Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Dorothy Parker
Age: 73 †
Born: 1893
Born: August 22
Died: 1967
Died: June 7
Columnist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Screenwriter
Songwriter
Writer
West End
Monmouth County
New Jersey
Dorothy Rothschild
Dot Rothschild
Dottie Rothschild
Years
Rhetoric
Life
Studying
Beowulf
Stealing
Penmanship
George
Eliot
Spend
Syntax
Somebody
Steals
Study
Pencil
Best
Pencils

More quotes by Dorothy Parker

Image
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
Image
His books are exciting and powerful and — if I may filch the word from the booksy ones — pulsing.
Dorothy Parker
Image
Hollywood money isn't money. It's congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are.
Dorothy Parker
Image
Accursed from their birth they be Who seek to find monogamy, Pursuing it from bed to bed— I think they would be better dead.
Dorothy Parker
Image
I can’t write five words but that I change seven.
Dorothy Parker
Image
One more drink and I'd have been under the host.
Dorothy Parker
Image
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
Image
I shudder at the thought of men.... I'm due to fall in love again
Dorothy Parker
Image
His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets.
Dorothy Parker
Image
The sun's gone dim, and the moon's gone black. For I loved him, and he didn't love back.
Dorothy Parker
Image
Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.
Dorothy Parker
Image
Flowers are heaven's masterpiece.
Dorothy Parker
Image
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
Image
Money cannot buy health, but I'd settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.
Dorothy Parker
Image
There was a reason for the cost of those perfectly plain black dresses.
Dorothy Parker
Image
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
Image
Innocence is a desirable thing, a dainty thing, an appealing thing, in its place but carried too far, it is merely ridiculous.
Dorothy Parker
Image
[On hearing that President Coolidge was dead:] How can you tell?
Dorothy Parker
Image
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
Image
How do people go to sleep? I'm afraid I've lost the knack. I might try busting myself smartly over the temple with the night-light. 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