Dorothy parker quotes

Three highballs, and I think I'm St. Francis of Assisi.

He is a writer for the ages, the ages of four to eight.

What ever beauty may be it has for its basis order and for its essence unity Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.

Little Words When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf, Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds; And I can only stare, and shape my grief In little words. I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown The bitter woe that racks my cords apart. The weary pen that sets my sorrow down Feeds at my heart. There is no mercy in the shifting year, No beauty wraps me tenderly about. I turn to little words- so you, my dear, Can spell them out.

Now, look, baby, 'Union' is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a four-letter word.

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they're happy.

If you don't have anything nice to say, come sit by me.

I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.

Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.

You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.

Telegram to a friend who had just become a mother after a prolonged pregnancy: Good work, Mary. We all knew you had it in you.

A girl's best friend is her mutter.

A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika.

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them.

But I don't give up; I forget why not.

I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money.

Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!

[On hearing that Clare Boothe Luce was invariably kind to her inferiors:] And where does she find them?

There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them.

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.

(Scottish Terriers) have all the compactness of a small dog and all the valor of a big one. And they are so exceedingly sturdy that it is proverbial that the only thing fatal to them is being run over by an automobile - in which case the car itself knows it has been in a fight.

I like to have a martini/Two at the very most/After three I'm under the table/After four I'm under my host.

[After she and Clare Boothe Luce met in a doorway and the latter said, 'Age before beauty':] Pearls before swine.

If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.

The Monte Carlo casino refused to admit me until I was properly dressed so I went and found my stockings, and then came back and lost my shirt.

Maybe it is only I, but conditions are such these days, that if you use studiously correct grammar, people suspect you of homosexual tendencies.

There is entirely too much charm around, and something must be done to stop it.

Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.

[On Katharine Hepburn's stage performance:] She ran the whole gamut of emotions, from A to B.

If all the girls attending [the Yale prom] were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Where unwilling dies the rose; buds the new another year.

If all the young ladies who attended the Yale promenade dance were laid end to end, no one would be the least surprised.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.

I might repeat to myself . . . a list of quotations from minds profound - if I can remember any of the damn things.

People ought to be one of two things, young or dead.

Honesty means nothing until you are tested under circumstances where you are sure you could get away with dishonesty.

[On being shown an apartment by a real estate agent:] Oh, dear, that's much too big. All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.

Los Angeles: Seventy-two suburbs in search of a city.

All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.

You do what you can, and you do it because you should. But all you can do is all you can do.

Vice is nice, but liquor is quicker.

And if my heart be scarred and burned, The safer, I, for all I learned.

I hate writing, I love having written.

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

Brevity is the soul of lingerie.

Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.

I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.

By the time you swear you're his, Shivering and sighing. And he vows his passion is, Infinite, undying. Lady make note of this -- One of you is lying.

Q: What's the difference between an enzyme and a hormone? A: You can't hear an enzyme.

If I didn't care for fun and such, I'd probably amount to much. But I shall stay the way I am, Because I do not give a damn.

all men are the same age.

Of course I talk to myself. I like a good speaker, and I appreciate an intelligent audience.

The writer's way is rough and lonely, and who would choose it while there are vacancies in more gracious professions, such as, say, cleaning out ferryboats?

I regret to say that during the first act of this, I fell so soundly asleep that the gentleman who brought me piled up a barricade of overcoat, hat, stick, and gloves between us to establish a separation in the eyes of the world, and went into an impersonation of A Young Man Who Has Come to the Theater Unaccompanied.

Never throw mud: you can miss the target, but your hands will remain dirty.

I can’t write five words but that I change seven.

Time may be a great healer, but it's a lousy beautician.

Lady, lady, never start Conversation toward your heart; Keep your pretty words serene; Never murmur what you mean. Show yourself, by word and look, Swift and shallow as a brook. Be as cool and quick to go As a drop of April snow; Be as delicate and gay As a cherry flower in May. Lady, lady, never speak Of the tears that burn your cheek- She will never win him, whose Words had shown she feared to lose. Be you wise and never sad, You will get your lovely lad. Never serious be, nor true, And your wish will come to you- And if that makes you happy, kid, You'll be the first it ever did.

I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.

They tire of quiet, that have known the storm

Quick!! Act as if nothing has happened!

Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.

Don't feel bad when I die; I've been dead for a long time.

The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.

Don't look at me in that tone of voice.

Of Orson Welles: It's like meeting God without dying.

Friends come and go but I wouldn't have thought you'd be one of them

Genius can write on the back of old envelopes but mere talent requires the finest stationery available.

The best way to avoid a hangover is to stay drunk.

I don't want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I've never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn't do it. A "smartcracker" they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

[On the ringing of her doorbell or telephone:] What fresh hell is this?

The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.

Writing well is the best revenge.

Money cannot buy health, but I'd settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

I hate almost all rich people, but I think I’d be darling at it.

Daily dawns another day; I must up, to make my way. Though I dress and drink and eat, Move my fingers and my feet, Learn a little, here and there, Weep and laugh and sweat and swear, Hear a song, or watch a stage, Leave some words upon a page, Claim a foe, or hail a friend- Bed awaits me at the end.

I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.

You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.

Most good women are hidden treasures who are only safe because nobody looks for them.

When I was young and bold and strong, The right was right, the wrong was wrong. With plume on high and flag unfurled, I rode away to right the world. But now I’m old - and good and bad, Are woven in a crazy plaid. I sit and say the world is so, And wise is s/he who lets it go.

Four be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

I'm not a writer with a drinking problem, I'm a drinker with a writing problem.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

Once I was coming down a street in Beverly Hills and I saw a Cadillac about a block long, and out of the side window was a wonderfully slinky mink, and an arm, and at the end of the arm a hand in a white suede glove wrinkled around the wrist, and in the hand was a bagel with a bite out of it.

My own dear love, he is strong and bold And he cares not what comes after. His words ring sweet as a chime of gold, And his eyes are lit with laughter. He is jubilant as a flag unfurled - Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him. My own dear love, he is all my world - And I wish I'd never met him.

Ducking for apples -- change one letter and it's the story of my life.

I don't mind anything that's written about me, as long as it's not true.

My land is bare of chattering folk; / the clouds are low along the ridges, / and sweet's the air with curly smoke / from all my burning bridges.

I won't telephone him. I'll never telephone him again as long as I live. He'll rot in hell, before I'll call him up. You don't have to give me strength, God; I have it myself. If he wanted me, he could get me. He knows where I am. He knows I'm waiting here. He's so sure of me, so sure. I wonder why they hate you, as soon as they are sure of you.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, a medley of extemporanea, And love is a thing that can never go wrong, and I am Marie of Romania.

A liberal is a man who leaves the room before the fight starts.

Years are only garments, and you either wear them with style all your life, or else you go dowdy to the grave.

The only dependable law of life - everything is always worse than you thought it was going to be.

If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people He gives it to.

It was written without fear and without research.

The nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters. ... Obscenity is too valuable a commodity to chuck around all over the place; it should be taken out of the safe on special occasions only.

His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.

Said after she had been seriously ill: The doctors were very brave about it.

Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.

Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.

Bewildered is the fox who lives to find that grapes beyond reach can be really sour.

Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.

Guns aren't lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful. So you might as well live.

The only useful thing I ever learned in school was that if you spit on your eraser it erased ink.

It turns out that, at social gatherings, as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, I rank somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate.

Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)

All I say is, nobody has any business to go around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don't catch horses going around looking like people, do you?

The cleverest woman on earth is the biggest fool on earth with a man.

I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.

The definition of eternity is two people and a ham.

Writing is the art of applying the ass to the seat.

It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes.

And I'll stay off Verlaine too; he was always chasing Rimbauds.

There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.

They sicken of the calm who know the storm.

I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

There's little in taking or giving, There's little in water or wine: This living, this living, this living, Was never a project of mine. Oh, hard is the struggle, and sparse is The gain of the one at the top, For art is a form of catharsis, And love is a permanent flop, And work is the province of cattle, And rest's for a clam in a shell, So I'm thinking of throwing the battle - Would you kindly direct me to hell?

Newton's Fourth Law: Every action has an equal and opposite satisfaction.

The only “ism” Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.

Women and elephants never forget.