As the barber was almost finished the on the kid's hair and the man hadn't returned, the barber said, "Say, shouldn't your dad be back about now?"

"I don't know that man," the boy said. "He just stopped me in the street and said come get a free haircut."

Fred became frustrated that his teenage daughter would spend hours and hours on the phone with her friends. After he gave her a long, stern lecture, he waited to see what would happen the next time she used the phone. He had his chance shortly after his scolding when the phone rang and his daughter picked it up. When she hung up 15 minutes later, Fred smiled with a sense of parental pride.

"So what did your friend think about your cutting it short?" he asked.

"Oh, that was just someone who got the wrong number," his daughter replied.

The young trial lawyer felt he had nailed the seasoned criminal when he leaned into the witness box and bellowed, "How can you claim you're innocent? I can produce three witnesses who say they saw you grab the victim's purse."

But, without flinching, the old rogue replied, "Oh yeah? And I can produce fifty witnesses who say they didn't see me do it."

The moment the secretary sashayed into the office, her exasperated boss pointed angrily at the clock and demanded to know why she was half an hour late.

Slipping off her coat with a flourish, she said coolly, "I could have arrived on time, but the handsome man who was following me was walking ever so slowly."

A journalist covering an unseasonable prairie hailstorm approached a farmer whose entire uninsured crop was lost. 

"I feel deeply for you," the reporter sympathised.

"Thank you kindly son," the farmer replied. "It's a mighty loss. If it was anybody but the Lord who did it, I would have been annoyed."
 

The lowest depth to which people can sink before God is defined by the word journalist. If I were a father and had a daughter who was seduced I should not despair over her; I would hope for her salvation. But if I had a son who became a journalist, and continued to be one for five years, I would give him up.
--Kierkegaard

The only qualities for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability. The capacity to steal other people's ideas and phrases...is also invaluable.
--Nicholas Tomalin