Jim Bernhard > Quotes

“Whom”
― Jim Bernhard, Words Gone Wild: Puns, Puzzles, Poesy, Palaver, Persiflage, and Poppycock

“irregular verbs.”
― Jim Bernhard, Words Gone Wild: Puns, Puzzles, Poesy, Palaver, Persiflage, and Poppycock

“The old man with the flaccid face and dour expression grimaced when asked if he were conversant with zoology, mineralogy, or the culinary arts. ‘Not to be secretive,’ he said, ‘I may tell you that I'd given precedence to the study of genealogy. But, since my father's demise, it has been my vagary to remain incognito because of an inexplicable, lamentable, and irreparable family schism. It resulted from a heinous crime, committed at our domicile by an impious scoundrel. To err is human… but his affair was so grievous that only my inherent acumen and consummate tact saved me.”
― Jim Bernhard, Words Gone Wild: Puns, Puzzles, Poesy, Palaver, Persiflage, and Poppycock

“To fear death, gentlemen, is to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. As far as anyone knows, death may be the greatest of all blessings, yet people fear it as if they knew for certain that it is the greatest of evils.”
― Jim Bernhard, Final Chapters: How Famous Authors Died

“Marcus Aurelius: “Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.”
― Jim Bernhard, Final Chapters: How Famous Authors Died

“cul de sac.”
― Jim Bernhard, Words Gone Wild: Puns, Puzzles, Poesy, Palaver, Persiflage, and Poppycock

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
― Jim Bernhard, Final Chapters: How Famous Authors Died

“His final words, as he waited for the axe to fall, were, “Strike, man, strike!” Raleigh’s head was embalmed and given to his wife. The rest of him was laid to rest at St. Margaret’s Church in Westminster. Lady Raleigh kept the head in a velvet bag until her death in 1647, at which time it was placed in Raleigh’s tomb with the body.”
― Jim Bernhard, Final Chapters: How Famous Authors Died

“treacle”
― Jim Bernhard, Words Gone Wild: Puns, Puzzles, Poesy, Palaver, Persiflage, and Poppycock

“blithely”
― Jim Bernhard, Words Gone Wild: Puns, Puzzles, Poesy, Palaver, Persiflage, and Poppycock

“Torquemada,”
― Jim Bernhard, Words Gone Wild: Puns, Puzzles, Poesy, Palaver, Persiflage, and Poppycock

“Wit has truth in it; wise cracking is simply calisthenics with words.” —Dorothy Parker For”
― Jim Bernhard, Words Gone Wild: Puns, Puzzles, Poesy, Palaver, Persiflage, and Poppycock

“. Even though nowadays you can say the words any way you like, some of them may at least give you pause: In the halcyon days of internecine tergiversation, a concupiscent chargé d'affaires at the Tanzanian consulate had the onerous assignment of arranging assignations amongst Zbigniew Brzezinski, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Deng Xiao Peng, Angela Merkel, and Dmitri Medvedev. “What a concatenation of blackguards,” expatiated this amanuensis, who was a bona fide dilettante. “It's a veritable farrago of inextricable idiosyncrasies. They will discuss laissez-faire, hypotenuses, synapses, kamikazes, Clio, Melpomene, Mnemosyne, and other such viragoes, before arriving, apocalyptically, at the dénouement. A priori, it is de rigueur that I not err, though embarrassed and harassed vituperatively by such vagaries.” Grasping”
― Jim Bernhard, Words Gone Wild: Puns, Puzzles, Poesy, Palaver, Persiflage, and Poppycock