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Rather than waste precious time arguing, I went up and started serving my sentence without delay. It was usually about an hour for epigrams somewhat longer for a paradox.

Peter De Vries

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Peter De Vries
Age: 83 †
Born: 1910
Born: February 27
Died: 1993
Died: September 28
Editor
Novelist
Writer
Chicago
Illinois
Hours
Sentences
Epigrams
Rather
Punishment
Delay
Without
Hour
Somewhat
Time
Waste
Paradox
Usually
Sentence
Longer
Serving
Started
Arguing
Went
Precious

More quotes by Peter De Vries

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A politician is a man who can be verbose in fewer words than anyone else.
Peter De Vries
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What baffles me is the comfort people find in the idea that somebody dealt this mess. Blind and meaningless chance seems to me so much more congenial - or at least less horrible. Prove to me that there is a God and I will really begin to despair.
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Anyone informed that the universe is expanding and contracting in pulsations of eighty billion years has a right to ask. What's in it for me?
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Everybody hates me because I'm so universally liked.
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The trouble with treating people as equals is that the first thing you know they may be doing the same thing to you.
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Sex in marriage is like medicine. Three times a day for the first week. Then once a day for another week. Then once every three or four days till the condition clears up.
Peter De Vries
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Why is the awfulness of families such a popular reason for starting another?
Peter De Vries
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We turned on one another deep, drowned gazes, and exchanged a kiss that reduced my bones to rubber and my brain to gruel.
Peter De Vries
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I am not impressed by the Ivy League establishments. Of course they graduate the best -- it's all they'll take, leaving to others the problem of educating the country. They will give you an education the way the banks will give you money -- provided you can prove to their satisfaction that you don't need it.
Peter De Vries
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People rarely do what they don't want to.
Peter De Vries
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Marriage has driven more than one man to sex.
Peter De Vries
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I suppose I shall marry eventually One does that, one drifts into stability
Peter De Vries
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I tried to write worse but it was no good my generalizations came out as before, each more exquisite than the last. I grew discouraged.
Peter De Vries
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... it is a fact universally acknowledged that a husband is the most ridiculous thing on earth, except for a bachelor.
Peter De Vries
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I made a tentative conclusion. It seemed from all of this that uppermost among human joys is the negative one of restoration: not going to the stars, but learning that one may stay where one is.
Peter De Vries
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You ought to be ashamed, a woman in an Easter bonnet told Stein. Your race gave us our religion... From ancient polytheism, the belief in lots of gods, the woman continued a little more eruditely, the Hebrew nation led us on to the idea that there is only one. Which is just a step from the truth, said Stein.
Peter De Vries
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Do you believe in astrology? -I don't even believe in astronomy.
Peter De Vries
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I wondered whether any woman could be happy with a man who says 'folderol'.
Peter De Vries
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This human nature is shabby stuff, as you may know from introspection.
Peter De Vries
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Are you pro- or anti-macassar?
Peter De Vries