"Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city"
About this Quote
Burns turns the sentimental American idol of “family” into a punchline by sliding one prepositional phrase - “in another city” - under the door like a note you’re not supposed to read out loud. The intent is classic vaudeville misdirection: he invites the audience into a Hallmark definition of happiness, then reveals the adult truth hiding behind the greeting card. It’s not that he hates his relatives. It’s that closeness is exhausting, and love doesn’t cancel out friction.
The subtext is a sly defense of boundaries, decades before “self-care” became a consumer category. A “large, loving, caring, close-knit family” is described in maximal, syrupy adjectives - the kind of moral credentialing that makes you sound like a good person. Burns keeps all of it, then adds distance as the real ingredient. That’s why the joke lands: it admits what polite culture pressures people to deny, that intimacy often needs oxygen to stay breathable.
Context matters. Burns came up in an era when family was treated as duty and social insurance, not an optional lifestyle. Postwar America sold togetherness as virtue; comedy offered an escape hatch. The line also reflects the touring entertainer’s life: constant travel, hotel rooms, and a working relationship with absence. Burns isn’t rejecting family values so much as puncturing their hypocrisy. He’s saying: yes, cherish them - just not within arm’s reach.
The subtext is a sly defense of boundaries, decades before “self-care” became a consumer category. A “large, loving, caring, close-knit family” is described in maximal, syrupy adjectives - the kind of moral credentialing that makes you sound like a good person. Burns keeps all of it, then adds distance as the real ingredient. That’s why the joke lands: it admits what polite culture pressures people to deny, that intimacy often needs oxygen to stay breathable.
Context matters. Burns came up in an era when family was treated as duty and social insurance, not an optional lifestyle. Postwar America sold togetherness as virtue; comedy offered an escape hatch. The line also reflects the touring entertainer’s life: constant travel, hotel rooms, and a working relationship with absence. Burns isn’t rejecting family values so much as puncturing their hypocrisy. He’s saying: yes, cherish them - just not within arm’s reach.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Attributed to George Burns; listed on Wikiquote (George Burns). No primary publication/source cited on the page. |
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