Top 250 Dorothy Parker Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “People Who Do Things exceed my endurance; God, for a man that solicits insurance!”

— Dorothy Parker

102. “Four be the things I’d have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.”

— Dorothy Parker

103. “Speech to American Horticultural Society; when challenged to use horticulture in a sentence: You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”

— Dorothy Parker

104. “Guns aren’t lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful. So you might as well live.”

— Dorothy Parker

105. “What is life, anyway? A death sentence. The longest distance between two points.”

— Dorothy Parker

106. “Three highballs, and I think I’m St. Francis of Assisi.”

— Dorothy Parker

107. “There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”

— Dorothy Parker

108. “A girl’s best friend is her mutter.”

— Dorothy Parker

109. “Art is a form of catharsis.”

— Dorothy Parker

110. “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

111. “Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!”

— Dorothy Parker

112. “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

113. “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

114. “If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it.”

— Dorothy Parker

115. “At birth the Devil touched my tongue.”

— Dorothy Parker

116. “It’s not the tragedies that kill us; it’s the messes.”

— Dorothy Parker

117. “Hell’s afloat in lover’s tears.”

— Dorothy Parker

118. “She will never win him, whose words had shown she feared to lose.”

— Dorothy Parker

119. “I wish, I wish I were a poisonous bacterium.”

— Dorothy Parker

120. “People ought to be one of two things, young or dead.”

— Dorothy Parker

121. “If you’re going to write, don’t pretend to write down. It’s going to be the best you can do, and it’s the fact that it’s the best you can do that kills you.”

— Dorothy Parker

122. “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

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

123. “I’ll be the way I was when I first met him. Then maybe he’ll like me again. I was always sweet, at first. Oh, it’s so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.”

— Dorothy Parker

124. “She can sit up and beg, and she can give her paw – I don’t say she will, but she can.”

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

126. “Love is like quicksilver in the hand.”

— Dorothy Parker

127. “Men don’t like nobility in woman. Not any men. I suppose it is because the men like to have the copyrights on nobility – if there is going to be anything like that in a relationship.”

— Dorothy Parker

128. “And where does she find them?”

— Dorothy Parker

129. “The plot is so tired that even this reviewer, who in infancy was let drop by a nurse with the result that she has ever since been mystified by amateur coin tricks, was able to guess the identity of the murderer from the middle of the book.”

— Dorothy Parker

Featured in: Book Quotes

130. “He is a writer for the ages, the ages of four to eight.”

— Dorothy Parker

131. “A list of authors who have made themselves most beloved and therefore, most comfortable financially, shows that it is our national joy to mistake for the first-rate, the fecund rate.”

— Dorothy Parker

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

132. “The only “ism” Hollywood believes in is plagiarism.”

— Dorothy Parker

133. “I like to think of my shining tombstone. It gives me, as you might say, something to live for.”

— Dorothy Parker

134. “Let the past die, my child, and go gaily on from its unmarked grave.”

— Dorothy Parker

135. “The Swiss are a neat and an industrious people, none of whom is under seventy-five years of age.”

— Dorothy Parker

136. “I know that ridicule may be a shield, but it is not a weapon.”

— Dorothy Parker

137. “This must be a gift book. That is to say a book, which you wouldn’t take on any other terms.”

— Dorothy Parker

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

138. “Summer makes me drowsy. Autumn makes me sing. Winter’s pretty lousy, but I hate Spring.”

— Dorothy Parker

139. “Somebody was using the pencil.”

— Dorothy Parker

140. “For herself, she declared that she paid no attention to her birthdays – didn’t give a hoot about them; and it is true that when you have amassed several dozen of the same sort of thing, it loses that rarity which is the excitement of collectors.”

— Dorothy Parker

141. “Scratch a lover, and find a foe.”

— Dorothy Parker

142. “Now, look, baby, ‘Union’ is spelled with 5 letters. It is not a four-letter word.”

— Dorothy Parker

143. “I can’t write five words but that I change seven.”

— Dorothy Parker

144. “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

Featured in: Fun Quotes

145. “Vice is nice, but liquor is quicker.”

— Dorothy Parker

146. “Guido Natso is natso guido.”

— Dorothy Parker

147. “If all the young ladies who attended the Yale promenade dance were laid end to end, no one would be the least surprised.”

— Dorothy Parker

148. “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”

— Dorothy Parker

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

149. “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

150. “Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.”

— Dorothy Parker