'There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.'

'I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.'

- Actress and singer Marlene Dietrich (1901-1992)

'I am a writer who came from a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.'

- American novelist Eudora Welty (1909-2001)

'I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.'

- Comedian Joan Rivers (1933-2014)

'A word after a word after a word is power.'

- Author Margaret Atwood (1939-present)

'The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.'

-Writer J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)

'We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.'

- Playwright Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Twain ruthlessly criticized other writers

The writer was known for lambasting popular writers of his time, including Jane Austen and Robert Louis Stevenson. One of his most famous takedowns is “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences,” an essay that simultaneously mocks Cooper’s popular adventure tales and satirizes the pretentiousness of literary criticism. Remarking on Cooper’s novel “The Deerslayer,” Twain wrote, “its conversations are—oh! Indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language.”

Poet Robert Lowell encouraged O'Connor to turn away from commercial appeal

When O’Connor secured a publisher for “Wise Blood,” her publisher envisioned it as a broad, commercial comedy, something Lowell—the accomplished poet whom she met after graduate school at Yaddo, an artist colony in upstate New York—suggested she avoid, encouraging her to lean into her more esoteric and darker interests. This interview with O’Connor biographer Brad Gooch elaborates on that advice.

'If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time.'

- Activist Dorothy Height (1912-2010)

'Mockingbirds don't do one thing except make music for us to enjoy ... That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'

-Harper Lee (1926-2016) in "To Kill a Mockingbird"

'Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.'

- "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles M. Schulz (1922-2000)

'Practice, which some regard as a chore, should be approached as just about the most pleasant recreation ever devised.'

- Legendary athlete Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias (1911-1956)

'For it would seem—her case proved it—that we write, not with the fingers, but with the whole person. The nerve which controls the pen winds itself about every fibre of our being, threads the heart, pierces the liver.'

- Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) in "Orlando: A Biography"

'After you make a fool of yourself a few hundred times, you learn what works.'

- Musician Gwen Stefani (1969-present)

Satire often employs irony

Satirists often make their point indirectly through ironic statements, indirectly highlighting the foolishness of the thing they’re mocking. An example is Mark Twain's satirical 1882 essay, “Advice to Youth.” “Build your character thoughtfully and painstakingly upon these precepts,” he wrote, “and by and by, when you have got it built, you will be surprised and gratified to see how nicely and sharply it resembles everybody else’s.”

'I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot ... The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.'

- Author Jack London (1876 - 1916)

'The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first, Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd.'

- Poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

'The Wizard of Oz' was panned by some contemporary critics

A 1939 New Yorker review by Russel Maloney said the movie displayed ''no trace of imagination, good taste, or ingenuity.'' The New Republic's Otis Ferguson wrote, "It has dwarfs, music, Technicolor, freak characters, and Judy Garland. It can't be expected to have a sense of humor as well."

A quote by broadcast legend Walter Cronkite

"In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story."

Two 100-year-old sisters share their tips for staying mentally sharp

Shirley Hodes, 106, and her sister Ruth Sweedler, 103, don’t routinely do crossword puzzles, but both have stayed sharp as they aged. Though they live states apart, they share similar advice for maintaining mental acuity. They sum up their strategies for cognitive health with four verbs: work, connect, learn, and appreciate. Read this article to learn more about their approach to staying 100-plus years young.

'The first of April is the day we remember what we are the other 364 days of the year.'

- Mark Twain, from "Pudd'nhead Wilson and Other Tales"

Stand-up arrived in the late 19th century

Vaudeville theaters featured family-friendly comics, often working in teams, to execute tightly written comedic back-and-forths. Burlesque, vaudeville’s bawdier offshoot, often featured single comics delivering rapid-fire, joke-filled sets.

'Mutual ignorance breeds mutual distrust.'

- Businessman Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919)

Is the pandemic performance art?

Interdisciplinary artist Kristina Wong sees parallels between the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and some of the “worst performance art” she’s encountered in her career. Wong’s sharp sense of humor and clever writing mean that she gets in some good digs at the more ridiculous side of performance art, but don’t let her funny fool you: this is an incisive piece on the role of performance, empathy, trauma, and art in all our lives.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

A database of clever insults from Merriam-Webster

Merriam-Webster maintains a database of lists of some of the best ways to insult people in a clever way. Check out their various lists here, from some of the better Shakespeare jabs to a noun and verb insult generator.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

Comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, star of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'Home Alone,' quit 'Saturday Night Live' after just one week to return to her old job.

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

A pickleball's loud 'pop' sound can reach 120 decibels, which is equivalent to a hammer hitting a nail

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

See a ranking of the best (and worst) Federal Reserve Chairs since 1914 out of the 16 men and women who have held the office since.