Dorothy Parker Quotes

Work is the province of cattle.
Dorothy Parker
Wit has truth in it wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.
Dorothy Parker
She realizes she doesn't know as much as God but feels she knows as much as God knew when he was her age.
Dorothy Parker
I shall stay the way I am Because I do not give a damn.
Dorothy Parker
There was never a place for her in the ranks of the terrible slow army of the cautious. She ran ahead where there were no paths.
Dorothy Parker
I don't know much about being a millionaire but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.
Dorothy Parker
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
Dorothy Parker
Where's the man could ease the heart Like a satin gown?
Dorothy Parker
They sicken of the calm who know the storm.
Dorothy Parker
I don't know much about being a millionaire but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.
Dorothy Parker
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
Dorothy Parker
Where's the man could ease the heart Like a satin gown?
Dorothy Parker
They sicken of the calm who know the storm.
Dorothy Parker
He and I had an office so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.
Dorothy Parker
Women and elephants never forget.
Dorothy Parker
Lips that taste of tears they say are the best for kissing.
Dorothy Parker
Scratch a lover and find a foe.
Dorothy Parker
Men seldom make passes At girls who wear glasses.
Dorothy Parker
The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant - and let the air out of the tires.
Dorothy Parker
It cost 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.'
Dorothy Parker
Poisons pain you Rivers are damp Acid stains you And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful Nooses give Gas smells awful You might as well live.
Dorothy Parker
Where unwilling dies the rose Buds the new another year.
Dorothy Parker
Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.
Dorothy Parker
They sicken of calm who know the storm.
Dorothy Parker
They sicken of the calm that know the storm.
Dorothy Parker
One more drink and I'd have been under the host.
Dorothy Parker
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.
Dorothy Parker
Eternity is a ham and two people” (also given as “Eternity is two people and a ham") is an old quip from the days when a ham was huge—far more than two people could finish. Irma Rombauer mentions this line in her famous cookbook, The Joy of Cooking.
Dorothy Parker
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.
Dorothy Parker
She realizes she doesn't know as much as God but feels she knows as much as God knew when he was her age.
Dorothy Parker
You think You're frightening me with Your hell, don't You? You think Your hell is worse than mine.
Dorothy Parker
Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night.
Dorothy Parker
tomorrow's gone-we'll have tonight!
Dorothy Parker
Then she told herself to stop her nonsense. If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them, more easily each time, so easily, soon, that you did not even realize you had gone out searching.
Dorothy Parker
London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.
Dorothy Parker
A Very Short Song Once, when I was young and true, Someone left me sad- Broke my brittle heart in two; And that is very bad. Love is for unlucky folk, Love is but a curse. Once there was a heart I broke; And that, I think, is worse.
Dorothy Parker
This level reach of blue is not my sea; Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun,Whose quiet ripples meet obediently A marked and measured line, one after one. This is no sea of mine. that humbly laves Untroubled sands, spread glittering and warm. I have a need of wilder, crueler waves; They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm. So let a love beat over me again, Loosing its million desperate breakers wide; Sudden and terrible to rise and wane; Roaring the heavens apart; a reckless tide That casts upon the heart, as it recedes, Splinters and spars and dripping, salty weeds.
Dorothy Parker
I never see that prettiest thing-A cherry bough gone white with Spring-But what I think, "How gay 'twould beTo hang me from a flowering tree.
Dorothy Parker
If wild my breast and sore my pride,I bask in dreams of suicide,If cool my heart and high my headI think 'How lucky are the dead.
Dorothy Parker
Some men break your heart in two,Some men fawn and flatter,Some men never look at you;And that cleans up the matter.
Dorothy Parker
He'll be cross if he sees I have been crying. They don't like you to cry. He doesn't cry. I wish to God I could make him cry. I wish I could make him cry and tread the floor and feel his heart heavy and big and festering in him. I wish I could hurt him like hell.He doesn't wish that about me. I don't think he even knows how he makes me feel. I wish he could know, without my telling him. They don't like you to tell them they've made you cry. They don't like you to tell them you're unhappy because of them. If you do, they think you're possessive and exacting. And then they hate you. They hate you whenever you say anything you really think. You always have to keep playing little games. Oh, I thought we didn't have to; I thought this was so big I could say whatever I meant. I guess you can't, ever. I guess there isn't ever anything big enough for that.
Dorothy Parker
I shudder at the thought of men....I'm due to fall in love again
Dorothy Parker
Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.
Dorothy Parker
Ducking for apples -- change one letter and it's the story of my life.
Dorothy Parker
She was pleased to have him come and never sorry to see him go.
Dorothy Parker
Money cannot buy health, but I'd settle for a diamond-studdedwheelchair.
Dorothy Parker
Why, that dog is practically a Phi Beta Kappa. She can sit up and beg, and she can give her paw -- I don't say she will but she can.
Dorothy Parker
God, the bitter misery that reading works into this world! Everybody knows that - everbody who IS everybody. All the best minds have been off reading for years. Look at the swing La Rouchefoucauld took at it. He said that if nobody had ever learned to read, very few people would be in love. Good for you, La Rouchefoucauld; nice going, boy. I wish I’d never learned to read.
Dorothy Parker
They sicken of the calm who know the storm.
Dorothy Parker
Now to me, Edith looks like something that would eat her young.
Dorothy Parker
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.
Dorothy Parker
I find her anecdotes more efficacious than sheep-counting, rain on a tin roof, or alanol tablets.... you will find me and Morpheus, off in a corner, necking.
Dorothy Parker
A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
Dorothy Parker
Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.
Dorothy Parker
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.
Dorothy Parker
I don't know," she said. "We used to squabble a lot when we were going together and then engaged and everything, but I thought everything would be so different as soon as you were married. And now I feel so sort of strange and everything. I feel so sort of alone.
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.
Dorothy Parker
You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.
Dorothy Parker
Hold your pen and spare your voice.
Dorothy Parker
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.
Dorothy Parker