Quotes by American Authors - Page 41

A hick town is one in which there is no place to go where you shouldn't be.
Alexander Woollcott
When caught reading the Bible W.C. Fields said T'm looking for loopholes.' The Bible is nothing but a succession of civil rights struggles by the Jewish people against their oppressors.
Jesse Jackson
That kind of so-called housekeeping where they have six Bibles and no cork-screw.
Mark Twain
The English of the Bible has a pithiness and raciness a homely tang a terse sententiousness an idiomatic flavour which comes home to men's business and bosoms ... a nobility of diction and ... a rhythmic quality . . . unrivaled in its beauty.
John Livingston Lowes
Brotherton So once in every year we throng Upon a day apart To praise the Lord with feast and song In thankfulness of heart.
Arthur Guiterman
Heap high the board with plenteous cheer and gather to the feast And toast the sturdy Pilgrim band whose courage never ceased. Give praise to that All-Gracious One by whom their steps were led And thanks unto the harvest's Lord who sends our "daily bread."
Alice Williams
I thank you for not snoring.
Marlon Brando
Don't move! I want to forget you just the way you are.
Henny Youngman
He who laughs last thinks slowest.
Troy Anderson
Another fine mess you've got us in Stanley.
Oliver Hardy
Better to be king for a night than a schmuck for a lifetime.
Robert De Niro
It is always dullest before the yawn.
Bob Phillips
Ladies and gentlemen you can't please everyone. Take my girlfriend - I think she's the most remarkable woman in the world. . . . That's me . . . But to my wife . . .
Jackie Mason
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
Martin H. Fischer
I've had a wonderful evening . . . but this wasn't it.
Groucho Marx
Nouvelle cuisine roughly translated means "I can't believe I spent ninety-six dollars and I'm still hungry."
Mike Kalin
The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.
Norman Vincent Peale
Adam was the only man who when he said a good thing knew that nobody had said it before him.
Mark Twain
A good storyteller is a person who has a good memory and hopes other people haven't.
Irvin S. Cobb
Admiration: Our polite recognition of another man's resemblance to ourselves.
Ambrose Bierce
I've been here so long . . . when I got here the Dead Sea wasn't even sick yet.
Wimp Sanderson
The audience was swell. They were so polite they covered their mouths when they yawned.
Bob Hope
I explained to him I had simple tastes and didn't want anything ostentatious no matter what it costs.
Art Buchwald
I really don't deserve this but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that either.
Jack Benny
I want to thank everybody who made this day necessary.
Yogi Berra
One thing I can guarantee you. You may not be a great deal wiser from my talk today but you will be a great deal older.
Melvin Helitzer
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
Mae West
If the world were merely seductive that would be easy. If it were merely challenging that would be no problem. But I rise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savour) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.
E B White
I have a simple principle for the conduct of life - never to resist an adequate temptation.
Max Lerner
After listening to thousands of pleas for pardon to offenders I can hardly recall a case where I did not feel that I might have fallen as my fellow man had done if I had been subjected to the same demoralizing influences and pressed by the same temptations.
Horatio Seymour
There are several good protections against temptation but the surest is cowardice.
Mark Twain
All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down provided it is the right temptation put in the right spot.
Henry Ward Beecher
Every moderate drinker could abandon the intoxicating cup if he would every inebriate would if he could.
J. B. Gough
I've had several years in Hollywood and I still think the movie heroes are in the audience.
Wilson Mizner
Television is not the truth. Television is a god-damned amusement park. Television is a circus a carnival a travelling troupe of acrobats storytellers dancers singers jugglers sideshow freaks lion tamers and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business.
Paddy Chayefsky
Why should people pay good money to go out and see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?
Sam Goldwyn
Television has a real problem. They have no page two.
Art Buchwald
Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
Clive Barnes
Television is chewing gum for the eyes.
Frank Lloyd Wright
Television is a gold goose that lays scrambled eggs and it is futile and probably fatal to beat it for not laying caviar.
Lee Loevinger
Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.
Ann Landers
When television is good nothing is better. But when television is bad nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your TV set and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.
Newton Minow
I can get a better grasp of what is going on in the world from one good Washington dinner party than from all the background information NBC piles on my desk.
Barbara Walters
Television is the literature of the illiterate the culture of the low-brow the wealth of the poor the privilege of the underprivileged the exclusive club of the excluded masses.
Lee Loevinger
Television's compelling power is its immediacy . .. this immediacy feeds the politics of emotions gut reactions and impressions rather than the politics of logic facts and reason it emphasizes personality rather than issues.
Hedrick Smith
All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching?
Nicholas Johnson
Never a tear bedims the eye That time and patience will not dry.
Bret Harte
A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
Horace Mann
We teach what we need to learn and write what we need to know.
Gloria Steinem
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
Kahlil Gibran
Teaching is not a lost art but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
Jacques Barzun
A teacher affects eternity he can never tell where his influence stops.
Henry Adams
Governments last as long as the under-taxed can defend themselves against the over-taxed.
Bernard Berenson
The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make a tax form out on the level you don't know when it's through if you are a crook or a martyr.
Will Rogers
The power to tax involves the power to destroy.
John Marshall
One man's poison ivy is another man's spinach.
George Ade
One of the surest signs of the Philistine is his reverence for the superior tastes of those who put him down.
Pauline Kael
Taste cannot be controlled by law.
Thomas Jefferson
Talking is like playing on the harp there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out their music.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Everyone carries his own inch-rule of taste and amuses himself by applying it triumphantly wherever he travels.
Henry Adams