Dorothy Parker Quotes

188 Sourced Quotes

Out in Hollywood, where the streets are paved with Goldwyn....

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
Mrs. Ewing was a short woman who accepted the obligation borne by so many short women to make up in vivacity what they lack in number of inches from the ground.

Dorothy Parker
Her mind lives tidily, apart from cold and noise and pain. And bolts the door against her heart, out wailing in the rain.

Dorothy Parker
Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.

Dorothy Parker
The murdered man meets his death in an intriguing and novel manner, which the management asks its customers, as a personal favor, not to reveal to possible future audiences. It remains a secret, chummily shared by those that have seen the play and the four or five million who read it in its original form as a Saturday Evening Post story a year or so ago.

Dorothy Parker
Men seldom make passes At girls who wear glasses.

Dorothy Parker
There is one thing that appreciably eases the strain for the plays that arrive at this time of year, and that is that practically nothing is expected of them.

Dorothy Parker
Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.

Dorothy Parker
This is me apologizing. I am a fool, a bird-brain, a liar and a horse-thief. I wouldn't touch a superlative again with an umbrella.

Dorothy Parker
For art is a form of catharsis,
And love is a permanent flop,
And work is the province of cattle,
And rest's for a clam in a shell,
So I'm thinking of throwing the battle —
Would you kindly direct me to hell?

Dorothy Parker
He's a writer for the ages — for the ages of four to eight.

Dorothy Parker
Sorrow is tranquility remembered in emotion.

Dorothy Parker
The ladies men admire, I've heard, Would shudder at a wicked word. Their candle gives a single light, They'd rather stay at home at night. They do not keep awake 'till three, Nor read erotic poetry. They never sanction the impure, Nor recognize an overture. They shrink from powders and from paints... So far I've had no complaints.

Dorothy Parker
I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions and billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.

Dorothy Parker
He lies below, correct in cypress wood, And entertains the most exclusive worms.

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. Women alone often developed into experts at the practice. She must never join their dismal league.

Dorothy Parker
And it is that word 'hummy,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.

Dorothy Parker
My love runs by like a day in June, And he makes no friends of sorrows. He'll tread his galloping rigadoon In the pathway of the morrows. He'll live his days where the sunbeams start, Nor could storm or wind uproot him. My own dear love, he is all my heart, — And I wish somebody'd shoot him.

Dorothy Parker
I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.

Dorothy Parker
Two things made The Dice of the Gods, another play about drugs, seem much better than it had any real right to seem. One was that Morphia had come first, and once you had seen Morphia, nothing seemd so very terrible to you.

Dorothy Parker
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?

Dorothy Parker
Razors 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
Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.

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
Of Katharine Hepburn:
She ran the whole gamut of the emotions from A to B, and put some distance between herself and a more experienced colleague [Alison Skipworth] lest she catch acting from her.

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
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.

Dorothy Parker
By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, Undying—
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

Dorothy Parker
Upton Sinclair is his own King Charles' head. He cannot keep himself out of his writings, try though he may; or, by this time, try though he doesn't.

Dorothy Parker