Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations

In the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, the late writer and satirist Ned Sherrin has gathered more than 5,000 quotations in a rollicking collection drawn from an international cast of humorists and pundits, ranging from Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Oscar Wilde to Groucho Marx, Monty Python, and Lenny Bruce.
Arranging these quotes under more than 200 headings, from Actors and Acting (including Dorothy Parker's famous barb on Katherine Hepburn's Broadway debut, "She ran the whole gamut of the emotions from A to B") to Youth (such as Fran Lebowitz's wry comment: "Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you"), Sherrin collected the sharpest, the wittiest, the wryest in quips, put-downs, and one-liners. Now packed with even more quotes and covering more subjects than ever before, from Weddings to the Supernatural, Australia to Headlines, the book ranges from President Bush's "They misunderestimated me"; to James Agee's caustic review "Several tons of dynamite are set off in this picture, none of it under the right people"; to Jay Leno's comment when asked if the U.S. should draft a Constitution for Iraq: "We might as well give them ours. We aren't using it." The Dictionary also includes an index of authors, so you can track your favorite humorist throughout the book, and an index of keywords.
With quotations courtesy of comedians and playwrights, novelists and producers, cartoonists and moguls, soldiers and lawyers, and displaying all shades of humor, from dry to sly, subtle to wacky, and even unintended, the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations will be the perfect resource for public speakers, writers, and anyone else who enjoys a sparkling line, a clever pun, or a wickedly clever riposte.

Ned Sherrin CBE was presenter of BBC Radio 4's Loose Ends. Producer and director of the ground-breaking 1960s satire TV show That Was the Week that Was, and producer of a number of films, including The Virgin Soldiers (1968) and Up Pompeii (1971), he also wrote extensively for stage and screen. He directed many theatre productions such as Side by Side by Sondheim and Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. He compiled a number of anthologies, including Cutting Edge, Theatrical Anecdotes, and Ned Sherrin in his Anecdotage. Ned Sherrin died in October 2007.