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"Quotations -- Humor"
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Oxford dictionary of humorous quotations
\"Writer, broadcaster, and wit Gyles Brandreth has completely revised Ned Sherrin's classic collection of wisecracks, one-liners, and anecdotes. With over 1,000 new quotations from all media, it's easy to find hilarious quotes on subjects ranging from Argument to Diets, from Computers to The Weather. Add sparkle to your speeches and presentations, or just enjoy a good laugh in company with Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Joan Rivers, Kathy Lette, Frankie Boyle, and friends.\"--Publisher's description.
Book
May I Quote You on That?
We all use language in different ways, depending on the situations we find ourselves in. In formal contexts we are usually expected to use a formal level of Standard English-the English codified in grammars, usage guides, and dictionaries. In May I Quote You on That? Stephen Spector offers a new approach to learning Standard English grammar and usage. The product of Spector's forty years of teaching courses on the English language, this book makes the conventions of formal writing and speech easier and more enjoyable to learn than traditional approaches usually do. Each lesson begins with humorous, interesting, or instructive illustrative quotations from writers, celebrities, and historical figures. Mark Twain appears alongside Winston Churchill, Yogi Berra, Woody Allen, Jerry Seinfeld, Stephen Colbert, Oprah, Lady Gaga, and many others. These quotations allow readers to infer the rules and word meanings from context. And if they stick in readers' memory, they can serve as models for the rules they exemplify. The lessons then offer short essays, written in a conversational style, on the history of the rules or the words being discussed. But because English is constantly changing, the essays offer not only the traditional rules of Standard English, but also the current opinions of usage panelists, stylists, and language specialists. When rules are controversial, Spector offers advice about stylistic choices. A companion website features a workbook with practice drills. This book will appeal to anyone who wants to write well. It's aimed at those who are applying to college, taking the SAT, or writing a job application, an essay, or anything else that requires clear and effective communication.
eBook
Hello goodbye hello : a circle of 101 remarkable meetings
A collection of whimsical true encounters between famous and infamous individuals describes the unlikely meetings of Marilyn Monroe with Frank Lloyd Wright, Michael Jackson with Nancy Reagan, and Sigmund Freud with Gustav Mahler.
Book
Selections From the Art of Party Crashing
Selove provides a humorous selection of anecdotes from al-Baghdadi’s The Art of Party-Crashing, a book about enjoying food, flirtation and everyday life in Medieval Iraq. The passages are full of ribald jokes, roguish tricksters, and joyful outpourings of spontaneous eloquence.
eBook
Toward a Theoretical and Analytical Framework for the Study of Sexual Humour in Chaucerian Fabliaux
The present study offers an examination of laughter in comic texts from a range of fabliau in The Canterbury Tales, framing them within discussions of medieval views of eroticism that draw from religion, medicine, philosophy, and literature. These texts feature males and females who laugh and make jokes in sexual themes and plots which involve deception and sexual misbehaviour. First, the article explores medieval attitudes toward laughter in religious, medical treatises and literature. It then discusses a number of predominant themes in the Reeve’s Tale, the Miller’s Tale, the Merchant’s Tale and the Shipman’s Tale in the context of Chaucer’s the Canterbury Tales to try to tease out how these particular themes may have worked to bring erotic pleasure to the reader of the comic texts. The comic themes discussed in this article are briefly cuckoldry, culinary humour, exposure of the genitals and farting. These subjects and how they are represented are very different from modern erotic representations. They are based both on a different understanding of the body and on a different social and cultural landscape, and their complexity resists simple interpretations about misogyny or functionality that are suggested by feminist perspectives on sexual humour. All quotations from the Canterbury Tales are taken from The Riverside Chaucer, edited by Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
Journal Article
The Ultimate Quotable Einstein
This is the definitive edition of the hugely popular collection of Einstein quotations that has sold tens of thousands of copies worldwide and been translated into twenty-five languages.
The Ultimate Quotable Einsteinfeatures roughly 1,600 quotes in all. This paperback edition includes sections unique to the ultimate collection--\"On and to Children,\" \"On Race and Prejudice,\" and \"Einstein's Verses: A Small Selection\"--as well as a chronology of Einstein's life and accomplishments, Freeman Dyson's authoritative foreword, and commentary and descriptive source notes by Alice Calaprice.
eBook
Musical Borrowing or Curious Coincidence?
Studies of allusion, modeling, paraphrase, quotation, and other forms of musical borrowing hinge on the claim that the composer of one piece of music has used material or ideas from another. What evidence can be presented to support or refute this claim? How can we know that the material is borrowed from this particular piece and not from another source? How can we be sure that a similarity results from borrowing and is not a coincidence or the result of drawing on a shared fund of musical ideas?
These questions can be addressed using a typology of evidence organized into three principal categories: analytical evidence gleaned from examining the pieces themselves, including extent of similarity, exactness of match, number of shared elements, and distinctiveness; biographical and historical evidence, including the composer’s knowledge of the alleged source, acknowledgment of the borrowing, sketches, compositional process, and typical practice; and evidence regarding the purpose of the borrowing, including structural or thematic functions, use as a model, extramusical associations, and humor. Ideally, an argument for borrowing should address all three categories.
Exploring instances of borrowing or alleged borrowing by composers from Johannes Martini and Gombert through Mozart, Brahms, Debussy, Ives, Stravinsky, and Berg illustrates these types of evidence. The typology makes it possible to evaluate claims and test evidence for borrowing by considering alternative explanations, including the relative probability of coincidence. A particularly illuminating case is the famous resemblance between the opening themes of Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne and Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, discussed by hundreds of writers for more than 150 years. Bringing together all the types of evidence writers have offered for and against borrowing shows why the debate has proven so enduring and how it can be resolved.
Journal Article