49 Tone Quotes

Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.

The essayist ... can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter - philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast...

I heard Dennis Kucinich say in a debate, 'When I'm president...' and I just wanted to stop him and say, 'Dude.'

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it.

Sometimes I read one of my stories, maybe one that I wrote thirty years ago, and I think, Now I'd go and do it differently. Or I think I would just alter a phrase that seems to me a little too polished or too sharp or too smart-aleck or something. Or too ironic. Irony was so big then that it got under your skin and you sort of didn't recognize it.

People have told me it's like Touched by an Angel on acid. I think that's a good description.

'I don't really think Elvis' voice was significantly lower than those of any other baritones. The colour of the voice and the sense of warmth and richness of tone gave the sense that the voice was much deeper. Elvis, in fact, did not force his lower register, comfortable as he was with it, which in turn gave the impression that it was lower than those of other baritones.'

' Mmmm. Aye. Oh aye. Y'know?'

Everything you say, Reichenau, is totally unmilitaristic.

I never read a reply by Shaw that did not leave me in better and not worse temper or frame of mind; which did not seem to come out of inexhaustible fountains of fairmindedness and intellectual geniality; which did not savor somehow of that native largeness which the philosophers attributed to Magnanimous Man.

I shit on the chest of Fun.

'Chrome Grover's are bitchin', I have them on a couple guitars. Almost as good as blue fuzzy Grover's.'

'Oh yeah, and using different guitars for different feels in a song is definitely cool. Fender guitars lend themselves well to clean tone parts; they have a nice sparkly yet warm tone that'll make you want to pee in the sink.'

'An exclamation mark makes everything I say more exciting!'

'Alllll-righty then!' (Ace Ventura: Pet Detective)

Good evening everybody, ladies, gentlemen... Felicity.

How may I, in all humble servitude, be of assistance?

See, I thought that Jay has had too many high class, very hoity-toity guests on this week. And I wanted to bring everything down a notch or two.

Is that what passes for humor with you?

For God's sake, sit down. You look like a Calvinist rector telling his flock about Hell.

Paul Harvey ... Good Day!

By the end of this long film, I would have traded any given gladiatorial victory for just one shot of blue skies... Gladiator lacks joy. It employs depression as a substitute for personality, and believes that if the characters are bitter and morose enough, we won't notice how dull they are.

My next shall be a more sober & chastised Epistle - but you see I was in the humour for metaphors - and to tell thee the Truth, I have so often serious reasons to quarrel with my Inclination, that I do not chuse to contradict it for Trifles.

(In his usual dry, monotone voice) 'Thanks.'

'I think his tone is much too vehement'

Herzen: Marx is a bourgeois from the anus up. Natalie : Alexander! I won't have that word... Herzen: Sorry, middle-class.

She sounded how you'd expect talking to a tree to sound - bored out of her mind

Ansset did not understand the words, but the tone of voice was clear. He understood the tone of voice instinctively, as he always had; it was his greatest gift, to know emotions even better than the person feeling them

The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.

Ma'am have you ever taken one off the chin?

Bravo, Streicher!

Mmm-hmm. Fascinating.

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.

'Yes, sir,' said Jeeves in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend.

'I don't want to seem always to be criticizing your methods of voice production, Jeeves,' I said, 'but I must inform you that that 'Well, sir' of yours is in many respects fully as unpleasant as your 'Indeed, sir?' Like the latter, it seems to be tinged with a definite scepticism. It suggests a lack of faith in my vision. The impression I retain after hearing you shoot it at me a couple of times is that you consider me to be talking through the back of my neck, and that only a feudal sense of what is fitting restrains you from substituting for it the words 'Says you!''

Directing an austere look at Tubby's receding back, she spoke in a cold crisp voice which sounded in the drowsy stillness like ice tinkling in a pitcher.

There are tones of voices that mean more than words.

No royal palace was prepared for him; No silken courtiers slid from room to room, Gathering together in the gorgeous gloom Of purple hangings, drooping rich and dim;