An illustration from an 1888 issue of Punch magazine.

An illustration from an 1842 issue of Punch magazine.

"You may be quite surprised at how much you can get for that old painting that's been sitting in the attic for years."
—Green Your Home All in One For Dummies (2009)

Librarians have acquired tastes.  (That's a Googlewhack, but surely the joke's been done?)

(Thanks to New Hampshire's Keene Public Library for acquiring our Tarot of Portmeirion.  We can hardly imagine a lovelier home for the deck than a Victorian mansion!)

An illustration from an 1879 issue of Punch magazine.

Exactly one-hundred years before the giant dragonfly's debut in Monster on the Campus, these monstrosities appeared in Punch (1858).

"The Unknown Bull": an illustration from an 1862 issue of Punch magazine.

This is the best rendition of a giraffe jumping off an elephant into a crocodile's mouth that we've seen all year.  From Punch, 1858.

"Sensational.  I knew somebody would come up with the right word."  A still from the classic sitcom Bewitched, season six.

An illustration from an 1856 issue of Punch magazine.  The caption reads: "Every Lady Her Own Perambulator."

"You should always remember that society isn't always all that it's cracked up to be."
—Patrick W. McDermott, The Memoirs of the Walrus (2010)

"Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings." —Charlotte Brontë, Villette

The spirit of the teapot: an illustration from an 1862 issue of Punch magazine.  The caption reads: "Now then, I'm ready if you are..."

"Unless you have heard it yourself you may find it hard to believe that the woodcock, that long-billed, bug-eyed eater of earthworms, can sing a song as sweet as a nightingale's."
—Field & Stream (April 1972)

"Battle of the Alphabet": an illustration from an 1843 issue of Punch magazine.

"I think someone realized it would only be funny if it was clear that the spelling error was intentional."
—John Gierach, Death, Taxes, and Leaky Waders (2001)

"You would have had to be there, and even then it'd only be funny if you'd been drinking."
—Paul Alan Fahey, The Other Man (2013)

You've heard the old saying that one catches more flies with honey, but the truth is that one catches more flies with reconnaissance.  An illustration from an 1856 issue of Punch magazine.

An illustration from an 1856 issue of Punch magazine.  The caption reads: "The very idea of work [in] this beautiful weather is repugnant to my feelings."