# funniest sentence in literature, IMO **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 9, 2007, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946 "2007-08-09T02:02:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mark\_Ryle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8dc957/32.png) [@Mark\_Ryle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Ryle)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/1 "2007-08-09T02:02:14Z")
It’s on [this](http://www.fullbooks.com/Right-Ho-Jeeves3.html) page. I first read it 25 years ago. Whenver I think of it I chuckle. Never have I run across a funnier line, actually, the last two sentences of this passage from P.G. Wodehouse’s _Right Ho, Jeeves_. Bertie Wooster is the narrator and is speaking of his Uncle Tom, whose gifted French chef, Anatole, has just given notice: > [@](#): > > I have stated earlier in this chronicle that this curious object of the > seashore with whom Aunt Dahlia has linked her lot is a bloke who > habitually looks like a pterodactyl that has suffered, and the reason he > does so is that all those years he spent in making millions in the Far > East put his digestion on the blink, and the only cook that has ever been > discovered capable of pushing food into him without starting something > like Old Home Week in Moscow under the third waistcoat button is this > uniquely gifted Anatole. Deprived of Anatole’s services, all he was > likely to give the wife of his b. was a dirty look. Yes, unquestionably, > things seemed to have struck a somewhat rocky patch, and I must admit > that I found myself, at moment of going to press, a little destitute of > constructive ideas. > > Confident, however, that these would come ere long, I kept the stiff > upper lip. > > “Bad,” I conceded. “Quite bad, beyond a doubt. Certainly a nasty jar for > one and all. But have no fear, Aunt Dahlia, I will fix everything.” > > I have alluded earlier to the difficulty of staggering when you’re > sitting down, showing that it is a feat of which I, personally, am not > capable. Aunt Dahlia, to my amazement, now did it apparently without an > effort. She was well wedged into a deep arm-chair, but, nevertheless, she > staggered like billy-o. A sort of spasm of horror and apprehension > contorted her face. > > “If you dare to try any more of your lunatic schemes----” > > I saw that it would be fruitless to try to reason with her. Quite > plainly, she was not in the vein. Contenting myself, accordingly, with a > gesture of loving sympathy, I left the room. Whether she did or did not > throw a handsomely bound volume of the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, at > me, I am not in a position to say. I had seen it lying on the table > beside her, and as I closed the door I remember receiving the impression > that some blunt instrument had crashed against the woodwork, but I was > feeling too pre-occupied to note and observe. I would be interested to hear others’ favorites. I like to keep a humorous book going and they are hard to find. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/2 "2007-08-09T02:10:57Z")
“Jack, you have debauched my sloth!” - said by Stephen Maturin to Jack Aubrey in “HMS Surprise”. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/3 "2007-08-09T05:17:02Z")
Catch-22 is full of them: > [@](#): > > “Well, Metcalf, suppose you try keeping that stupid mouth of yours shut,and maybe that’s the way you learn how. Now where were we? Read me back the last line.” > > “‘Read me back the last line,’” read back the corporal who could take shorthand. > > “Not my last line, stupid!” the colonel shouted. “Somebody else’s.” > > “‘Read me back the last line,’” read back the corporal. > > “That’s my last line again!” shrieked the colonel, turning purple with anger. > > “Oh, no, sir,” corrected the corporal. "That’s _my_ last line. > [@](#): > > “Honestly now, Chaplain, you wouldn’t want your sister to marry an enlisted man, would you?” > > “My sister _is_ an enlisted man, sir,” the chaplain replied. > > The colonel stopped in his tracks again and eyed the chaplain sharply to make certain he was not being ridiculed. “Just what do you mean by that remark, Chaplain? Are you trying to be funny?” > > “Oh, no, sir,” the chaplain hastened to explain with a look of excruciating discomfort. “She’s a Master Sergeant in the Marines.” ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/4 "2007-08-09T05:26:16Z")
Those are some pretty long sentences, dude… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/5 "2007-08-09T05:30:33Z")
“My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three.” Vladimir Nabokov, _Lolita_ ---
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 6:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/6 "2007-08-09T06:09:16Z")
I came in to add another P G Wodehouse: ‘Bingo uttered a startled woofle, like a bulldog refused cake.’ It was the first (but by no means the last) PGW line to make me laugh out loud. I don’t know any bulldogs, so I had to mentally substitute my Aunt’s obese Cavalier King Charles spaniel - then put down the book until I stopped laughing. ---
**Author:** ![Pel2na](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Pel2na](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pel2na)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/7 "2007-08-09T06:12:05Z")
I have this habit of giving away all the books I’ve read that I’ve liked a lot. “Here, take this. You’ve gotta read it.” Especially the ones that have really made me laugh. So without the original, this quote is as close as I can remember. I was about fourteen and reading, after bedtime, under the covers with a flashlight. The book was _Auntie Mame_. Patrick was required to slip out of his boarding school and walk a very pregnant Gooch up and down the roads at night. Suddenly, a car is coming and he drags Gooch off the road and into a muddy ditch. As the car goes by, he realizes it is his headmaster “…in the Nashcan, headed off to Irma’s to get his ashes hauled.” It is so painful to laugh without making any noise. By the by, if any Dopers have a copy of the novel and can write out the full quote, I’d be as happy as if I had brains. ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/8 "2007-08-09T06:24:32Z")
[QUOTE=Pel2na] By the by, if any Dopers have a copy of the novel and can write out the full quote, I’d be as happy as if I had brains. [/QUOTE] Via Amazon’s _Search Inside._ [http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0767908198/ref=sib\_dp\_srch\_pop/102-3771707-1209705?v=search-inside&keywords=ashes+hauled&go.x=11&go.y=13&go=Go!](http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0767908198/ref=sib_dp_srch_pop/102-3771707-1209705?v=search-inside&keywords=ashes+hauled&go.x=11&go.y=13&go=Go%21) ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/9 "2007-08-09T07:24:20Z")
This passage comes from a work of nonfiction, so perhaps it doesn’t qualify as literature. But when I first read it, I was giggling for days. > [@](#): > > Now we do talk first about the disease in cases of bodily breakdown; and that for an excellent reason. Because, though there may be doubt about the way in which the body broke down, there is no doubt at all about the shape in which it should be built up again. No doctor proposes to produce a new kind of man, with a new arrangement of eyes or limbs. The hospital, by necessity, may send a man home with one leg less: but it will not (in a creative rapture) send him home with one leg extra. Medical science is content with the normal human body, and only seeks to restore it. > > But social science is by no means always content with the normal human soul; it has all sorts of fancy souls for sale. Man as a social idealist will say “I am tired of being a Puritan; I want to be a Pagan,” or “Beyond this dark probation of Individualism I see the shining paradise of Collectivism.” Now in bodily ills there is none of this difference about the ultimate ideal. The patient may or may not want quinine; but he certainly wants health. No one says “I am tired of this headache; I want some toothache,” or “The only thing for this Russian influenza is a few German measles,” or “Through this dark probation of catarrh I see the shining paradise of rheumatism.” But exactly the whole difficulty in our public problems is that some men are aiming at cures which other men would regard as worse maladies; are offering ultimate conditions as states of health which others would uncompromisingly call states of disease. Mr. Belloc once said that he would no more part with the idea of property than with his teeth; yet to Mr. Bernard Shaw property is not a tooth, but a toothache. Lord Milner has sincerely attempted to introduce German efficiency; and many of us would as soon welcome German measles. Dr. Saleeby would honestly like to have Eugenics; but I would rather have rheumatics. > > This is the arresting and dominant fact about modern social discussion; that the quarrel is not merely about the difficulties, but about the aim. We agree about the evil; it is about the good that we should tear each other’s eyes out. We all admit that a lazy aristocracy is a bad thing. We should not by any means all admit that an active aristocracy would be a good thing. We all feel angry with an irreligious priesthood; but some of us would go mad with disgust at a really religious one. Everyone is indignant if our army is weak, including the people who would be even more indignant if it were strong. The social case is exactly the opposite of the medical case. We do not disagree, like doctors, about the precise nature of the illness, while agreeing about the nature of health. On the contrary, we all agree that England is unhealthy, but half of us would not look at her in what the other half would call blooming health . Public abuses are so prominent and pestilent that they sweep all generous people into a sort of fictitious unanimity. We forget that, while we agree about the abuses of things, we should differ very much about the uses of them. Mr. Cadbury and I would agree about the bad public house. It would be precisely in front of the good public-house that our painful personal fracas would occur. -G. K. Chesterton in _What is Wrong with the World_ ---
**Author:** ![Paladud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Paladud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paladud)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/10 "2007-08-09T08:08:50Z")
I don’t have a copy of the book, but some sentences accompanying the graphs in Cryptonomicon would earn the honor, particularly those associated with the graph of masturbation and productivity. ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Ryle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8dc957/32.png) [@Mark\_Ryle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Ryle)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/11 "2007-08-09T11:22:47Z")
[QUOTE=Leaper] Those are some pretty long sentences, dude… 😃 [/QUOTE] Bertie’s sentences become short and clipped when speaking with Jeeves (as are Jeeves’s) but then return to their wandering, zigzagging, comma-filled length when he, reverting back to narrator, analyzes the foregoing conversation, as if relieved to be back in that role after yet another tension-filled back-and-forth with his manservant. Wodehouse is breaking a rule of writing with his long sentences. But artists make the rules and break the rules. All his sentences are finely crafted. These particular ones seem to wander, keeping us off-balance, then hit us with the gag at unexpected times. ---
**Author:** ![Cub\_Mistress](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea666f/32.png) [@Cub\_Mistress](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cub_Mistress)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/12 "2007-08-09T12:38:50Z")
“Suck my fat one, you cheap dimestore hood” from Stephen King’s story “The Body.” It might not be an exact quote, I don’t have the book here right now. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/13 "2007-08-09T12:48:31Z")
“The ugly yellow somethings hung in the air in precisely the way that bricks don’t.” “The machine produced a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.” - Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/14 "2007-08-09T12:57:54Z")
When Max was arraigned for attempted murder, nobody laughed when the judge said “You have the right to remain silent.” Everybody knew that Max the Silent never _attempted_ to murder anybody." Andrew Vachss’s **Flood** ---
**Author:** ![Tapiotar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3be4f8/32.png) [@Tapiotar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapiotar)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/15 "2007-08-09T13:01:49Z")
Most of the sentences in any of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books is funny, and some are true, too. The only one I remember off the top of my head, however, is “Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs, and then you had the urge to pass it on.” From Soul Music, in which Death quits and his daughter must take over the job. Great satire on rock ‘n’ roll aspirants, too. Pratchett is often compared with Wodehouse as one of the funniest writers ever. I have to be in the right mood for reading P.G. Wodehouse, but I always find Pratchett laugh out loud funny. The Discworld series, read in order, got me through all the long hours in waiting rooms during my father’s cancer surgeries and chemo and radiation treatments. ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Ryle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8dc957/32.png) [@Mark\_Ryle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Ryle)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/16 "2007-08-09T13:06:14Z")
[QUOTE=cmkeller] “The ugly yellow somethings hung in the air in precisely the way that bricks don’t.” “The machine produced a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.” - Douglas Adams, _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ [/QUOTE] Those are great. That second really has become a classic. I am familiar with it, but did not know its source, or its source subject, tea. It’s versatile in that almost anything could be its subject. ---
**Author:** ![Tapiotar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3be4f8/32.png) [@Tapiotar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapiotar)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/17 "2007-08-09T13:09:25Z")
Don’t have a copy on hand, but if you like classic farce involving ludicrous sexual situations, Joe Keenan’s (who wrote the funniest episodes of Frasier and none of the dull ones) Blue Heaven is a hoot. (Sequels not so good). ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Ryle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8dc957/32.png) [@Mark\_Ryle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Ryle)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/18 "2007-08-09T13:16:33Z")
[QUOTE=Tapiotar] I have to be in the right mood for reading P.G. Wodehouse, but I always find Pratchett laugh out loud funny. [/QUOTE] Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll try Pratchett. I agree with what you say about Wodehouse, but I don’t think it’s my (or your) moods. I think his work was very unevenly funny. It was not unevenly written though. He wrote regularly and to a formula. I always put it down to the evanescent nature of humor. Even the best humorists produce it irregularly. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/19 "2007-08-09T13:23:14Z")
One that comes readily to mind is from Breslin’s **Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight.** paraphrased from memory, it describes a gangster who “died of natural causes. His heart stopped beating, after someone slipped into his bedroom while he was sleeping and stuck an icepick into it several times.” Maybe not that hysterical, but a funny enough turn of phrase to have stuck with me for 20-30 years. ---
**Author:** ![Scarlett67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlett67/32/7387_2.png) [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2007, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/20 "2007-08-09T14:20:13Z")
Don’t have time to go looking for any, but surely anything by David Sedaris qualifies for this thread. Particularly “The Santaland Diaries.” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946.md?page=2)