Do you have any favorite one-liners that were just randomly spoken by ordinary people?
Asked by
Jeruba (
56061)
April 14th, 2019
Forget professional comedians and carefully crafted stage scripts. What great lines have you heard ordinary people say just offhand? I can think of a few.
A woman I know said this as she was coping with nonstop family drama: “I turn off my phone at night. If somebody’s dead, they’ll still be dead in the morning.”
”Maybe is my go-to word.” I heard somebody say that when talking about dealing with his son.
And I like this one: “I’m a nonpracticing atheist.”
The most spectacular mystery line was at a bank of telephone niches in a hotel—this was some years ago—where I overheard someone say (loudly and with exasperation), “Well, but did you get the dead skunks OUT of the bedroom?”
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21 Answers
One of those reminds me of a line of mine, “I’m a non-practicing vegetarian.”
At a casual dinner some years back where the new girlfriend of one of the guests surveyed a table full of meatless offerings and announced, rather snottily, “I don’t eat vegetarian!”
My friend, not missing a beat, responded: “Well, the guinea pigs are relieved, but now the dog looks worried!”
Mom always tells me whenever I can’t find whatever it is she wants me to get for her that if it was a snake I’d be dead already.
My paternal grandfather, if anybody said “I’ll try” would always reply “Hell, a steer can try!”
If I would say “I forgot” to his son (my dad) he would reply “Try telling the IRS you forgot”
My sister said “I got my mords wixed”
My Dad always said “You don’t have to like what happens, but you do have to make the best of it.”
I guess I should rephrase the question as “Do you have any favorite sayings that people you know always said?” since that is what’s being answered.
A one liner that my Ex and I loved was when my Dad came outside once after a blizzard and said, “It’s a fucking winter wonderland!” He was not a man who cursed normally.
One day, when me and my little brother were young (10— 14 years old) we heard the bell of the front door ring.
We lived upstairs and the door was at the end of the staircase (and was opened from upstairs by means of a rope that hung along the grip of the the steps).
Us being kids we loved to open the door that way and so it was always a competition to try to be first at the landing and be the one that opened the door and greeting the visitor.
That day I don’t know if it was me or my brother, but we were both sitting on the landing, looking who it was that rung our door bell.
A stranger stepped through the door opening, and asked us, looking up, holding his cupped hands forward: “Is this frog yours?”
^^^^ That is my new life’s metaphor.
I was best man at my friend’s wedding and at the reception afterwards he copied his sister in law by sticking a flower in his hair. She thought it looked stupid and he tried to say if you can wear flowers in your hair I can wear flowers in my hair but what came out was “if you can wear hairs on your flower I can wear flowers in my hair” which was much better.
“Your momma’s so fat, Thanos had to snap twice.”
There is no “I” in team, but there is two in winning. Also there is a “me” in team.
When my cousin Lucy was four, she watched me eat a black liquorice lace. I choked on it, and she said – disdainfully – ”I guess it wasn’t so smart to eat that cable or hair tie after all.”
We use that in my family to comment on each other’s misfortune.
I served with a guy that had two gems. The first was “I’ve never had an original thought that was my own.” and the other was “Don’t make fun of my mom. You know she died before I was born.” I was never sure if he had a really dry sense of humor or if he didn’t recognize what he was saying.
“If it’s raining it must be Thursday.”
Several years ago, it seemed like every Thursday it would rain so it has become somewhat of a joke around here.
“If at first you don’t succeed keep on a suckin’ till you do suck a seed.” My dad’s mom, who died when he was 13.
Also he was from Texas and. Gramma frowned on slang. If he ever said “fer” for “for” she’d say “Cat fur for to make kitten britches out of.”
Commuter driving is not a competition sport.
A doctor I work with said “Chyna is the only person I’ve ever known to be late for her own heart cath and sprints across the parking lot, with a 99% blockage in her main artery. And lived.
Alas! What cruel twist of fate hath skewered us betwixt the coattails so?
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