Cynical Humor Quotes & Sayings

This is some sort of joke, isn't it?" asks Hunt, staring at the flawless blue sky and distant fields.
I cough as lightly and briefly as possible into a handkerchief I have made from a towel borrowed from the inn. "Probably," I say. "But then, what isn't? — Dan Simmons

His joy was a release of Paul's conversion, not the heavy backslapping practical-joking humor of the Victorians, nor the cynical satire or the flippancy of the twenty first century mass media, just the gift of not taking himself or his adversaries too seriously. — John Charles Pollock

I like to think my sense of humor is sort of smart and dumb at the same time. I like to work on multiple levels - smart and dumb, funny and sad, profound and mundane, cynical and hopeful. — Robert Lopez

It's war, you jackasses," Keyes snapped. "I'm sorry it's not terribly convenient or comfortable for you. — John Scalzi

Anyway, that's what life is, just one learning experience after another, and when you're through with all the learning experiences you graduate and what you get for a diploma is, you die. — Frederik Pohl

Why do people who so obviously hate children have so many of them? Audrey asked...Because they hate everyone else more. Their bratty kids are their revenge on a society that has denied them the riches they so rightly deserve. — Shaun David Hutchinson

I'm with the federal government, Drummond, Trust me is another way of saying I'm lying. — Brian Haig

You can go back to blacksmithing in Hintindar and live a quiet happy life. Do me a favor and marry some pretty farm girl and train your son to beat the crap out of imperial knights."
"Sure," Hadrian told him. "And with any luck he'll make friends with a cynical burglar who'll do nothing but torment him. — Michael J. Sullivan

It's easy to be cynical in this day and age, but I believe that everyone has some good in them. And by good, I'm referring to "good cholesterol". — John Hartnett

I don't think it's ever easy to be funny. I find it easy to amuse myself with a certain sort of cynical dark humor that tends toward the meaner side, like my character in Happy Gilmore. Those kinds of characters come easily to me. — Ben Stiller

The only activity a cynic will find contagious is yawning, that is, with other people, at other people. — Criss Jami

Yes, world.
Truly.
You disgust me.
Please continue. — Eric Jarosinski

My condolences, you're still alive. — Fakeer Ishavardas

In modern medicine, we have a name for nearly everything, but a cure for almost nothing. — Charles F. Glassman

I've been waiting my whole life to fuck up like this. — Robert Stone

They tugged plans and ambitions out their asses and held tight to the first that didn't smell so strongly of shit. — Patrick Bryant

-Would you wish us to invest it for you?
-No, I would like you to set up a trust for dumb animals.
-What kind of dumb animals do you have in mind, Miss Donahue?
-Oh, stray dogs. Rats. Birds.
-We could still invest it for you. Then the animals would get the income without touching the capital.
-No, I don't wish to invest it. I don't want them to get rich. They might become human. — Romain Gary

The law enforcement in this town is terrific. All through prohibition Eddie Mars' place was a night club and they had two uniformed men in the lobby every night-to see that the guests didn't bring their own liquor instead of buying it from the house. — Raymond Chandler

The only way of rendering life endurable is to drink as much wine as one can come by. — James Branch Cabell

Do you know what happens when you play a country song backwards? You get your wife back, your dog back and your job back. — Richard Belzer

It's weird, marriage. It's like this license that gives a person the legal right to control their spouse / their 'other half. — Jess C. Scott

I would like at this moment to announce that I will be retiring from this program in two weeks' time because of poor ratings. Since this show is the only thing I had going for me in my life, I've decided to kill myself. I'm going to blow my brains out right on this program a week from today. So tune in next Tuesday. That should give the public relations people a week to promote the show. You ought to get a hell of a rating out of that. 50 share, easy. — Paddy Chayefsky

I want to attend a Pampered Chef party about as much as I want to go to a used auto parts party where you can win a baby monkey as a door prize. — Carol Maloney Scott

It's kind of depressing, if you think about it. I mean, me being so young, and yet so cynical and suspicious. — Meg Cabot

For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable bastards we've all had to become disappears, when we're confronted with something as simple as a plate of food. — Anthony Bourdain

Piers took a leisurely look at Linnet. There was the beauty, sure enough. But it didn't detract from the intelligence in her eyes. And in his opinion the slightly cynical lilt in her voice just made her all the more beautiful, as if Aphrodite had been crossed with Athena. — Eloisa James

Didn't Chains tell you about the Golden Theological Principle?"
"The what?"
"The single congruent aspect of every known religion. The one shared, universal assumption about the human condition."
"What is it?"
"He said that life boils down to standing in line to get shit dropped on your head. Everyone's got a place in the queue, you can't get out of it, and just when you start to congratulate yourself on surviving your dose of shit, you discover that line is actually circular. — Scott Lynch

If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life. — Terry Pratchett

If by 'foe' you mean a brutal killer, then I suppose I'd fall into the 'friend' category," I replied cynically. "Although in your case, we may have to find a secret option number three. — M.A. George

It's nice to be able to do things for other people, isn't it?

That's why it's fun to talk in the third person sometimes. — Patrick Bryant

Has anybody ever told you you're a remarkably cynical person?"
"I like to think of it as learning from experience. — Benedict Jacka

It seemed perverse to some, but for all their apparent militarism the Gzilt had remained peaceful over many millenia; it was the avowedly peaceful Culture that had , within living memory, taken part in an all-out galactic war against another civilisation. — Iain M. Banks

The Sublime. The almost tangible, entirely believable, mathematically verifiable nirvana just a few right-angle turns away from dear boring old reality: a vast, infinite, better-than-virtual ultra-existence with no Off switch, to which species and civilizations had been hauling their sorry tired-with-it-all behinds off to since - the story went - the galaxy had still been in metaphorical knee socks. — Iain M. Banks

Well, I just don't want you to think that this piece of shit is anything other than a pathetic, human defect. Nothing more. Not a monster, not a bogeyman. Nothing but another reason to feel better about yourself. Understand that it's just a person - not worth devoting any nightmares to. — Jhonen Vasquez

Let us be thankful for the fools,' Mark Twain wrote with typically dark humor in 1897. 'But for them the rest of us could not succeed.' Of all the paradoxes of failure in America, surely this is the darkest. Long ago, we saw through old fables of rags to riches; it is still fun to dream, but we know that we are partaking of a cultural myth. But if we do not quite believe in that kind of success, our faith in the myths of failure is unshaken. We are merrily cynical about whether the average tycoon really tugged on those bootstraps, but we still believe with deadly seriousness that the reasons for failure are usually individual-- "in the man." Failure is not the dark side of the American Dream; it is the foundation of it. The American Dream gives each of us the chance to be a born loser. — Scott A. Sandage

Breslin gives me his wise-teacher smile, which is kind and crinkly and would make me feel warm all over if I was dumber than a bag of hair. — Tana French

Nobody has any rights unless they've got a machine gun. — Kent Anderson

Our town was known for two things--no, three: salted fish, expertly dyed fabrics, and corruption. — Angela Elwell Hunt

Are you always so cynical?' said Angelica.
'No,' said Katherine. 'Sometimes I'm asleep. — Sam Byers

I think I'm too cynical for L.A. My sense of humor doesn't go down well here, which probably affects my love life. I need to have a laugh track following me around so people know I'm trying to be funny. — Teddy Thompson

alcohol played the midwife — James Branch Cabell

Billions of years before twelve step groups, God committed shotgun suicide. Today wall scrapings share His gratitude stories. — Brian Spellman