Top 50 Will Cuppy Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Etiquette means behaving yourself a little better than is absolutely essential.”

— Will Cuppy

2. “Ah, well! We live and learn, or, anyway, we live.”

— Will Cuppy

3. “All Modern Men are descended from a Wormlike creature but it shows more on some people.”

— Will Cuppy

4. “Aristotle taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons.”

— Will Cuppy

5. “A hermit is simply a person to whom civilization has failed to adjust itself.”

— Will Cuppy

6. “Young normal tigers do not eat people. If eaten by a tiger you may rest assured he was abnormal.”

— Will Cuppy

7. “Let’s not be too quick to blame the human race for everything. A great many species of animals became extinct before man ever appeared on earth.”

— Will Cuppy

8. “The moral of the story of the Pilgrims is that if you work hard all your life and behave yourself every minute and take no time out for fun you will break practically even, if you can borrow enough money to pay your taxes.”

— Will Cuppy

Featured in: Fun Quotes, Quotes About Stories

9. “If a cat does something, we call it instinct; if we do the same thing, for the same reason, we call it intelligence.”

— Will Cuppy

10. “Galvani was mistaken about the amount of electricity in frogs, but he had some good ideas, too, for the galvanometer is named in his honor, and you don’t have galvanometers named after you merely for making a mistake about a frog.”

— Will Cuppy

11. “Never call anyone a baboon unless you are sure of your facts.”

— Will Cuppy

12. “My philosophy of life can be summed up in four words: It can’t be helped.”

— Will Cuppy

13. “Frogs will eat red-flannel worms fed to them by biologists; this proves a great deal about both parties concerned.”

— Will Cuppy

14. “I hear so many things about who I am supposed to be I hardly know what to believe. I am willing to tell all, but what Is it? Doubtless all these myths and legends will be straightened out eventually, but It may take years.”

— Will Cuppy

15. “It’s easy to see the faults in people I know; it’s hardest to see the good. Especially when the good isn’t there.”

— Will Cuppy

16. “Some people lose all respect for the lion unless he devours them instantly. There is no pleasing some people.”

— Will Cuppy

17. “Egypt has been called the Gift of the Nile. Once every year the river overflows its banks, depositing a layer of rich alluvial soil on the parched ground. Then it recedes and soon the whole countryside, as far as the eye can reach, is covered with Egyptologists.”

— Will Cuppy

18. “The stork is voiceless because there is really nothing to say.”

— Will Cuppy

19. “The Love bird is one hundred percent faithful to his mate-who is locked into the same cage.”

— Will Cuppy

20. “Just when you’re beginning to think pretty well of people, you run across somebody who puts sugar on sliced tomatoes.”

— Will Cuppy

21. “Humor springs from rage, hay fever, overdue rent and miscellaneous hell.”

— Will Cuppy

22. “Aristotle described the Crow as chaste. In some departments of knowledge, Aristotle was too innocent for his own good.”

— Will Cuppy

23. “The sloth lives his life upside down. He is perfectly comfortable that way. If the blood rushes to his head, nothing happens because there is nothing to work on.”

— Will Cuppy

24. “Alexander III of Macedon is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time.”

— Will Cuppy

25. “The Dodo never had a chance. He seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of becoming extinct and that was all he was good for.”

— Will Cuppy

26. “The Ancient Egyptians considered it good luck to meet a swarm of Bees on the road. What they considered bad luck I couldn’t say.”

— Will Cuppy

27. “I only know that all is lost, and that nothing can help me unless I inherit money, strike oil or go to work.”

— Will Cuppy

28. “Intelligence is the capacity to know what we are doing and instinct is just instinct. The results are about the same.”

— Will Cuppy

29. “I am billed as a humorist, but of course I am a tragedian at heart.”

— Will Cuppy

30. “Even as a child back in Indiana, whenever I took a Butterbelly off the hook I used to ask myself, “Does this fish think?” I would even ask others, “Do you suppose this Butterbelly can think?” And all I would get in reply was a look. At the age of eighteen, I left the state.”

— Will Cuppy

31. “The wren-box problem is becoming more acute each year, for wrens now demand better housing conditions and labor-saving devices.”

— Will Cuppy

32. “Whenever a kangaroo puts his paws on your shoulder and gives you a big grin, that is the time to leave.”

— Will Cuppy

33. “Male penguins are unfaithful up to an advanced age, a phenomenon sometimes attributed to the sea air.”

— Will Cuppy

34. “Unfortunately, this world is full of people who are ready to think the worst when they see a man sneaking out of the wrong bedroom in the middle of the night.”

— Will Cuppy

35. “The Mexicans gave the Spaniards malaria, and the Spaniards gave the Mexicans smallpox, whooping cough, diphtheria, and syphilis. The Spaniards believed it was better to give than to receive.”

— Will Cuppy

36. “As llamas have never heard of oxygen, they do not miss it.”

— Will Cuppy

37. “The male is colored much more gorgeously than the female so that he can be shot and made into feather embroidery.”

— Will Cuppy

38. “The trouble with the dictionary is that you have to know how a word is spelled before you can look it up to see how it is spelled.”

— Will Cuppy

39. “A few Cobras in your home will soon clear it of Rats and Mice. Of course, you will still have the Cobras.”

— Will Cuppy

40. “To the seeing eye life is mostly Sparrows.”

— Will Cuppy

41. “Orangutans teach us that looks are not everything-but warned near it.”

— Will Cuppy

42. “I borrow to pay my honest debts and not to squander foolishly. What’s more, I confine my borrowing to those who can well afford it. I don’t go around sponging on widows and orphans unless they have plenty.”

— Will Cuppy

43. “I do not travel. I am not much of an extrovert, and I’m not much interested in extroverted objects. I do not care for the ‘ideas’ of novelists. Novels are wonderful, of course, but I prefer newspapers.”

— Will Cuppy

44. “We all make mistakes, but intelligence enables us to do it on purpose.”

— Will Cuppy

45. “The hippopotamus looks monogamous- he looks as if he would have to be.”

— Will Cuppy

46. “Armadillos make affectionate pets, if you need affection that much.”

— Will Cuppy

47. “Caesar might have married Cleopatra, but he had a wife at home. There’s always something.”

— Will Cuppy

48. “Borrowing has a bad name, but you would be surprised how it helps in a pinch.”

— Will Cuppy

49. “Henry VIII had so many wives because his dynastic sense was very strong whenever he saw a maid of honour.”

— Will Cuppy

Featured in: Strong Quotes

50. “The call of the yellow-billed cuckoo of North America is often mistaken for a bloodhound drinking a bowl of milk. He goes coulp coulp coulp.”

— Will Cuppy