Dorothy Parker Quotes: 37

• Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.

• If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

• 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.

• RésuméRazors pain you,Rivers are damp,Acids stain you,And drugs cause cramp.Guns aren't lawful,Nooses give,Gas smells awful.You might as well live.

  Enough Rope

• In youth, it was a way I had,To do my best to please.And change, with every passing ladTo suit his theories.But now I know the things I knowAnd do the things I do,And if you do not like me so,To hell, my love, with you.

  The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

• Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.

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

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

• I hate writing, I love having written.

• 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.

  The Collected Dorothy Parker

• Inventory:"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.

  The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

• 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.

  While Rome Burns

• I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.

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

  While Rome Burns

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

  Sunset Gun: Poems

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

• 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.

  The Portable Dorothy Parker

• 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.

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

• There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words."[Interview, The Paris Review, Summer 1956]

• It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.

  You Might as Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker

• I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.

• Four be the things I'd have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.

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

• Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.

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

  The Portable Dorothy Parker

• The sun's gone dim, and the moon's gone black. For I loved him, and he didn't love back.

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

  While Rome Burns

• 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.

  The Collected Dorothy Parker

• You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.

  The Algonquin Wits

• If I had a shiny gun I could have a world of fun Speeding bullets through the brains Of the folks that cause me pains :)

• And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.

• 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.

  The Portable Dorothy Parker

• Prince or commoner, tenor or bass,Painter or plumber or never-do-well,Do me a favor and shut your face -Poets alone should kiss and tell.

  The Collected Dorothy Parker

• My love runs by like a day in June, And he makes no friends of sorrows. He'll tread his galloping rigadoon In the pathway of the morrows. He'll live his days where the sunbeams start, Nor could storm or wind uproot him. My own dear love, he is all my heart, -- And I wish somebody'd shoot him.

  The Portable Dorothy Parker

• It costs me never a stab nor squirm / To tread by chance upon a worm. / Aha, my little dear, / I say, Your clan will pay me back one day.