Art of the one-liner: wit and grit for a deadly hit

Gary Nunn in The Guardian

For a while, I had the perfect tagline on my dating profile, and it was all thanks to the wit of Carrie Fisher: “Instant gratification takes too long.”

It alerted me to the dimmer bulbs in the chandelier. “Your tagline makes no sense. What could be quicker than instant?” Blocked! 

But: “Great Postcards from the Edge quote there” = date request! 

Alas, that led to little success so I’m again taking Fisher’s advice, as echoed by Meryl Streep this month: “Take your broken heart, make it into art.” The art I’ve decided to make is to discover the world’s best one-liner. This one’s for you, Carrie:

Some one-liners are so great, they’ve become their own cliches. Some characters deserve their own category for speaking almost exclusively in them - take a bow, Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, Groucho Marx, Mae West, Mark Twain, Maya Angelou.

What makes a great one-liner? Certainly not an inspirational quote in an infuriatingly pretty font over an evocative filtered landscape. They are more likely to be bawdy, rambunctious and not always kind. The edge makes them memorable, although that’s not to say they can’t be profound.

Straight-up humour isn’t enough: the funniest one-liners have a sardonic, sarcastic or even bitchy undertone. The dreamier ones need a tinge of sadness or bitterness. Those offering guidance need to insinuate it’s advice the author of the phrase wistfully - or bitterly - wishes they’d taken themselves. Concision is essential. 

Some wordplay will make the ‘inspirational’ one liner forgivable for its linguistic merit. Don’t state the bleeding obvious: tell us something counterintuitive, or something that reveals the grit of your struggle and how you’ve mastered words as your response.

Retorts are out; if you need someone to rack up a line for you to knock down, then strictly speaking that isn’t a one-liner. It should include all its wit, grit and tips in that standalone line. Metaphors, self-deprecation and genuine poignancy are in.

With those criteria in mind, here’s my - unapologetically subjective - stab at the shortlist of the world’s greatest one-liners of all time:

Self-deprecating
“It costs a lot of money to look this cheap” - Dolly Parton
“I used to be Snow White, but I drifted” - Mae West
“My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain” - WH Auden

Wordplay
“I can resist everything, except temptation” - Oscar Wilde
“Better to be looked over than overlooked” - Mae West
“There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t” - Robert Benchley

Perceptive
“If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself” – Albert Einstein
“Faith: not wanting to know what is true” - Friedrich Nietzsche
“Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung” - Voltaire
“Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from two, it’s research” - Wilson Mizner
“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo” - HG Wells

Sardonic
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it” - Groucho Marx
“Every love’s the love before in a duller dress” - Dorothy Parker
“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography” - Ambrose Bierce
“If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me” - Alice Roosevelt Longworth (and Shirley MacLaine in Steel Magnolias, of course)

Underrated
“Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length” - Robert Frost
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance” - Derek Bok

Just brilliant
“You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think” - Dorothy Parker
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about” - Oscar Wilde

Advice
“When someone shows you who they are believe them; the first time” - Maya Angelou
“When you’re going through hell, keep going” - Winston Churchill
“Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off” - Coco Chanel

Poignant
“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple” - Dr Seuss
“At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; at 45 they are caves in which we hide” - F Scott Fitzgerald

Inspirational
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” - Oscar Wilde
“It is never too late to be what you might have been” - George Eliot
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“If everything is under control, you are going too slow” - Mario Andretti

I can relate
“Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life” - Lawrence Kasdan

I’d best wrap this up because:
“He that uses many words for explaining any subject, doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink” - John Ray

And finally, take all these with a pinch of salt because:
“The aphorism is a personal observation inflated into a universal truth, a private posing as a general” - Stefan Kanfer

What do you think is the world’s best one-liner?