A cynic's retorts.
The wise and the foolish. · Cleverness. · Clever verbal retorts (repartee). · Repartee – miscellaneous. · view the constellation · filed as J1442
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13 finer motifs beneath it
The cynic wants sunlight. King (to cynic): "What can I do for you?" "Get out of my sunlight. Don't take away from me what you can't give me." The cynic at the bath. Leaving an unclean bath house: "Where can I go now to wash?" The cynic and the pale gold. "Why is gold so pale?" "It is in great danger." The cynic's burial. Asked who will carry him to his grave if he has no friends: "He who needs my house." The cynic as judge of wine. Asked which wine tastes best, he says, "That belonging to other people." The cynic and the big gates. Coming to a little town with big gates, he says, "Close the gate so that the town won't run away." The cynic and the bastard stone-thrower. Cynic: "Be careful; you might hit your father." The cynic discusses heaven. Hearing a man discoursing at great length about heaven, he asks, "When did you come down from there?" The cynic and the bald-headed man. His only reply to the baldheaded man's slanders is to compliment the hair that has left such a horrible head The cynic and the deceiver. When the deceiver calls him wicked, he says, "I am glad that you are my enemy; for you do good to your enemies and evil to your friends." The cynic and the fig tree. Man tells friend that his wife has hanged herself on a fig tree. Friend: "Give me a shoot of that tree!" Cynic is asked if widower should remarry. "One who has just escaped from drowning should not return to sea." The smallest woman makes the best bride. "Of an evil choose the smallest part."
Filed beside it
God of the earth. Question from the king: "Who are you?" "I am God." "Make my eyes larger." "I am only God of the earth and have power only below the girdle." The fools in the city. Man ordered to number the fools in the city replies, "It is easier to number the wise men." They gave it away themselves. A wandering actor rewarded by a city with a coat of their color gambles it away. When upbraided about giving away their present he replies that they hadn't wanted to keep it themselves The forgotten traditions. A man has been told by a seer that there are two ways in which a believer may be distinguished. But he has forgotten one of them and the seer had forgotten the other Aaron's censer. A man strikes a priest with a cane: "This is Moses' staff." The priest shoots with a pistol: "This is Aaron's holy censer." The favored swine. Dog reproaches sow that Venus will not allow those who have eaten swine to enter her temple. Sow says that it is because the goddess abhors those who kill swine The contagious yawns. A husband planning to punish his wife, who has yawned in church at the same time as a man, sees his error when his wife in the woods calls out, "The squirrels hop from bough to bough as the yawns from mouth to mouth." Who gets the beehive. Badger: "I was a hundred years old when grama grass first grew." Crane: "My daughter was a hundred years old when grama grass first grew." Wolf: "I am only eight years old, but we shall see who gets the beehive." Why he was thin. Philosopher explains that with his own blood he was nourishing as large a population as that of the Roman Emperor (lice) It's better to fight in the shade. Soldier tells captain that the enemy are so numerous that their arrows darken the sun. Captain: "Good, it will be more comfortable fighting in the shade." The lion and the statue. A man points out the statue to show the supremacy of man. The lion: "If it had been a lion sculptor, the lion would have been standing over the man." Has never died yet. Slave (workman) recommended to master whose recent slaves have died: "He has never died while I owned him." The liar. A man attempts to lie out of having called another a liar: "You lie if you say that I said you lied." The other: "It's a good thing for you that you didn't call me a liar." (Cf. J817.) The gray fox. An old husband tells his young wife, who is concerned about his gray hair, "A gray fox is as good as a red one." "But an old gray fox is not so good as a young red one." An oath to break oaths. Village called on to join in war deliberates in meeting. A man says, "We have taken oaths not to go to war. We must now take an oath to break all the oaths we have taken." The cause of grayness. Fool asked what made him gray-headed replies, "My hair."
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