19th-century Screenwriter Quotes

Raymond Chandler

L. Frank Baum

Nikos Kazantzakis

Lionel Barrymore

Roscoe Arbuckle

Anita Loos

George S. Kaufman

Not only is the motion picture an art, but it is the one entirely new art that has been evolved on this planet for hundreds of years. It is the only art at which we of this generation have any possible chance to greatly excel.

Raymond Chandler

Mortals seldom know how greatly they are influenced by fairies, knooks and ryls, who often put thoughts into their heads that only the wise little immortals could have conceived.

Hilda's eye, roaming over the folded newspaper, fell on the weather forecast. "Fair to-morrow," she said, "and colder." "That doesn't stand for much. They said the same thing yesterday. It's a worse gamble than wheat."

Samuel Merwin (writer)

Boredom is a sign of satisfied ignorance, blunted apprehension, crass sympathies, dull understanding, feeble powers of attention, and irreclaimable weakness of character.

I burned my candle at both ends, And now have neither foes nor friends.

Samuel Hoffenstein

They call war an art, but it isn't. It largely consists in outwitting people, robbing widows and orphans, and inflicting suffering on the helpless for one's own ends - and that's not art: that's business.

Kenneth Roberts (author)

Nothing that the law-makers or the law-breakers or the MCC or the Board of Control or any conferences or county committees or pressmen or captains or players can do to it or have done to it over the years - nothing can affect cricket's basic worth or irresistible attraction.

The Great Actor always must act. … Every last second of his life must be pose and posture.

Lionel Barrymore

I don't believe there is any finer mission on earth than just to make people laugh.

Roscoe Arbuckle

Lost causes are the only causes worth fighting for.

Ethel Lina White

The superstitions of today are the scientific facts of tomorrow.

John L. Balderston

The first person I ever cared deeply and sincerely about was - myself.

Louella Parsons

There were no temples or shrines among us save those of nature.

Charles Eastman

You don't know what you want. Nobody ever knows until they are too old to get it.

Look, Daddy. Teacher says, "Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings."

Frances Goodrich

It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily.

I owe my greatest success to women. Contrary to the assertion that women do all in their power to hinder one another's progress, I have found that it has always been one of my own sex who has given me a helping hand when I needed it.

There was laughter in the back of the theatre, leading to the belief that someone was telling jokes back there.

George S. Kaufman

And what, for instance, would have happened had Romeo and Juliet lived to middle age, their silhouettes broadened by pasta?

I loved my body and did not want it to perish; I loved my soul and did not want it to decay. I have fought to reconcile these two primordial forces.

Nikos Kazantzakis