George Burns Quotes

A good sermon should have a good beginning and a good ending, and they should be as close together as possible.

Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

At my age flowers scare me.

Be quick to learn and wise to know.

Bridge is a game that separates the men from the boys. It also separates husbands and wives.

By the time you’re eighty years old you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it.

Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who’ll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you’re in the wrong house.

Don’t stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.

Everything that goes up must come down. But there comes a time when not everything that’s down can come up.

First of all you’ve got to have talent. And then you’ve got to marry her like I did.

First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally, you forget to pull it down.

For thirty years my act consisted of one joke. And then she died.

Happiness? A good cigar, a good meal, a good cigar and a good woman – or a bad woman – it depends on how much happiness you can handle.

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

How can I die? I’m booked.

I can’t afford to die – I’d lose too much money.

I can’t understand why I flunked American history. When I was a kid there was so little of it.

I don’t believe in dying. It’s been done. I’m working on a new exit. Besides, I can’t die now – I’m booked.

I love to sing, and I love to drink scotch. Most people would rather hear me drink scotch.

I smoke ten to fifteen cigars a day. At my age I have to hold on to something.

I spent a year in that town, one Sunday.

I would go out with women my age, but there are no women my age.”

If it’s a good script I’ll do it. And if it’s a bad script, and they pay me enough, I’ll do it.

I’d rather be a failure at something I love than a success at something I hate.

I’m at the age now where just putting my cigar in its holder is a thrill.

If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.

If you live to be one hundred, you’ve got it made. Very few people die past that age.

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.

It’s hard for me to get used to these changing times. I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.

Look to the future, because that is where you’ll spend the rest of your life.

Nice to be here? At my age it’s nice to be anywhere.

No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

Old age is when you resent the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated because there are fewer articles to read.

People ask me what I’d most appreciate getting for my eighty-seventh birthday. I tell them, a paternity suit.

Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.

Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.

Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.

Smartness runs in my family. When I went to school I was so smart my teacher was in my class for five years.

There are two kinds of cruises – pleasure and with children.

This is the sixth book I’ve written, which isn’t bad for a guy who’s only read two.

Too bad all the people who know how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair.

When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.

When I was young I was called a rugged individualist. When I was in my fifties I was considered eccentric. Here I am doing and saying the same things I did then and I’m labeled senile.

When Jack Benny has a party, you not only bring your own scotch, you bring your own rocks.

You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.

You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.