Will Cuppy Quotes

Male penguins are unfaithful up to an advanced age, a phenomenon sometimes attributed to the sea air.

[Footnote] It's easy to see the faults in people, I know; and it's harder to see the good. Especially when the good isn't there.

Whenever a thousand or so of his men would fall off an Alp, he [Hannibal] would tell the rest to cheer up, the elephants were all right. If someone had given him a shove at the right moment, much painful history might have been avoided.

Philip [II of Spain] was a great believer in diplomacy, or the art of lying. He fooled some of the people some of the time.

Then Hamilcar … was drowned in 228 B.C. while crossing a stream with a herd of elephants.

I am billed as a humorist, but of course I am a tragedian at heart.

[on the Borgias' illegitimate births] All children are natural, but some are more so than others and are therefore known as natural children.

The Pike is the meanest and most vicious of fresh-water fishes. This is caused by heredity and environment, or unfortunate social conditions in the water.

Egyptologists say they have no idea what Khufu was doing when he was not building pyramids, since he left no inscriptions describing his daily activities, and they would give a good deal to know. Then they say he had six wives and a harem full of concubines. They do not seem to make the connection, but you get it and I get it. We do not need any hieroglyphics to inform us that Khufu dropped around occasionally to see how things were getting along and to tell the ladies how many cubic yards of limestone he had laid that afternoon.

[Footnote:] The Dotterel weighs only four ounces. It has long been a scientific riddle how so much wrong-headedness can manage to exist in so small a space. Still, there's the Least Gnatcatcher.

Her early years were very unhappy, and she decided she would have a good time if she ever got a chance. Later on, she overdid it a little.

Intelligence is the capacity to know what we are doing and instinct is just instinct. The results are about the same.

Captain Smith reached Virginia on April 26, 1607, with a number of English gentlemen and some people who were willing to work. Then they all held a meeting to discuss ways and means of civilizing everybody. They made a great many speeches and accused each other of various crimes and misdemeanors and arrested some of themselves as an object lesson, and American history was started at last.

[Footnote] The Mexicans gave the Spaniards malaria, and the Spaniards gave the Mexicans smallpox, whooping cough, diphtheria, and syphilis. The Spaniards believed it was better to give than to receive.

The fact is that building a pyramid is fairly easy, aside from the lifting. You just pile up stones in receding layers, placing one layer carefully upon another, and pretty soon you have a pyramid. You can't help it. In other words, it is not in the nature of a pyramid to fall down. [Footnote: It probably could not fall down if it tried.]