Top 250 Dorothy Parker Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 6

151. “One more drink and I’d have been under the host.”

— Dorothy Parker

152. “There is entirely too much charm around, and something must be done to stop it.”

— Dorothy Parker

153. “She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”

— Dorothy Parker

154. “Hollywood money isn’t money. It’s congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are.”

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

156. “I’d like to have money. And I’d like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that’s too adorable, I’d rather have money.”

— Dorothy Parker

157. “It turns out that, at social gatherings, as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, I rank somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate.”

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

159. “Excuse me, everybody, I have to go to the bathroom. I really have to telephone, but I’m too embarrassed to say so.”

— Dorothy Parker

160. “The House Beautiful is the play lousy.”

— Dorothy Parker

161. “Work is the province of cattle.”

— Dorothy Parker

162. “I wouldn’t touch a superlative again with an umbrella.”

— Dorothy Parker

163. “Now to me, Edith looks like something that would eat her young.”

— Dorothy Parker

164. “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

165. “I like to have a martini, Two at the very most.”

— Dorothy Parker

166. “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

167. “He and I had an office so tiny, that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery.”

— Dorothy Parker

168. “All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.”

— Dorothy Parker

169. “I was the toast of two continents: Greenland and Australia.”

— Dorothy Parker

170. “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

171. “Anthologists are lazy fellows who like to spend a quiet evening at home raiding good books.”

— Dorothy Parker

172. “All I say is, nobody has any business to go around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don’t catch horses going around looking like people, do you?”

— Dorothy Parker

173. “Misfortune, and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.”

— Dorothy Parker

174. “He lies below, correct in cypress wood, And entertains the most exclusive worms.”

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

176. “There was nothing separate about her days. Like drops on the window-pane, they ran together and trickled away.”

— Dorothy Parker

177. “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

178. “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

179. “Never throw mud. You may miss your mark, but you will have dirty hands.”

— Dorothy Parker

180. “This play John Drinkwater’s Abraham Lincoln holds the season’s record, thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinee. By an odd coincidence, it ran just five performances too many.”

— Dorothy Parker

181. “The affair between Margot Asquinth and Margot Asquinth will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.”

— Dorothy Parker

182. “If you looked for things to make you feel hurt and wretched and unnecessary, you were certain to find them...”

— Dorothy Parker

183. “I’ve seen the way he dances; it looks like something you do on Saint Walpurgis Night.”

— Dorothy Parker

184. “Benchley and I had an office in the old Life magazine that was so tiny, if it were an inch smaller it would have been adultery.”

— Dorothy Parker

185. “You can’t take it with you, and even if you did, it would probably melt.”

— Dorothy Parker

186. “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

187. “Money was made, not to command our will, But all our lawful pleasures to fulfill. Shame and woe to us, if we our wealth obey; The horse doth with the horseman away.”

— Dorothy Parker

188. “Money is only congealed snow.”

— Dorothy Parker

189. “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

190. “Just begin a story with such a phrase as ‘I remember Disraeli – poor old Dizz! – once saying to me, in answer to my poke in the eye,’ and you will find me and Morpheus off in a corner, necking.”

— Dorothy Parker

191. “The only useful thing I ever learned in school was that if you spit on your eraser it erased ink.”

— Dorothy Parker

192. “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

193. “Everybody’s got their troubles.”

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

195. “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

196. “I’m never going to accomplish anything; that’s perfectly clear to me. I’m never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don’t do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more.”

— Dorothy Parker

197. “Their pooled emotions wouldn’t fill a teaspoon.”

— Dorothy Parker

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

— Dorothy Parker

199. “Honest, I won’t ever do it again. I’ll go straight, after this. I’ll never go to bed again, if I can only sleep now.”

— Dorothy Parker

200. “I know that there are things that never have been funny, and never will be. And I know that ridicule may be a shield, but it is not a weapon.”

— Dorothy Parker