12 Quotes Tagged: self-deprecation

If a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer 'writer' for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer poetry would embarrass us both.

One notorious apikoros named Hiwa al-Balkhi, writing in ninth-century Persia, offered two hundred awkward questions to the faithful. He drew upon himself the usual thunderous curses — 'may his name be forgotten, may his bones be worn to nothing' — along with detailed refutations and denunciations by Abraham ibn Ezra and others. These exciting anathemas, of course, ensured that his worrying 'questions' would remain current for as long as the Orthodox commentaries would be read. In this way, rather as when Maimonides says that the Messiah will come but that 'he may tarry,' Jewishness contrives irony at its own expense. If there is one characteristic of Jews that I admire, it is that irony is seldom if ever wasted on them.

They all laughed when I said I'd become a comedian. Well, they're not laughing now.

Don't be afraid! We won't make an author of you, while there's an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.

He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.

He presses my hand and he says he loves me,
Which I find an admirable peculiarity.

I have been on the verge of being an angel all my life, but it's never happened yet.

Winning isn’t everything, but losing isn’t anything.

Every time I move I squash something said Loathesome.

The buzzard has nothing to fault himself with.
Scruples are alien to the black panther.
Piranhas do not doubt the rightness of their actions.
The rattlesnake approves of himself without reservations.

The self-critical jackal does not exist.
The locust, alligator, trichina, horsefly
live as they live and are glad of it.

The killer whale's heart weighs one hundred kilos
but in other respects it is light.

There is nothing more animal-like
than a clear conscience
on the third planet of the Sun.

Strange that people are happy to adopt epithets they would fight to the death to throw off had they been imposed.

I was a little cross.I ask pardon. If I do get up a little temper I have no sufficient time to keep it up.