# 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:** 14\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Gadarene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Gadarene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gadarene)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2007, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/101 "2007-08-13T16:57:46Z")
Here are three worthy candidates. The third isn’t a sentence so much as a passage, but it demands inclusion: > [@](#): > > I never know Jack O’Hearts is even mad at Louie, and I am wondering why he takes these shots at him, but I do not ask any questions, because when a guy goes around asking questions in this town people may get the idea he is such a guy as wishes to find things out. –Damon Runyon > [@](#): > > God keep me from chauvinism, but New York is beautiful. Oh, this is a lovely city you have here! I think that your skyline is astounding, and that your women are the most attractive in the world, but that there is a certain amount of exaggeration in the report that your men think of nothing but business, business, business, all the time. If it is true, then wherever did I get these bruises on my neck? –Dorothy Parker, upon her return from Switzerland > [@](#): > > Montmorency was in it all, of course. Montmorency’s ambition in life is to get in the way and be sworn at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day has not been wasted. > > To get somebody to stumble over him, and curse him steadily for an hour, is his highest aim and object; and, when he has succeeded in accomplishing this, his conceit becomes quite unbearable. > > He came and sat down on things, just when they were wanting to be packed; and he laboured under the fixed belief that, whenever Harris or George reached out their hand for anything, it was his cold damp nose that they wanted. He put his leg into the jam, and he worried the teaspoons, and he pretended that the lemons were rats, and got into the hamper and killed three of them before Harris could land him with the frying-pan. > > Harris said I encouraged him. I didn’t encourage him. A dog like that don’t want any encouragement. It’s the natural, original sin that is born in him that makes him do things like that. –Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/102 "2007-08-15T11:34:50Z")
Since nonfiction has been posted, I’m going to admit to having read **Blind Faith** , by Joe McGinnis. Now, McGinnis’s **Fatal Vision** has been called into question in recent years, so it’s possible that he took liberties with the dialogue between the detectives on the Marshall case, and they didn’t really say, “Golf clubs. He passed away due to golf clubs.” and “We were respectful. We fingerprinted her with the utmost of respect.” and also “…and boy, does she remember every single drop of salad dressing.” ---
**Author:** ![The\_Them](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/898d66/32.png) [@The\_Them](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Them)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/103 "2007-08-15T14:13:50Z")
I am the world’s laziest… The library was having a sale,I got some stuff, and I clipped part of a page from a _National Geographic_, just because. It’s c.1995, and is from an article about the Jamestown settlement (NF seems to be allowed, and the turn of phrase is priceless): The colonists who had suffered in this alleged Virginia paradise did not know that the Orient was actually about 11,000 miles away, but they would have wondered why no copperheads, voracious insects, or hostile natives were depicted along with the birds and bunny rabbits. ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/104 "2007-08-15T18:57:46Z")
[QUOTE=rackensack] And while it’s not really literature, there are few things that make me laugh to the point of tears, no matter how many times I read it, like Mr. Clemens’ letter to the gas company of Feb. 12, 1891. It’s available in the Viking _Portable Mark Twain_, and at only one paragraph of only four sentences it’s hard to quote enough to give a flavor of it without exceeding “fair use”, but trust me it’s worth seeking out if you don’t know it. [/QUOTE] Twain has to be in public domain by now. ---
**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 15, 2007, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/105 "2007-08-15T19:37:21Z")
[QUOTE=Yookeroo] Twain has to be in public domain by now. [/QUOTE] To the Gas Company Hartford, February 12, 1891. Dear Sirs: Some day you will move me almost to the verge of irritation by your chuckle-headed Goddamned fashion of shutting your Goddamned gas off without giving any notice to your Goddamned parishioners. Several times you have come within an ace of smothering half of this household in their beds and blowing up the other half by this idiotic, not to say criminal, custom of yours. And it has happened again today. Haven’t you a telephone? ``` Ys S L Clemens (Mark Twain) ``` ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/106 "2007-08-15T20:09:52Z")
This site has tons of wonderful Mark Twain letters and excerpts (including th gas company one) > **[bizbag.com](http://www.bizbag.com/twain.htm)** > > This domain may be for sale! ---
**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 15, 2007, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/107 "2007-08-15T20:13:13Z")
[QUOTE=Civil Guy] No love for Mark Twain? Sheesh. [/QUOTE] This is more than one sentence, but the first sentence is quite long, two-thirds of the quote. From _Life On The Mississippi_: > [@](#): > > The Model Boy of my time –- we never had but the one –- was perfect: perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, perfect in filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; but at bottom he was a prig; and as for the contents of his skull, they could have changed place with the contents of a pie and nobody would have been the worse off for it but the pie. This fellow’s reproachlessness was a standing reproach to every lad in the village. He was the admiration of all the mothers, and the detestation of all their sons. I was told what became of him, but as it was a disappointment to me, I will not enter into details. He succeeded in life. ---
**Author:** ![Incensed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Incensed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Incensed)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/108 "2007-08-15T22:48:53Z")
[QUOTE=rackensack] How about the bit from the essay on the literary offenses of Fenimore Cooper? One of my favorites:… [/QUOTE] Thank you for that **rackensack** , saved me some research. A dark-horse candidate from _Catch-22_ _Impressionable men in the squadron like Dobbs and Captain Flume were so deeply disturbed by Hungry Joe’s shrieking nightmares that they would begin to have shrieking nightmares of their own, and the piercing obscenties they flung into the air every night from their separate places in the squadron rang against each other in the darkness romantically like the mating calls of songbirds with filthy minds._ I can’t find it in the text, but there is also the line refering to a woman’s ‘divine fulcrum.’ ---
**Author:** ![Raspberry\_NOT\_Rhubarb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecd19e/32.png) [@Raspberry\_NOT\_Rhubarb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raspberry_NOT_Rhubarb)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/109 "2007-08-16T02:26:56Z")
My contribution is for the Wodehouse fans out there. If you haven’t already, check out the works of Saki, AKA H.H. Munro. Here’s a link to my favorite, Esme. [http://haytom.us/showarticle.php?id=17](http://haytom.us/showarticle.php?id=17) ---
**Author:** ![Hometownboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/5e9695/32.png) [@Hometownboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hometownboy)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/110 "2007-08-16T04:05:30Z")
In the distance, a toad farted ominously. —Spider Robinson ---
**Author:** ![rackensack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rackensack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rackensack)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/111 "2007-08-16T05:10:06Z")
[QUOTE=Yookeroo] Twain has to be in public domain by now. [/QUOTE] Not according to the copyright notice in the edition of the Viking _Portable Mark Twain_ I used as a reference. Albert Bigelow Paine’s edition of the Twain’s letters doesn’t include this gas company letter (though it does include a different one, similar in tone but with a different complaint) – this is available as an free etext from Project Gutenberg and is apparently in the public domain. This letter, however, seems to have been published for the first time by Bernard De Voto in the first edition of the _Portable_ in 1946. Copyright was renewed in 1984 by one of Clemens’ heirs. Obviously, copyright on the individual works may be different, particularly for works published by Twain in the 1800s which are generally public domain by now. This letter appears not to be public domain, however, and I wasn’t sufficiently motivated to establish otherwise, so I decided to err on the side of caution. Others have since posted the whole thing, and in looking all this up there appear to be any number of places where it’s available in its entirety on the web. BTW, I also leared that the recent (2005) edition of the Viking _Portable Mark Twain_ omits many of the letters that De Voto included, this one included. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Them](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/898d66/32.png) [@The\_Them](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Them)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/112 "2007-08-16T06:45:20Z")
By the by, thanks to everyone here! Some nice reading tips you guys have given me. Runyon, hmmm… From _Venus on the Half Shell_ by “Kilgore Trout”, who I have been informed was one of Vonnegut’s friends, not Vonnegut himself. > [@](#): > > …in a line as straight as a fake geneology. ---
**Author:** ![denquixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9bd4f/32.png) [@denquixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/denquixote)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/113 "2007-08-16T11:51:32Z")
While I would hardly call them literature, Victo Mollo, one of the all-time great English bridge players has written a series of books describing the exploits of the members of a bridge club known as the Griffins, the star of the club being “Hideous Hog” (thought to be Mollo himself) called thus because of his insistence on playing every hand himsel (“I assure you partner it is for your own good.”) From the opening of “Bridge in the Menagerie,” the first in the series: “We play quickly, for we feel that it is more dignified to make mistakes through lack of forethought than after mature deliberation.” The series is obviously more enjoyable if you are a bridge player, but even if you aren’t the Hog is a character that will definitely make you laugh. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2007, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946/114 "2007-08-16T12:23:41Z")
As long as we’re on that tangent, allow me to paraphrase a review of a WW1 wargame: “It’s often been the opinion amongst wargame enthusiasts that a World War 1 wargame would be boring due to lack of options and static tactics. _The Great War_ does nothing to dispel this opinion.” (Name changed due to lack of remembrance) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/funniest-sentence-in-literature-imo/414946.md?page=5)