Why should I know George Burns?

“A married couple that plays cards together is just a fight that hasn't started yet.”

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

“Age to me means nothing. I can't get old; I'm working. I was old when I was twenty-one and out of work. As long as you're working, you stay young. When I'm in front of an audience, all that love and vitality sweeps over me and I forget my age.”

“And God said "Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything on me. And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan.”

“As long as you're working, you stay young.”

“Be quick to learn and wise to know.”

“Be sure to wear a good cologne, a nice aftershave lotion, and a strong underarm deodorant. And it might be a good idea to wear some clothes, too.”

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

“By age 93, I had shrunk quite a lot. My car was known as the Phantom Cadillac. People would see it whizzing by and they would swear there was no driver.”

“Critics are eunuchs at a gang bang.”

“Define your business goals clearly so that others can see them as you do.”

“Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.”

“Everyday happiness means getting up in the morning, and you can't wait to finish your breakfast. You can't wait to do your exercises. You can't wait to put on your clothes. You can't wait to get out. And you can't wait to come home, because the soup is hot.”

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

“Fall in love with what you're going to do for a living. To be able to get out of bed and do what you love to do for the rest of the day is beyond words. I'd rather be a failure in something I love than be successful in something I hate.”

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

“From Paris we took the Orient Express to Vienna. I must say I was terribly disappointed; nobody was murdered on the train.”

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

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

“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 did go to school - my kind of school. When I was a kid I went out... and you meet people. You talk to them. Anybody says something that makes sense, it stays with you, rubs off on you. That kind of school.”

“I don't care what you do for a living. If you love it, you are a success.”

“I don't have a drinking problem. I drink. I get drunk. I fall down, no problem.”

“I don't worry about getting old. I'm old already. Only young people worry about getting old. When I was 65, I had Cupid's eczema. 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 drink coffee with my right hand, and I smoke with my left. But I talk with both hands.”

“I find you have to take each day as it comes and be thankful for who's left and whatever you can still do.”

“I get a standing ovation just standing.”

“I get up every morning and read the obituary column. If my name's not there, I eat breakfast.”

“I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.”

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

“I must be getting absent-minded. Whenever I complain that things aren't what they used to be, I always forget to include myself.”

“I never go jogging, it makes me spill my martini.”

“I should have been a country-western singer. After all, I'm older than most western countries.”

“I smoke cigars because at my age if I don't have something to hang on to I might fall down.”

“I thought to myself, 'why not write a bestseller?' In the first place, more people buy them and more people read them. You make more money and it doesn’t take any more time to write a bestseller than it does to write a book nobody buys.”

“I was brought up to respect my elders, so now I don't have to respect anybody.”

“I would read Playboy more often, but my glasses keep steaming up.”

“I'd rather be a flop at show business than to be a success at something I didn't like.”

“I'd rather be over the hill than under it.”

“I'd say that about 82 percent of what I write is bad, but don't go by me; I'm as bad a judge as I am a writer. Look, if it were all good, you'd be paying twice as much for this book.”

“I'm very pleased to be here. Let's face it, at my age I'm very pleased to be anywhere.”

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

“If I get big laughs, I'm a comedian. If I get little laughs, I'm a humorist. If I get no laughs, I'm a singer.”

“If I had taken my doctor's advice and quit smoking when he advised me to, I wouldn't have lived to go to his funeral.”

“If I paid ten dollars for a cigar, first I'd make love to it, then I'd smoke it.”

“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.”

“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.”

“If you stay in the business long enough and get to be old enough, you get to be new again.”

“If you were married to Marilyn Monroe, you'd cheat with some ugly girl.”

“In those days the best painkiller was ice; it wasn't addictive and it was particularly effective if you poured some whiskey over it.”

“In what other business can a guy my age drink martinis, smoke cigars and sing? I think all people who retire ought to go into show business. I've been retired all my life.”

“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 better to be happy doing something you love, even if you don't find success right away.”

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

“It's one of the old show business axioms. No matter how successful you've been, there's always a younger and sexier seal coming along.”

“Just because you're old that doesn't mean you're more forgetful. The same people whose names I can't remember now I couldn't remember fifty years ago...”

“Lots of people have asked me what Gracie and I did to make our marriage work. It's simple - we don't do anything. I think the trouble with a lot of people is that they work too hard at staying married. They make a business out of it. When you work too hard at a business you get tired; and when you get tired you get grouchy; and when you get grouchy you start fighting; and when you start fighting you're out of business.”

“Love is a lot like a backache. It doesn't show up on x-rays, but you know it's there.”

“My best advice: Fall in love with what you do for a living.”

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”

“None of us kids had a middle name. We were lucky we had any name at all. By the time my mother got around to naming one, there was another on the way.”

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

“People are always asking me how much I'm worth. Well, all I can say is, I've got enough money to last me the rest of my life. As long as I die in the next 20 minutes.”

“People are always asking me when I'm going to retire. Why should I? I've got it two ways - I'm still making movies, and I'm a senior citizen, so I can see myself at half price.”

“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 the Universal Language in which nobody speaks; they don't have to.”

“She didn't need to go to acting school to learn that the essence of acting is to act like you're not acting.”

“Someone who makes you laugh is a comedian. Someone who makes you think and then laugh is a humorist.”

“Tennis is a young man's game. Until you're 25, you can play singles. From 25 to 35, you should play doubles. I won't tell you exactly how old I am, but when I played, there were 28 men on the court - just on my side of the net.”

“The happiest people I know are the ones that are still working. The saddest are the ones who are retired. Very few performers retire on their own. It's usually because no one wants them. Six years ago Sinatra announced his retirement. He's still working.”

“The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending, then having the two as close together as possible.”

“There are many ways to die in bed, but the best way is not alone.”

“There are two kinds of cruises - pleasure and with children.”

“There will always be a battle between the sexes because men and women want different things. Men want women and women want men.”

“There's an old saying, 'Life begins at forty.' That's silly. Life begins every morning you wake up.”

“There's nothing wrong with making love with the light on. Just make sure the car door is closed.”

“This is all so exciting I've decided to keep making one movie every 36 years.”

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

“Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.”

“What actresses do today when they appear on the screen is what they did once upon a time for getting to appear on the screen.”

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

“When I was in Vegas women were throwing their hotel keys at me. But it was after they checked out.”

“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 we played the back end of a horse we always knew that if we worked hard and did a good job we could become the front end.”

“When you stop giving and offering something to the rest of the world, it's time to turn out the lights.”

“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.”

“Young. Old. Just words. Inside we feel like our shoe size.”