Evan Esar Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

Good teachers cost a lot; but, poor teachers cost a lot more.

The only way to cure an egotist from bragging is by surgery--amputation at the neck.

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

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

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

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

The diamond is the hardest stone -- to get.

Egocentric: A person who has his I's too close together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A batch of credit cards fattens a wallet before it thins it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A hamburger by any other name costs twice as much.

A husband is like a fire. He goes out when unattended.

Don't tear your hair out over a woman; it'll be harder to attract the next one if you're bald.

A credit card is a convenient device that saves you the trouble of counting your change.

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

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

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

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

Reactionary: One who wants the rules enforced so nobody can take his pile away from him the way he got it from others.

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

[Statistics] Fiction in its most uninteresting form.

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

The only time a lazy man ever succeeds is when he tries to do nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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