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Frasi di Will Cuppy

Will Cuppy era umorista, critico letterario.

✵ 23. Agosto 1884 – 19. Settembre 1949
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Will Cuppy: 119   frasi 0   Mi piace

Will Cuppy: Frasi in inglese

“Alexander III of Macedonia was born in 356 B. C., on the sixth day of the month of Lous. He is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time. (Footnote) He did this in order to impress Greek culture upon them. Alexander was not strictly a Greek and he was not cultured, but that was his story, and who am I to deny it?”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Alexander the Great

“[Footnote] He [Alexander] was often extremely brutal to his captives, whom he sold into slavery, tortured to death, or forced to learn Greek.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Alexander the Great

“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.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part IV: A Few Greats, Catherine the Great

“Whenever he [Charlemagne] decided to help somebody's morals, people would bury their small change and hide in the swamps and forests.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part III: Strange Bedfellows, Charlemagne

“The Dodo never had a chance. He seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of becoming extinct and that was all he was good for.”

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Will Cuppy

The Dodo
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“Other countries may boast of this and that, but nobody can touch the United States for poisonous snakes. We have about twenty species, most of them deadly, and Europe has only five or six, none of them much good. We have fifteen kinds of Rattlesnakes alone and nobody else has even one. [Footnote: There is a species in Central and South America, but it probably came from here. ]”

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Will Cuppy

The Rattlesnake
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“All Modern Men are descended from a Wormlike creature but it shows more on some people.”

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The Modern Man
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)

“[Footnote:] The female of any species is generally regarded as a relatively anabolic organism, more passive than the male, who is relatively katabolic and active. The fact remains that one frequently runs across a rather katabolic female.”

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Will Cuppy

The Viviparous Blenny
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“[Footnote] At the age of twelve Nero had shown a lively interest in the arts, particularly music, painting, sculpture, and poetry. Why was nothing done about this?”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Nero

“After a while Louis let her [du Barry] draw her own drafts on the comptroller-general. It saved time and bother in a field he much disliked. Jeanne never took more than she needed for urgent current expenses — that is, whatever was in the treasury.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part IV: A Few Greats, Madame du Barry

“Then there's the law that any person found carrying a Swanhook, the same being neither a Swanherd in good standing nor accompanied by two certified Swanherds, or Swannerds (or Swanners, or Swanmasters), of known probity, should cough up thirteen shillings fourpence, three shillings fourpence going to the informer and the rest to the King. This looked like a fine bit of legislation until it developed that you can't collect from such people. They haven't got it. That's why they're out stealing Swans.”

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Swan-Upping, Indeed!
How to Attract the Wombat (1949)

“The father guards the nest and fans it with his pectoral fins until the children are able to shift for themselves. Then he eats them. [Footnote: He does this because of his altruistic (parental) instinct. The higher one rises in the vertebrate scale the more altruistic one becomes. The higher vertebrates are just one mass of altruism. ]”

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Will Cuppy

The Three-Spined Stickleback
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“The Bayeux Tapestry is accepted as an authority on many details of life and the fine points of history in the eleventh century. For instance, the horses in those days had green legs, blue bodies, yellow manes, and red heads, while the people were all double-jointed and quite different from what we generally think of as human beings.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part V: Merrie England, William the Conqueror

“[Footnote:] The Chameleon's face reminded Aristotle of a Baboon. Aristotle wasn't much of a looker himself.”

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Will Cuppy

The Chameleon
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“He [Khufu] had discovered the fact that if you tell somebody to do something, nine times out of ten he will do it.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part I: It Seems There Were Two Egyptians, Cheops, or Khufu

“If the Pilgrims were looking for freedom of conscience, they came to just the right place. In America, everybody's conscience is unusually free.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Miles Standish

“Catherine announced that he died of hemorrhoidal colic, and people who went to the funeral wondered why, in that case, the large bandage was tied around his neck. And that, gentle reader, is what comes from playing with dolls at the wrong time.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part IV: A Few Greats, Catherine the Great

“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.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal

“He [Thutmose III] went to Asia with his army and killed the natives to his heart's content, and stole so much of their goods that Egypt was rolling in wealth for quite a while. Thutmose III was thus one of the earliest exponents of internationalism, or going into other countries and slaughtering the inhabitants.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part I: It Seems There Were Two Egyptians, Hatshepsut

“Ah, well! We live and learn, or, anyway, we live.”

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Will Cuppy

The Hermit's Emergency Shelf
How to Be a Hermit (1929)

“And he [Hannibal] probably believed, up to the very end, that everything might still come out right if he only had a few you-know-whats.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal

“She [Lucrezia] also had bright yellow hair, which she washed once a week with a mixture of saffron, box shavings, wood ash, barley straw, madder, cumin seed, and one thing and another to bring out the hidden glints and restore its natural color. You left it on your head for twenty-four hours and washed it off with lye made from cabbage stalks, the only hazard of which was the second-degree burn. If your hair remained on the scalp, you were a blonde.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part III: Strange Bedfellows, Lucrezia Borgia

“Even as a child back in Indiana, whenever I took a Butterbelly off the hook I used to ask myself, "Does this fish think?" I would even ask others, "Do you suppose this Butterbelly can think?" And all I would get in reply was a look. At the age of eighteen, I left the state.”

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Will Cuppy

Do Fish Think, Really?
How to Become Extinct (1941)

“The Romans were stern and dignified, living hard, frugal lives and adhering to the traditional Latin virtues, gravitas, pietas, simplicitas, and adultery.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal

“He believed you could reach the East by going west. That is true enough, if you don't overdo it. You can reach Long Island City by taking the ferry for Weehawken, but nobody does it on purpose.”

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The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Christopher Columbus

“They [the Pilgrim Fathers] believed in freedom of thought for themselves and for all other people who believed exactly as they did.”

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Will Cuppy

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Miles Standish

“Montezuma had a weak and vacillating nature. He never knew what to do next. [Footnote: He had the courage of his convictions, but he had no convictions. ]”

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The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part VI: Now We're Getting Somewhere, Montezuma

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