Dorothy Parker Quotes

188 Sourced Quotes

Lady, lady, should you meet
One whose ways are all discreet,
One who murmurs that his wife
Is the lodestar of his life,
One who keeps assuring you
That he never was untrue,
Never loved another one...
Lady, lady, better run!

Dorothy Parker
Bewildered is the fox who lives to find that grapes beyond reach can be really sour.

Dorothy Parker
It is our national joy to mistake for the first-rate, the fecund rate.

Dorothy Parker
When your bank account is so overdrawn that it is positively photographic, steps must be taken.

Dorothy Parker
This living, this living, this living Was never a project of mine.

Dorothy Parker
Men They hail you as their morning star Because you are the way you are. If you return the sentiment, They'll try to make you different; And once they have you, safe and sound, They want to change you all around. Your moods and ways they put a curse on; They'd make of you another person. They cannot let you go your gait; They influence and educate. They'd alter all that they admired. They make me sick, they make me tired.

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
Of course, there are many things to be said for the afternoon performance, chief among them being that it cuts in so generously on one's work.

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 Roumania.

Dorothy Parker
Travel, trouble, music, art, a kiss, a frock, a rhyme — I never said they feed my heart, but still they pass my time.

Dorothy Parker
His books are exciting and powerful and — if I may filch the word from the booksy ones — pulsing.

Dorothy Parker
Somewhere, there, is an analogy, in a small way, if you have the patience for it. But I guess it isn't a very good anecdote. I'm better at animal stories.

Dorothy Parker
That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.

Dorothy Parker
Years are only garments, and you either wear them with style all your life, or else you go dowdy to the grave.

Dorothy Parker
So seeing that there is nothing further to say, I shall go right on talking about The Circle, thus proving that I am a born reviewer of plays.

Dorothy Parker
Scratch an actor and you'll find an actress.

Dorothy Parker
All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.

Dorothy Parker
I fell into writing, I suppose, being one of those awful children who wrote verses.

Dorothy Parker
After my father died there wasn't any money. I had to work, you see, and Mr. Crowninshield, God rest his soul, paid twelve dollars for a small verse of mine and gave me a job at ten dollars a week.

Dorothy Parker
Innocence is a desirable thing, a dainty thing, an appealing thing, in its place; but carried too far, it is merely ridiculous.

Dorothy Parker
There was always something immensely comic to her in the thought of living elsewhere than New York. She could not regard as serious proposals that she share a western residence.

Dorothy Parker
I give her sadness and the gift of pain,
a new moon madness and a love of rain.

Dorothy Parker
Maybe it is only I, but conditions are such these days, that if you use studiously correct grammar, people suspect you of homosexual tendencies.

Dorothy Parker
Should they whisper false of you, Never trouble to deny; Should the words they say be true, Weep and storm and say they lie.

Dorothy Parker
It's easier to write about those you hate — just as it's easier to criticize a bad play or a bad book.

Dorothy Parker
You do what you can, and you do it because you should. But all you can do is all you can do.

Dorothy Parker
Then if my friendships break and bend, There's little need to cry The while I know that every foe Is faithful till I die.

Dorothy Parker
I won't telephone him. I'll never telephone him again as long as I live. He'll rot in hell, before I'll call him up. You don't have to give me strength, God; I have it myself. If he wanted me, he could get me. He knows where I am. He knows I'm waiting here. He's so sure of me, so sure. I wonder why they hate you, as soon as they are sure of you.

Dorothy Parker
As I was saying to the landlord only this morning: 'You can't have everything'.

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