"[T]he principal humour about a hippopotamus is that he exists."

[T]he only perfect pleasure in life is the pleasure of fighting for something in which one passionately believes, and [...] if that were left to me I would do without daylight and tobacco. I do think my own opinions very funny, but I also think them absolutely true. I think it very funny, for instance, that Mr. Kipling should be, as he is, psychologically incapable of a patriotic emotion and be, nevertheless, hailed everywhere as a patriotic poet. But I think it funny because I think it is the fact. The humour of it is like the humour of a hippopotamus; the principal humour about a hippopotamus is that he exists.

-October 10, 1903, Daily News