1
By the time you swear you're his, Shivering and sighing. And he vows his passion is, Infinite, undying. Lady make note of this --One of you is lying.Dorothy Parker
2
In youth, it was a way I had, To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me so, To hell, my love, with you.Dorothy Parker
3
Ur be the things I am wiser to know: Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I'd been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. Three be the things I shall have till I die: Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.Dorothy Parker
4
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
5
Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.Dorothy Parker
6
The sun's gone dim, and the moon's gone black. For I loved him, and he didn't love back.Dorothy Parker
7
Where's the man that could ease a heart like a satin gown?Dorothy Parker
8
And if my heart be scarred and burned, The safer, I, for all I learned.Dorothy Parker
9
It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.Dorothy Parker
10
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.Dorothy Parker
11
If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.Dorothy Parker
12
Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.Dorothy Parker
13
Don't look at me in that tone of voice.Dorothy Parker
14
I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.Dorothy Parker
15
I like to have a martini, Two at the very most. After three I'm under the table, after four I'm under my host.Dorothy Parker
16
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
17
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.Dorothy Parker
18
That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say 'No' in any of them.Dorothy Parker
19
Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.Dorothy Parker
20
I require three things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.Dorothy Parker
21
There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.", Summer 1956]Dorothy Parker
22
I don't care what is written about me so long as it isn't true.Dorothy Parker
23
Four be the things I'd have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.Dorothy Parker
24
The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.Dorothy Parker
25
MenThey 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
26
Three be the things I shall never attain: Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.Dorothy Parker
27
Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.Dorothy Parker
28
The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'cheque enclosed.Dorothy Parker
![If all the girls attending [the Yale prom] were laid...](https://cdn.quotesoverflow.com/file/quotesoverflow/images/if-all-the-girls-attending-the345432548660-1200.webp)
29
If all the girls attending [the Yale prom] were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised.Dorothy Parker
30
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.Dorothy Parker
31
She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.Dorothy Parker
32
Be you wise and never sad, You will get your lovely lad. Never serious be, nor true, And your wish will come to you-- And if that makes you happy, kid, You'll be the first it ever did.Dorothy Parker
33
Why is it no one sent me yet one perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it's always just my luck to get one perfect rose.Dorothy Parker
34
And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.Dorothy Parker
35
If I had a shiny gun I could have a world of fun Speeding bullets through the brains Of the folks that cause me pains :)Dorothy Parker
36
But I give you my word, in the entire book there is nothing that cannot be said aloud in mixed company. And there is, also, nothing that makes you a bit the wiser. I wonder--oh, what will you think of me--if those two statements do not verge upon the synonymous.Dorothy Parker
37
If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.Dorothy Parker
38
The TriflerDeath's the lover that I'd be taking; Wild and fickle and fierce is he. Small's his care if my heart be breaking- Gay young Death would have none of me. Hear them clack of my haste to greet him! No one other my mouth had kissed. I had dressed me in silk to meet him- False young Death would not hold the tryst. Slow's the blood that was quick and stormy, Smooth and cold is the bridal bed; I must wait till he whistles for me- Proud young Death would not turn his head. I must wait till my breast is wilted. I must wait till my back is bowed, I must rock in the corner, jilted- Death went galloping down the road. Gone's my heart with a trifling rover. Fine he was in the game he played- Kissed, and promised, and threw me over, And rode away with a prettier maid.Dorothy Parker
39
It costs me never a stab nor squirm / To tread by chance upon a worm. / Aha, my little dear, / I say, Your clan will pay me back one day.Dorothy Parker
40
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
41
Little WordsWhen you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf, Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds; And I can only stare, and shape my grief In little words. I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown The bitter woe that racks my cords apart. The weary pen that sets my sorrow down Feeds at my heart. There is no mercy in the shifting year, No beauty wraps me tenderly about. I turn to little words- so you, my dear, Can spell them out.Dorothy Parker
42
I hate writing, I love having written.Dorothy Parker
43
There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.Dorothy Parker
44
Hold your pen and spare your voice.Dorothy Parker
45
You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.Dorothy Parker
46
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
47
I don't know, " she said. "We used to squabble a lot when we were going together and then engaged and everything, but I thought everything would be so different as soon as you were married. And now I feel so sort of strange and everything. I feel so sort of alone.Dorothy Parker
48
I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.Dorothy Parker
49
Constant use had not worn ragged the fabric of their friendship.Dorothy Parker
50
A hangover is the wrath of grapes.Dorothy Parker
51
I find her anecdotes more efficacious than sheep-counting, rain on a tin roof, or alanol tablets.... you will find me and Morpheus, off in a corner, necking.Dorothy Parker
52
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it.Dorothy Parker
53
Now to me, Edith looks like something that would eat her young.Dorothy Parker
54
They sicken of the calm who know the storm.Dorothy Parker
55
God, the bitter misery that reading works into this world! Everybody knows that - everbody who IS everybody. All the best minds have been off reading for years. Look at the swing La Rouchefoucauld took at it. He said that if nobody had ever learned to read, very few people would be in love. Good for you, La Rouchefoucauld; nice going, boy. I wish I’d never learned to read.Dorothy Parker
56
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
57
Money cannot buy health, but I'd settle for a diamond-studdedwheelchair.Dorothy Parker
58
She was pleased to have him come and never sorry to see him go.Dorothy Parker
59
Ducking for apples -- change one letter and it's the story of my life.Dorothy Parker
60
Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.Dorothy Parker
61
He'll be cross if he sees I have been crying. They don't like you to cry. He doesn't cry. I wish to God I could make him cry. I wish I could make him cry and tread the floor and feel his heart heavy and big and festering in him. I wish I could hurt him like hell. He doesn't wish that about me. I don't think he even knows how he makes me feel. I wish he could know, without my telling him. They don't like you to tell them they've made you cry. They don't like you to tell them you're unhappy because of them. If you do, they think you're possessive and exacting. And then they hate you. They hate you whenever you say anything you really think. You always have to keep playing little games. Oh, I thought we didn't have to; I thought this was so big I could say whatever I meant. I guess you can't, ever. I guess there isn't ever anything big enough for that.Dorothy Parker
62
I shudder at the thought of men.... I'm due to fall in love againDorothy Parker
63
Some men break your heart in two, Some men fawn and flatter, Some men never look at you; And that cleans up the matter.Dorothy Parker
64
If wild my breast and sore my pride, I bask in dreams of suicide, If cool my heart and high my head I think 'How lucky are the dead.Dorothy Parker
65
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
66
This level reach of blue is not my sea; Here are sweet waters, pretty in the sun, Whose quiet ripples meet obediently A marked and measured line, one after one. This is no sea of mine. that humbly laves Untroubled sands, spread glittering and warm. I have a need of wilder, crueler waves; They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm. So let a love beat over me again, Loosing its million desperate breakers wide; Sudden and terrible to rise and wane; Roaring the heavens apart; a reckless tide That casts upon the heart, as it recedes, Splinters and spars and dripping, salty weeds.Dorothy Parker
67
A Very Short Song 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
68
London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful. Always it believes that something good is about to come off, and it must hurry to meet it.Dorothy Parker
69
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.Dorothy Parker
70
Tomorrow's gone-we'll have tonight!Dorothy Parker
71
Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night.Dorothy Parker
72
You think You're frightening me with Your hell, don't You? You think Your hell is worse than mine.Dorothy Parker
73
She realizes she doesn't know as much as God but feels she knows as much as God knew when he was her age.Dorothy Parker
74
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 Romania.Dorothy Parker
75
Eternity is a ham and two people” (also given as “Eternity is two people and a ham") is an old quip from the days when a ham was huge–far more than two people could finish. Irma Rombauer mentions this line in her famous cookbook, The Joy of Cooking.Dorothy Parker
76
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
77
One more drink and I'd have been under the host.Dorothy Parker
78
They sicken of the calm that know the storm.Dorothy Parker
79
They sicken of calm who know the storm.Dorothy Parker
80
Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it and it darts away.Dorothy Parker
81
Where unwilling dies the rose Buds the new another year.Dorothy Parker
82
Poisons 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
83
It cost me never a stab nor squirm To tread by chance upon a worm. 'Aha my little dear' I say 'Your clan will pay me back one day.'Dorothy Parker
84
The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant - and let the air out of the tires.Dorothy Parker
85
Men seldom make passes At girls who wear glasses.Dorothy Parker
86
Scratch a lover and find a foe.Dorothy Parker
87
Lips that taste of tears they say are the best for kissing.Dorothy Parker
88
Women and elephants never forget.Dorothy Parker
89
He and I had an office so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.Dorothy Parker
90
Where's the man could ease the heart Like a satin gown?Dorothy Parker
91
I don't know much about being a millionaire but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.Dorothy Parker
92
There was never a place for her in the ranks of the terrible slow army of the cautious. She ran ahead where there were no paths.Dorothy Parker
93
I shall stay the way I am Because I do not give a damn.Dorothy Parker
94
Wit has truth in it wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.Dorothy Parker
95
The two most beautiful words in the English language are "cheque enclosed".Dorothy Parker
96
Work is the province of cattle.Dorothy Parker