Pine Nuts with McAvoy Lane: Pithy quotes are gifts that keep on giving
Don't you love pithy quotes? Me too. I have a plug hat full of them, and I pull one out every now and again to give myself a lift. So I thought I'd share a few of them with you here today in this fine family journal, and hope that one of them might give you a lift too.
George Burns was just bursting with pithy quotes, and I wish I could have known him. I cite a scant three of his here.
"Acting is about sincerity. If you can fake that you’ve got it made."
"Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair."
"Why do I go out with young women? Their stories are shorter."
But then Mae West might have had this to say about George Burns: "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."
A modest Jack Benny had this to share while accepting an award: "I don't deserve this, but I have arthritis, and I don't deserve that either."
When asked how old he was, Satchel Paige offered this pensive guess: "I don’t know how old I am because the family goat ate the bible that had my birth certificate in it. The goat lived to be twenty-seven."
Then too, the great Satchel Paige adds at no extra cost, "If you can do it, it ain’t braggin’." And, "The social ramble ain’t healthful." And, "Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines."
The late George Carlin told us, “When you're born into this world you're given a ticket to the freak show. If you're born in America you're given a front-row seat." We miss you, George.
Agatha Christie, who was married to an archeologist, assured us, "An archeologist is the best husband a woman can have; the older she gets, the more interested he is in her."
Oscar Wilde, witty to the end, left us these last words, "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go."
The Dude, Quincy Jones should know, “No matter how much you feel, you have to have your science and craft together to express it. Otherwise you are in deep doo-doo.”
Raiders owner Al Davis captured quarterback George Blanda with this snapshot: "He has that God-given killer instinct."
Kurt Vonnegut bequeathed us babies this welcome: "Hello, babies, welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies — "God damn it, you've got to be kind."
And John Osborn was quick to recognize, "Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what he thinks about dogs."
As I am wont to do, I shall leave the last word to Mark Twain. "Always do right, this will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
— For more than 30 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American.”