I just read this clever line in a Detective pot-boiler set in Bangkok.
“Thailand’s history may not repeat itself but it certainly rhymed.” 
Got any clever funny lines you’d like to share?
J.
I… don’t get it.
Maybe I didn’t give enough context. In the story, the news was reporting that there had been a coup. Yet to the average person, there was no evidence of this. In most of the city there were no soldiers, tanks, etc. Everything was just proceeding as it always did. Another ex-pat was talking to the main character and the main character was espousing the theory that Thailand never really changed much. The people in power began to get a little too greedy and didn’t spread around the spoils enough, so another group of people slapped them down and took over. Eventually, the new group would get too greedy and another group would slap them down, etc., etc. So the statement in the OP was referring to this cycle. Maybe I have an odd sense of humor, or maybe it’s just one of those “you had to have been there” moments…
J.
I heard a variation of that on the show “Prime Suspect.”
It’s been attributed to Twain, but the actual source is unknown. Talk:History - Wikiquote
“I fold like a hooker that’s been punched in the gut by a fat guy with sores on his face.” Joey Tribbiani, Friends, “The One With All The Poker.”
“You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.” Inigo Montoya, “The Princess Bride”
“Musing on the idea of setting someone on fire doesn’t mean you really want to set them on fire - it’s just a thought that makes you happy. Only for a second, because then you feel bad - but that second can be a lot of fun!” Olive Snook, “Pushing Daisies”
“I don’t positively hate you all of the time.” – The Razor’s Edge, by Somerset Maugham.
“Hope stirred in its winding sheet.”
PG Wodehouse
A friend of mine referred to a seeing a woman of negotiable virtue in a local park getting “nailed against a tree like a missing cat poster”.
I thought that was a great simile, but I have no idea if it was original
From Ring Lardner:
“Are you lost, daddy?” I asked tenderly.
“Shut up” he explained.
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man,One Vote. The Patrician was the Man, he had the Vote.
describing Lord Vetinari, absolute ruler of Ankh-Morpork - from the Discworld of Terry Pratchett
One of the Narnia chronicles starts out with:
“There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.”
From Doc Martin:
A Doctor/patient liaison arrives from the NHS to investigate Doc Martin’s bedside manner (he has none). He starts explaining how important it is to listen to patients. Doc nods interestedly, looks at him, says, “Let me stop you right there,” and walks away.
“I’m too fucking busy, and vice versa.”
- Dorothy Parker
In a (sadly late) friend’s fanfic, referring to a guy with varied and prodigious sexual tastes: “The crack of dawn had to be careful around him.” Google says it’s not original, but it was the first time I’d seen it and it made me chuckle.
Reincarnation: Life sucks, then you die, then life sucks again.
[QUOTE=Abraham Lincoln]
Tell me what brand he drinks, and I will send a barrel to each of my other generals!
[/QUOTE]
Upon being told that General Grant drinks a lot.
Discworld series.
County Commission Chairman Mike Whitehead, to some creationists who insisted that they don’t need such a permit to build their “creationist museum”.
From another forum; how HP Lovecraft would describe a glass of milk.
“She said you’d fold faster than Superman on laundry day” – Bart Simpson “The PTA Disbands”
Wodehouse, small slimy creatures subcatagory:
“It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away.”
“Big chap with a small moustache and the sort of eye that could open an oyster at sixty paces.”
“I pity the shrimp that matches wits with you Jeeves”
“What do you mean, casual sex? This is my best shirt!”
Regards,
Shodan
“I was by the age of thirty, if not a pillar, at least a flying buttress of bourgeois society” -TC Boyle, Budding Prospects