Top 50 Oscar Levant Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.”

— Oscar Levant

Featured in: Crazy Quotes, Genius Quotes

2. “Happiness isn’t something you experience; it’s something you remember.”

— Oscar Levant

3. “What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.”

— Oscar Levant

4. “It’d be nice to please everyone but I thought it would be more interesting to have a point of view.”

— Oscar Levant

5. “I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.”

— Oscar Levant

6. “There are two sides to every question: my side and the wrong side.”

— Oscar Levant

7. “Schizophrenia beats dining alone.”

— Oscar Levant

8. “I’m a self-made man. Who else would help?”

— Oscar Levant

9. “Roses are red, violets are blue, I’m schizophrenic, and so am I.”

— Oscar Levant

10. “A pun is the lowest form of humor – when you don’t think of it first.”

— Oscar Levant

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

11. “Marriage is a triumph of habit over hate.”

— Oscar Levant

12. “It’s not what you are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts.”

— Oscar Levant

13. “Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.”

— Oscar Levant

14. “Ballet is the fairies baseball.”

— Oscar Levant

15. “Self-pity – it’s the only pity that counts.”

— Oscar Levant

16. “So little time and so little to do.”

— Oscar Levant

17. “I’m a concert pianist, that’s a pretentious way of saying I’m unemployed at the moment.”

— Oscar Levant

18. “I am no more humble than my talents require.”

— Oscar Levant

19. “I’ve given up reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself.”

— Oscar Levant

Featured in: Reading Quotes

20. “Talent’s like a baby. Wrap it up in wool and it goes to sleep.”

— Oscar Levant

21. “A conductor should reconcile himself to the realization that regardless of his approach or temperament the eventual result is the same-the orchestra will hate him.”

— Oscar Levant

22. “When I appeared before the draft board examiner during World War II, he asked me if I thought I could kill. “I don’t know about strangers,” I replied, “but friends, certainly.””

— Oscar Levant

23. “When I was young I looked like Al Capone, but I lacked his compassion.”

— Oscar Levant

24. “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.”

— Oscar Levant

25. “Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her.”

— Oscar Levant

26. “I never watch the Dinah Shore show- I’m a diabetic.”

— Oscar Levant

27. “My last picture for Warners was Romance on the High Seas. It was Doris Day’s first picture; that was before she became a virgin.”

— Oscar Levant

Featured in: Romance Quotes

28. “Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you’ll find the real tinsel underneath.”

— Oscar Levant

29. “I’m controversial. My friends either dislike me or hate me.”

— Oscar Levant

30. “I’m going to memorize your name and throw my head away.”

— Oscar Levant

31. “A politician is a man who will double cross that bridge when he comes to it.”

— Oscar Levant

32. “Harpo, she’s a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one.”

— Oscar Levant

33. “I don’t drink. I don’t like it. It makes me feel good.”

— Oscar Levant

34. “George, if you had to do it all over, would you fall in love with yourself again?”

— Oscar Levant

35. “An epigram is only a wisecrack that’s played at Carnegie Hall.”

— Oscar Levant

36. “I could never have a mistress, because I couldn’t bear to tell the story of my life all over again.”

— Oscar Levant

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

37. “Debbie Reynolds is as wistful as an iron foundry.”

— Oscar Levant

38. “I never read bad reviews about myself, because my friends invariably tell me about them.”

— Oscar Levant

39. “Once he makes up his mind, he’s full of indecision. – On Dwight D. Eisenhower.”

— Oscar Levant

40. “I’ve changed, I’m nice to people and I’m not so self-centered. What I’m trying to do now is think of the other person. The only trouble is, I’ve found that the other person thinks only of himself.”

— Oscar Levant

41. “I don’t like to play the piano. It makes me too attractive.”

— Oscar Levant

42. “Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character.”

— Oscar Levant

43. “I envy people who drink. At least they have something to blame everything on.”

— Oscar Levant

44. “When I can’t sleep, I read a book by Steve Allen.”

— Oscar Levant

45. “I’ve stepped on too many toes on the way down.”

— Oscar Levant

46. “In some situations I was difficult, in odd moments impossible, in rare moments loathsome, but at my best unapproachably great.”

— Oscar Levant

47. “I’m a study of a man in chaos in search of frenzy.”

— Oscar Levant

48. “The only difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too.”

— Oscar Levant

49. “Once I make up my mind, I’m full of indecision.”

— Oscar Levant

50. “I had always resented sleep as an intrusion on my nocturnal self-pity.”

— Oscar Levant