Evan Esar Biography Quotes 12 Report mistakes

Early Life and Identity
Evan Esar (1899, 1995) was an American humorist and compiler whose name became synonymous with the art of collecting, refining, and presenting wit. Rather than cultivating celebrity as a performer or columnist, he built a reputation as a meticulous editor of humor, bringing order to a vast landscape of jokes, epigrams, and comic definitions. From early on, he gravitated to the intersection of language and laughter, responding to the American appetite for concise, memorable turns of phrase. In an era when newspapers, magazines, radio, and later television sped the circulation of jokes and one-liners, he chose the quieter craft of organizing them for posterity, making him a central figure in mid-twentieth-century humor reference.

Finding a Vocation in Humor
Esar's vocation emerged from a recognition that comic insight, when carefully arranged, could tell a larger story about culture, language, and everyday life. He approached humor as a kind of folk literature, tracing how a line moved through public life and how it shifted meaning in different contexts. He was not primarily a stand-up or a satirist; he was a keeper of the flame, preserving lines that might otherwise have flickered out. The lineage that inspired him included Ambrose Bierce, whose The Devil's Dictionary demonstrated how definitions could deliver barbed social commentary. Esar admired that model yet steered it toward a broader, more inclusive survey of wit, one organized by subjects and speakers so that readers could browse, search, and compare.

Major Works and Editorial Achievements
His name is most closely tied to Esar's Comic Dictionary, a landmark in which he supplied comic definitions that echoed a long tradition of lexicographic satire while cultivating a voice that was urbane rather than caustic. The book gave readers a way to see everyday words anew, reversing expectations with a crisp, epigrammatic touch. He also assembled The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, reflecting years of reading and verification to track who actually said what, and under what circumstances. Another standout was 20, 000 Quips and Quotes, a capacious reference that became a staple in libraries, offices, and home bookshelves, particularly for teachers, editors, speechwriters, and journalists who needed a precise line to animate a page or a talk. Across these volumes and their reprints and updates, Esar's editorial voice remained steady: practical in arrangement, careful in attribution, and alive to the varieties of wit across eras.

People Around the Work
Although Esar did not cultivate a public persona, the daily company of his work was a chorus of celebrated voices. Mark Twain's dry American skepticism, Oscar Wilde's poised paradox, Dorothy Parker's cutting brevity, and Will Rogers's plainspoken wisdom are constants throughout Esar's compilations. He frequently marshaled the sharpness of George Bernard Shaw, the social observation of H. L. Mencken, and the deadpan of W. C. Fields, alongside the earlier model of Ambrose Bierce. He also shared a broad publishing climate with editors and anthologists who valued wit, a context in which collections of anecdotes and quotations flourished and were avidly consulted by readers seeking both entertainment and authority. These figures did not stand beside him in a literal salon; rather, they surrounded him as the living sources and exemplars that shaped his selections and standards.

Method, Standards, and Style
Esar's method balanced delight with discipline. He treated a well-turned line as a small, polished artifact, valuable only when it could be traced, dated, and situated. His entries were arranged so that readers could locate a quotation by topic or by speaker, and he took pains to sift variants, pruning stray attributions that had drifted from speaker to speaker. The shape of his books reveals a practical imagination: chapters and headings that anticipate how a reader hunts for a theme; cross-references that lead to neighboring ideas; and consistent, succinct wording that lets the wit of the source shine without editorial clutter. Even when he contributed his own aphorisms and definitions, he kept the tone lean, letting brevity do the work that a flourish might have obscured.

Cultural Role and Reception
Esar's collections became part of the backstage machinery of public discourse. Lecturers reached for them to lend sparkle to an introduction. Editors and copywriters used them to seed a headline or cap a column. Students met them in libraries as dependable companions for debate, essays, and speeches. Because he was attentive to verification, his compilations helped stabilize the attribution of oft-repeated lines that had drifted into anonymity or error. His books also supported a broader understanding of humor as a record of social feeling: what a culture smiles at, and why, across decades. Reviewers and readers alike recognized the seriousness of his lightness, noting how his volumes provided both quick amusement and an enduring resource.

Position in the Tradition of American Wit
In the tradition that runs from Benjamin Franklin's pithy proverbs to Twain's tall tales, from Bierce's definitions to Parker's barbs, Esar occupies the role of the curator. He did not need a stage; the page was his forum, and the anthology his instrument. By juxtaposing voices from different eras and sensibilities, he showed how a remark can illuminate politics, manners, business, science, and love, while also revealing the personality of the speaker. His comparisons implicitly teach readers to read a line within a tradition: Wilde's paradoxes beside Shaw's polemical wit, Mencken's skepticism beside Rogers's amiability. In this way, Esar's work served as a school of reading as much as a storehouse of jokes.

Later Years and Ongoing Influence
Esar continued to revise and expand his collections as demand persisted and new material entered circulation. Even as humor migrated into new media, his volumes held their place because they solved a perennial problem: finding the right line, accurately ascribed, quickly. He died in 1995, leaving behind books that remained in print and in broad use, especially wherever words are a craft and humor is a tool for connection. The move to digital quotation databases has only heightened appreciation for the care he invested in attribution and context. Many lines he chose and many of his own quips circulate widely, often without readers realizing the editorial labor that kept them alive. His legacy is a library of laughter built to last, strengthened by exactness and guided by a generous respect for the wit of others.

Our collection contains 12 quotes who is written by Evan, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Puns & Wordplay - Love - Hope - Honesty & Integrity.