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All laughter is a muscular rigidity spasmodically relieved by involuntary twitching.

Robert Benchley

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Robert Benchley
Age: 56 †
Born: 1889
Born: September 15
Died: 1945
Died: November 21
Actor
Humorist
Journalist
Screenwriter
Worcester
Massachusetts
Laughter
Twitching
Muscular
Rigidity
Involuntary
Relieved

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I am both a public and a private school boy myself, having always changed schools just as the class in English in the new school was taking up Silas Marner, with the result that it was the only book in the English language that I knew until I was eighteen--but, boy, did I know Silas Marner!
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In preparing the soil for planting, you will need several tools. Dynamite would be a beautiful thing to use, but it would have a tendency to get the dirt into the front-hall and track up the stairs.
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I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered.
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We call ourselves a free nation, and yet we let ourselves be told what cabs we can and can't take by a man at a hotel door, simply because he has a drum major's uniform on.
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Most personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why the writer hasn't written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close.
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At fifteen one is first beginning to realize that everything isn't money and power in this world, and is casting about for joys that do not turn to dross in one's hands.
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You won't find one fish in a million that has enough sense to come in when it rains.
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In Milwaukee last month a man died laughing over one of his own jokes. That's what makes it so tough for us outsiders. We have to fight home competition.
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Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
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She sleeps alone at last.
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Sheer madness is, of course, the highest possible brow in humor.
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If you look at eggs, you will see that each one is almost round but not quite ... Nature's way of distinguishing eggs from large golf balls.
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There is probably no more obnoxious class of citizen, taken end for end, than the returning vacationist.
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This congestion in the post offices is due to what are technically known as regulations but what are really a series of acrostics and anagrams devised by some officials who got around a table one night and tried to be funny.
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Anything can happen, but it usually doesn't.
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Next to an old-fashioned church social, or possibly a monster bridge party, there is no buzz which can equal the sibilant buzz ofa matinée.
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Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed be doing at that moment.
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There are two ways to travel, first class or with children.
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Traveling with children corresponds roughly to traveling third class in Bulgaria.
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Streets flooded. Please advise.
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