Dinsdale:
Don’t downplay it; it’s ten minutes since I read this post of yours and I’m still chuckling.
Probably my favourite Steve Aylett line is from Bigot Hall:
(for Americans and others who may not have come across one: a pantomime horse is two people dressed up in a horse costume in pantomimes and other comedy stage productions… )
I slogged through several of the Ender Wiggins books just because of -
Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
Still my all time favorite quote.
There are tons of funny lines from Good Omens, but the one that always sticks in my mind is this one (particularly the end of it):
“…No,” she reiterated, pointing at the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness, “this one’s definitely yours. From the top of his head to the tips of his hoofywoofies–which he hasn’t got,” she added hastily.
Precisely the two I came in to mention! I’d say that at least once a week those pop back up from the depths of my subconscious, and for over 20 years they’ve been making me giggle every single time.
“If you ask me,” said Salvor Hardin, “the galaxy is going to pot!”
– From Foundation by Isaac Asimov (quote from memory).
Anything by Chesterton qualifies, in my experience. I am not familiar with this book, but I am with his wit. The passage you quote is wonderful. This building block of his argument struck me:
I wouldn’t, by the way, my ideal milieu is 16th Century Geneva. But Chesterton builds his very serious argument using humor effectively, hilariously even – you mentioned you laughed for days, ITR champion, whenever it came to mind – making us more amenable later to whatever conclusions he might draw.
I remember sneakily reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for the first time during History in high school, and encountering the passage where Hunter explains that the seasoned drug user is used to encountering images like his dead grandmother climbing up his leg with a knife in her teeth (paraphrasing, of course).
This struck me as hilarious and I had to leave the classroom to get myself under control.
I also recall “Look, two women fucking a polar bear!” “Don’t tell me things like that!” having a similar effect.
So much to be mined therein. My personal fave is a pair which pops up unbidden in my mind from time to time, from Life, The Universe and Everything.
Arthur Dent sees an enormous (and deeply unflattering) statue of himself, depicted with many arms and legs, each visiting some kind of destruction on some creature or other, except one arm which was doing something unclear. Eventually, though… He glanced up again, and realized that the arm that had puzzled him was represented as wantonly calling into existence a bowl of doomed petunias. This was not a concept which leapt easily to the eye.
This is a reference to an earlier scene from two books earlier in the series (and a couple of months earlier in my reading life), where a nuclear missile was miraculously (or, more accurately, Very Improbably) transformed into a bowl of petunias: Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.
That seeming complete non-sequitur, written in a dry, almost academic tone, had me chuckling the first time. The fact that it was not, in fact, a complete non-sequitur in the end was somehow even funnier.
“We can’t stop here! This is bat country!”
[Okay, that’s two sentences.]
Also from F&LILV:
“Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catchall for fuckoffs and misfits, a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy, piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.”
That’s Ok. Mine, the OP, is two sentences. I read Fear and Loathing last winter for the first time, and I hadn’t seen the movie, if there is one. The line you quote, and that whole scene, did make me laugh out loud. I have since found out it is one of the most well-known lines in the book, printed on t-shirts, etc. I thought it was funny because of the long build-up it gets during the car trip.
Funny, I came in specifically to commend one of Wodehouse’s sentences. It’s from one of his Blandings Castle saga – I’m not even going to attempt to give the context, because my feeling about this sentence is that it is utterly, absolutely, perfectly hysterical in its own right:
“The dreamy peer was no poltroon.”
For some reason, that combination of six words of no more than two syllables each just tickles me every time I think of it.
That’s from The Hogfather, in which Death has to take over for Santa Claus.
If we’re doing nonfiction, this is a passage that is so funny that I had to memorize it even though I can never get all the way through it without becoming incoherent from laughter. From Miss Manners’ Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior:
Whoah. Is that a whoosh?
The movie starred Johnny Depp, plus a half-dozen other A-list celebrities, and spawned a huge cult following of sometimes annoying people who never shut up about it.
It was pretty good, though I have to admit I haven’t read the book. My favorite quote, possibly the most famous from the movie (and I’m pretty sure it’s in the book):
“We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, laughers, screamers… Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”
From memory: “As your lawyer, I advise you to take two hits of this acid; I’ll take five.”
As for HST film adaptations, don’t forget (the actually rather forgettable) Where the Buffalo Roam, starring Bill Murray as Hunter.
My favourite bit of dialogue by Pratchett comes from The Color of Magic when Rincewind meets Death:
I WAS SURPRISED THAT YOU JOUSTLED ME, RINCEWIND, FOR I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH THEE THIS VERY NIGHT.
“Oh no, not–”
OF COURSE, WHAT’S SO BLOODY VEXING ABOUT THE WHOLE BUSINESS IS THAT I WAS EXPECTING TO MEET THEE IN PSEPHOPOLIS.
“But that’s five hundred miles away!”
YOU DON’T HAVE TO TELL ME. THE WHOLE SYSTEM’S GOT SCREWED UP AGAIN, I CAN SEE THAT. LOOK, THERE’S NO CHANCE OF YOU–?
Rincewind backed away, hands spread protectively in front of him.
“Not a chance!”
I COULD LEND YOU A VERY FAST HORSE.
“No!”
That’s actually a parody of an old story I read in T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone (and probably much older than that): A merchant of Jerusalem was walking in the bazaar one day and was surprised to see Death; what’s more, Death seemed equally surprised to see him. The merchant hurried off and sought out a wise man to explain the omen. He was told, “It means Death has come here for you.” The merchant decided to flee before the appointment. He hired a fast horse and rode hard all night until he reached Damascus, a feat no one had ever managed before. The next day he was walking in the bazaar and Death plucked his sleeve and said, “I have come for you.” The merchant, astonished, cried, “But I saw you in Jerusalem just yesterday!” Death replied, “And I was quite surprised to see you there, for I was told to seek you here, today, in Damascus.”