Hugh Leonard Quotes

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

People of humor are always in some degree people of genius.

Wit and humor belong to genius alone.

I like Germany so much that I want there to be two of them.

Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing.

Ricky Gervais is a genius.

I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.

Nature not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.

Humor writing is something that comes naturally to me.

Each cartoon needs the right amount of wrong.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

Politics is much too serious to be taken too seriously; equally, there are many aspects of it so laughable as to be lamentable.

There are elements of irony in my work, of course.

Humor is really one of the hardest things to define, very hard. And it's very ambiguous. You have it, or you don't. You can't attain it.

I think to simply make fun of something isn't particularly interesting. I try to not just do a parody of something or belittle something or disparage something.

Comedy is the most difficult thing to do. Easily the most difficult.

A lot of what I do - I have to try and make sense of things before I can make nonsense of them.

Nature should have been pleased to have made this age miserable, without making it also ridiculous.

Nobody really knows, but I got a little comedy in me.

You achieve the surreal jokes through the realism by making it elastic.

Larry David is such an incredible talent.

An epigram is but a feeble thing - With straw in tail, stuck there by way of sting.

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.

I just love Stephen Colbert. He's a genius.

A little irreverence is always important to being a columnist. I try to do that.