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Will Cuppy

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Famous Will Cuppy Quotes

“During his fifteen years in Italy, Hannibal never had enough elephants to suit him. Most of the original group succumbed to the climate, and he was always begging Carthage for more, but the people at home were stingy. They would ask if he thought they were made of elephants and what had he done with the elephants they sent before.”

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Book:The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody
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“Most people, it seems, think that Robinson Crusoe when he landed on his Island had nothing to keep him from starvation or anything else. As a matter of fact he had twelve raft loads of supplies that he took off the wrecked ship. He had as much food and furniture as if he had had a delicatessen store and Fifth Avenue outside his hut.”

PeopleIfsThinkingMatterFactsSeemsSurvivalStoresShipsIslandsTwelveLoadFurnitureFifthAvenuesStarvationSuppliesMatter Of FactHutsRobinson CrusoeFifth Avenue
Author:Will Cuppy
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“[Footnote:] Pliny the Elder described a Whale called "Balaena or Whirlpool, which is so long and broad as to take up more in length and breadth than two acres of ground." This brings up again the old question: Are the classics doomed? Our ancestors believed that four years of this sort of information would inevitably produce a President, or at least a Cabinet Member. It didn't seem to work out that way.”

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Author:Will Cuppy
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“The Zebra is striped all over so that the Lion can see him and eat him. Some people say he is striped so that the Lion can not see him. These people believe that the stripes of the Zebra simulate the bars of sunlight falling through the tall jungle grasses and that therefore the Zebra is invisible and that the earth is flat.”

PeopleBelieveEarthFallInvisibleBarsGrassFlatsTallLionsSunlightCan NotJungleStripesSimulateZebras
Book:The Great Bustard and Other People: Containing: How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes and How to Become Extinct
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“Other countries may boast of this and that, but nobody can touch the United States for poisonous snakes. We have about twenty species, most of them deadly, and Europe has only five or six, none of them much good. We have fifteen kinds of Rattlesnakes alone and nobody else has even one. [Footnote: There is a species in Central and South America, but it probably came from here.]”

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Author:Will Cuppy
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“[Footnote:] The female of any species is generally regarded as a relatively anabolic organism, more passive than the male, who is relatively katabolic and active. The fact remains that one frequently runs across a rather katabolic female.”

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Book:The Great Bustard and Other People: Containing: How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes and How to Become Extinct
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“I'm a poetry-skipper myself. I don't like to boast, but I have probably skipped more poetry than any other person of my age and weight in this country - make it any other two persons. This doesn't mean that I hate poetry. I don't feel that strongly about it. It only means that those who wish to communicate with me by means of the written word must do so in prose.”

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Author:Will Cuppy
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