Dorothy Parker Quotes

188 Sourced Quotes

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

Dorothy Parker
You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.

Dorothy Parker
When asked if she'd enjoyed a cocktail party:
Enjoyed it! 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
On being told of Calvin Coolidge's death:
How do they know? (Coolidge was well-known for being a man of very few words.)

Dorothy Parker
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 must be a gift book. That is to say a book, which you wouldn't take on any other terms.

Dorothy Parker
Bringing in a wounded soldier is getting to be rather like waving an American flag at the end of an act. One cannot harbor feelings of unmixed admiration for the playwright who will hide behind either of them.

Dorothy Parker
I hate almost all rich people, but I think I'd be darling at it.

Dorothy Parker
All those writers who write about their own childhood! Gentle God, if I wrote about mine you wouldn't sit in the same room with me.

Dorothy Parker
If this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.

Dorothy Parker
I never see that prettiest thing- A cherry bough gone white with Spring- But what I think, "How gay 'twould be To hang me from a flowering tree.

Dorothy Parker
All I have to be thankful for in this world is that I was sitting down when my garter busted.

Dorothy Parker
Almost overnight, Dorothy Parker was transformed from a woman of letters into a gin-soaked quote machine, with a martini in one hand and a dagger in the other. p. xiii

Dorothy Parker
In the pathway of the sun, In the footsteps of the breeze, Where the world and sky are one, He shall ride the silver seas, He shall cut the glittering wave. I shall sit at home, and rock; Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock; Brew my tea, and snip my thread; Bleach the linen for my bed. They will call him brave.

Dorothy Parker
In fact, now that you've got me right down to it, the only thing I didn't like about The Barretts of Wimpole Street was the play.

Dorothy Parker
And there was that wholesale libel on a Yale prom. If all the girls attending it were laid end to end, Mrs Parker said, she wouldn't be at all surprised.

Dorothy Parker
I had been fed, in my youth, a lot of old wives' tales about the way men would instantly forsake a beautiful woman to flock around a brilliant one. It is but fair to say that, after getting out in the world, I had never seen this happen.

Dorothy Parker
Where's the man could ease a heart
Like a satin gown?

Dorothy Parker
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.

Dorothy Parker
Writing a book for the Follies seems to be about as profitable an occupation as furnishing flannel petticoats for the showgirls.

Dorothy Parker
Dotty had
Great Big
Visions of
Quietude.
Dotty saw an
Ad, and it
Left her
Flat.
Dotty had a
Great Big
Snifter of
Cyanide.
And that (said Dotty)
Is that.

Dorothy Parker
Most good women are hidden treasures who are only safe because nobody looks for them.

Dorothy Parker
I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.

Dorothy Parker
Ah, clear they see and true they say That one shall weep, and one shall stray

Dorothy Parker