Edwin Percy Whipple Quotes

I just heard a story from someone the other day where somebody was beaten up by Christians for wearing one of our shirts. Of course, that's a very Christian thing to do.

Always the innocent are the first victims, so it has been for ages past, so it is now.

We all have known good critics, who have stamped out poet's hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disemboweled for a tax; Good Popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sat still in easy-chairs; And damned the general world for standing up. Now, may the good God pardon all good men!

Wouldn't it be a helluva joke if all this were really burnt cork and you people were being tolerant for nuthin'?

The humorist has a good eye for the humbug; he does not always recognize the saint.

The world laughs at things it would really prefer to admire, and like Aesop's fox it criticizes things it covets.

Nobody can write such ironic things unless he has a deep sense of injustice-injustice to those members of the race who are victims of the stupid, the pretentious and the hypocritical.

The solemn fop; significant and budge; A fool with judges, amongst fools a judge

[Hawthorne''s] pious blame is a chuckle of praise all the while.

We love the things we pretend to laugh at.

Oh, for a pin that would puncture pretension!

What's that? My six song album entitled Bo Fo Sho is currently available on iTunes? With three songs that have never been heard on the internet? Uh, and if I try to pirate it for free I'll get AIDS? I would have guessed scurvy. Well, see you later ghost of Dr.Martin Luther King Jr.

Oh! the wisdom, the foresight and the hindsight and the rightsight and the leftsight, the northsight and the southsight, and the eastsight and the westsight that appeared in that august assembly.

It is not the least of a martyr's scourges to be canonized by the persons who burned him.

It is not the criminals who arouse the hatred of others, but the men who are honest.

I observe a lot of you drunk people. What I do is I just let myself go there and fully commit to that drunk thing, not that I've ever done that myself. I've had a lot of practice. Let's be honest.

Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things. The honest thief, the tender murderer, the superstitious atheist.

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.

Hasn’t anyone ever told you,” Jesse asked, in a semi-amused voice, “ that a gentleman never lays a hand on a lady?” Which I thought was kind of funny, considering where Jesse had had his hand the last time I’d seen him. But I thought it better to let that slide.

Feeling a tremendous rakehell, and not liking myself much for it, and feeling rather a good chap for not liking myself much for it, and not liking myself at all for feeling rather a good chap.

The world hates a Jew who hits back. The world loves us only when we are to be pitied.

I should have no compassion on these witches; I should burn them all.

All the hideously calculated hypocrisy of men when they commit a murder in the name of justice. Then it's the time of death on a grander scale, the hour of the great offenses ... fix your bayonets boys ...gentlemen, synchronize your watches ... in ten seconds time the barrage starts ... a thousand men are destined to die in order to capture a farmhouse no one has lived in for years...

Here's what I suggest," he said. "You pretend that rats can think, and I'll promise to pretend that humans can think, too.

Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity.