"Should they whisper false of you, Never trouble to deny; Should the words they say be true, Weep and storm and say they lie."
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Quote collection
Dorothy Parker quotes (page 12 of 16)
316 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Travel, trouble, music, art, a kiss, a frock, a rhyme -- I never said they feed my heart, but still they pass my time."
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"As I was saying to the landlord only this morning: 'You can't have everything'."
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"If I had any decency, I'd be dead. Most of my friends are."
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"Because your eyes are slant and slow, Because your hair is sweet to touch, My heart is high again; but oh, I doubt if this will get me much."
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"Four things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe."
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"[On being told their loquacious, domineering host was 'outspoken':] By whom?"
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"Go to the Martin Beck Theatre and watch Katherine Hepburn run the gamut of emotions from A to B."
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"For a few minutes, everything is so cute that the mind reels.... And then, believe it or not, things get worse. So I shot myself."
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"If I should labor through daylight and dark, Consecrate, valorous, serious, true, Then on the world I may blazon my mark; And what if I don't, and what if I do?"
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"Yes, well, let me tell you that if nobody had ever learned to quote, very few people would be in love with La Rochefoucauld. I bet you I don't know ten souls who read him without a middleman."
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"The nowadays ruling that no word is unprintable has, I think, done nothing whatever for beautiful letters. The boys have gone hog-wild with liberty, yet the short flat terms used over and over, both in dialogue and narrative, add neither vigor nor clarity; the effect is not of shock but of something far more dangerous — tedium."
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"Hell's afloat in lover's tears."
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"They say of me, and so they should, It's doubtful if I come to good."
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"You don’t want a general houseworker, do you? Or a traveling companion, quiet, refined, speaks fluent French entirely in the present tense? Or an assistant billiard-maker? Or a private librarian? Or a lady car-washer? Because if you do, I should appreciate your giving me a trial at the job. Any minute now, I am going to become one of the Great Unemployed. I am about to leave literature flat on its face. I don’t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading."
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"On being told of the death of former President Calvin Coolidge: How could they tell?"
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"Into love and out again, Thus I went and thus I go. Spare your voice, and hold your pen: Well and bitterly I know All the songs were ever sung, All the words were ever said; Could it be, when I was young, Someone dropped me on my head?"
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"They say of me, and so they should, It's doubtful if I come to good. I see acquaintances and friends Accumulating dividends And making enviable names In science, art and parlor games. But I, despite expert advice, Keep doing things I think are nice, And though to good I never come Inseparable my nose and thumb."
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"His books are exciting and powerful and — if I may filch the word from the booksy ones — pulsing."
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"Men don't like nobility in woman. Not any men. I suppose it is because the men like to have the copyrights on nobility -- if there is going to be anything like that in a relationship."
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