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When Yankees baseball great Babe Ruth signed a contract in 1930 for $80,000, he was asked whether he thought he deserved to be making more money than President Herbert Hoover. “Why not?” he replied. “I had a better year than he did.” Abraham Lincoln, after being called two-faced about slavery by debate opponent Stephen Douglas: “If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?” Reporter: “How many people work at the Vatican?” Pope John XXIII: “About half.” Writer Lewis Morris complaining that his new book of poems hadn’t been reviewed by the press: “There’s a conspiracy of silence.” Oscar Wilde: “My dear Morris, join it yourself.” In 1954, poet Edith Sitwell was given the title Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. On a visit to the United States, an American asked, “Why do you call yourself ‘Dame’?” “I don’t,” Sitwell responded. “The queen does.” After a bout of drinking, humorist Robert Benchley found himself face-to-face with a uniformed man. Benchley asked the man to call him a cab. The man informed Benchley he was an admiral in the U.S. Navy. “Get me a battleship, then,” Benchley replied. A young, unknown musician complained bitterly to composer Johannes Brahms about delays in the publication of his first opus. Brahms counseled him to be patient. “You can afford not to be immortal for a few more weeks,” Brahms told him. In 1845, President James K. Polk named James Buchanan secretary of state. Former president Andrew Jackson protested. “But you yourself appointed him minister to Russia for your first term,” said Polk defensively. “Yes, I did,” said Jackson. “It was as far as I could send him out of my sight and where he could do the least harm. I would have sent him to the North Pole if we had kept a minister there.”