JOHN KENDRICK BANGS QUOTES
American author and humorist (1862-1922)
Things are seldom what they seem--
Skim-milk masquerades as cream.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
From Pillar to Post
I am prepared to assert that if a thing with flashing green eyes, and clammy hands, and long, dripping strips of sea-weed in place of hair, should rise up out of the floor before me at this moment, 2 a.m., and nobody in the house but myself, with a fearful, nerve-destroying storm raging outside, I should without hesitation ask it to sit down and light a cigar and state its business—or, if it were of the female persuasion, to join me in a bottle of sarsaparilla--although every physical manifestation of fear of which my poor body is capable would be present.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others
If we were more careful not to teach our children to read in their childhood we should not be so anxious about the effects of pernicious literature upon their adolescent morals.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
The Autobiography of Methuselah
It was thus that the keynote of existence was struck for me, one of mirth even in the dark of storm, and that I have since become the oldest man that ever lived, and shall doubtless continue to the end of time to hold the record for longevity, I attribute to nothing else than that, thanks to my father's droll humor, I was born smiling.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
The Autobiography of Methuselah
Who works 'mongst roses soon will find
Their fragrance budding in his mind.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
"Gardening", Songs of Cheer
Pandemonium did not reign; it poured.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
From Pillar to Post
Queer people—some of 'em.... Mighty queer. With a country of their own right outside their front door so big that they couldn't walk around it in less than forty-eight hours, they've got to go abroad just to see an old Alp cavorting around in Whizzizalum or whatever else that place Whistlebinkie was trying to talk about is named. I'd like to see an Alp myself, but after all as long as there's plenty of elephants and rhinoceroses up at the Zoo what's the good of chasing around after other queer looking beasts getting your feet wet on the ocean, and having your air served up with salt in it?
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad
Winter hedges me about,
All the scene is cold and white.
Clouds are laden all with doubt,
And the day hath much of night.
Yet I hold secure within
Thoughts of spring and summer days,
And above the north-wind's din
Rise the Thrush's roundelays.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
"A Winter Song", Songs of Cheer
If there is any animal in the whole category of four-legged creatures that more thoroughly deserves to be called a pig than the pig, I don't know what it is. He looks like a pig, he behaves like a pig, and he eats like a pig—in fact he is a pig, and Adam never did anything better than when he invented that name and applied it.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
The Autobiography of Methuselah
When you are dealing with ghosts you mustn't give up all your physical resources until you have definitely ascertained that the thing by which you are confronted, horrid or otherwise, is a ghost, and not an all too material rogue with a light step, and a commodious jute bag for plunder concealed beneath his coat.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others
There was little profit in the practice of such a profession at a time when everybody lived so long that death was looked upon as a remote possibility, and one seldom called one in until after he had passed his nine hundredth birthday and sometimes not even then. It may be that this habit of putting off the call to the family physician was the cause of our wonderful longevity, but of that I do not know, and do not care to express an opinion on the subject, for socially I have always found the medicine folk charming companions.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
The Autobiography of Methuselah
The doctor's gig, now so generally in use, had not as yet been brought to that state of perfection that has made its use in these modern times a matter of ease and comfort. We had wheels, to be sure, but they were not spherical as they have since become, and were made out of stone blocks weighing ten or fifteen tons apiece, and hewn octagonally, so that a ride over the country roads in a vehicle of that period not only involved the services of some thirty or forty horses to pull the wagon, but an endless succession of jolts which, however excellent they may have been in their influence on the liver were most trying to the temper, and resulted in attacks of sickness which those who have been to sea tell me strongly resembles sea-sickness.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
The Autobiography of Methuselah
The outer garments of to-day will become the under-clothes of some destined to-morrow, and centuries hence a man found walking on the public highways dressed as you are will be arrested by the police for shocking the sense of propriety of the community, and so on. It will go on and on until you will find human beings everywhere decked out in layer after layer of clothes until he or she has lost all semblance to that beautiful thing that an all-wise Providence has designed us to be.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
The Autobiography of Methuselah
The paper lasts a great deal longer when you read it upside-down than when you read it upside-up. Reading it upside-up you can go through a newspaper in about a week, but when you read it upside-down it lasts pretty nearly two months. I've been at work on that copy of the Gazette six weeks now and I've only got as far as the third column of the second page from the end. I don't suppose I'll reach the news on the first column of page one much before three weeks from next Tuesday. I think it's very wasteful to buy a fresh paper every day when by reading it upside-down backwards you can make the old one last two months.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad
If we could only get used to the idea that ghosts are perfectly harmless creatures, who are powerless to affect our well-being unless we assist them by giving way to our fears, we should enjoy the supernatural exceedingly.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
Ghosts I Have Met and Some Others
To the man who is not interested in the human animal, and insists upon judging all men by his own rigid and narrow standards, measuring souls by a yardstick, as it were, the work can never be a joy; but if he is broad enough to take people as he finds them, looking for the good that lies inherent in every human being, and judging them by the measure of their capacity to become what they were designed to be, and are honestly trying to be, then he will find it full of a living and a loving interest almost equal to that of the "joy forever."
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
From Pillar to Post
Fishin' for whales is a nice gentle sport as long as you don't catch any.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
Mollie and the Unwiseman Abroad
I defy any man to be a pessimist on the subject of American character after a season or two on the lecture platform; provided of course that he is a reasonably sympathetic man, and is so constituted in matters social that he is what the politicians call a "good mixer."
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
From Pillar to Post
O what of the outer drear,
As long as there's inner light;
As long as the sun of cheer
Shines ardently bright?
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
"The Kingdom of Man", Songs of Cheer
Misery loves company, particularly when she is herself the hostess, and can give generously of her stores to others.
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
"The Spectre Cook of Bangletop"