Marriage Quote by Henny Youngman

Four words, a pause, and a plea create one of stand-ups purest demonstrations of misdirection. The setup seems benign, as if a courteous man is asking an usher to escort his spouse; the ellipsis cues a breath, then the command snaps into place, flipping the meaning so that the husband begs to be rid of her. That pivot is the joke. It hinges on ambiguity in the verb take, on the precise timing of the pause, and on the exaggerated persona of the beleaguered husband. Nothing extraneous clutters it. The economy is the punch: a complete character, a relationship, and a twist delivered in five syllables.

Henny Youngman, celebrated as the King of the One-Liners, built a career in vaudeville, radio, and the Borscht Belt refining such clockwork gags. His act moved at a clip, each line calibrated for maximum laugh-per-minute, and this became his signature. The bit also nods to a broader tradition in midcentury American comedy that traded on domestic friction, with wives and mothers-in-law serving as familiar foils. On paper that can read as harsh, but Youngmans stage persona was cartoonish rather than confessional, and by most accounts he adored his wife Sadie; the cruelty is theatrical, the target a stock type inside a well-understood comic world.

The line is often said to have sprung from a backstage moment when Youngman tried to get someone to seat his wife quickly and heard how the phrasing landed. Whether apocryphal or not, the tale underscores the joke’s essence: comedy discovered in everyday language and polished into a repeatable device. The construction endures because it models a principle modern stand-ups still rely on: set up an expectation, then subvert it cleanly and decisively. Even as cultural tastes evolve and marriage humor feels dated, the craftsmanship remains a touchstone for how a turn of phrase, timed just right, can detonate a room.