your life these days?

What’s been going on? Write away on COMMENT…I’ll get right back to you. Honest!
AF

Kids can make other kids and even some adults laugh—but that doesn’t make them prodigy comedians. They are cute youngsters who might grow up to become star comedians or insurance executives or boutique shop owners or auto mechanics. Humor starts early and is pretty basic. Usually the first amusement that a parent and child share is the toilet joke. It deals with “doodoo” or “peepee” or you can bet anything even remotely scatological that the kid discovered. It’s an innocent study of functions of the human anatomy and it’s kind of a shared secret. Of course, kids do say the darndest things. Sometimes shocking. Just roll with the punch; it’s the innocence and sparkle of children’s minds being verbalized.

What makes sense to a two-year-old can be a riot to an adult. An unsuspecting passerby, not even an adoring relative, will grin when a little person says that she “heared a lady who singed a pretty song.” There’s logic in adding the past tense suffix ed to a verb. What right do adults have to change speech so radically?

Cemeteries are fine places where literary humor can become eternal. Written in stone, as in gravestones. Some epitaphs are the words of the deceased, composed in anticipation of their demise. Others, the inspirations of silver tongued friends or family. The British display a knack for schemes to get in the last word, such as:

Stranger, treat this ground with gravity,
Dentist Brown is filling his last cavity

Just try to figure out why some folks can’t get a chuckle out of the way a pencil sharpener sounds or maybe how serious a dog is about the business of drinking water, and you’ll see a better neighborhood. The infection called humor spreads more quickly than a social disease. Humor seems to reach people through their pores without their being aware. This increases the threat of influencing and acquiring new playmates.