Dorothy Parker · 457 pages
Rating: (1.2K votes)
“Lips that taste of tears, they say,
Are the best for kissing.”
― Dorothy Parker, quote from The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker (Modern Library)
“Oh, it's so easy to be sweet to people before you love them.”
― Dorothy Parker, quote from The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker (Modern Library)
“When asked by her publisher why her work had not been submitted while on her honeymoon: "I've been too fucking busy or vice versa”
― Dorothy Parker, quote from The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker (Modern Library)
“Every love's the love before
In a duller dress.”
― Dorothy Parker, quote from The Poetry and Short Stories of Dorothy Parker (Modern Library)
Dorothy Parker
Born place: in Long Branch, New Jersey, The United States
Born date August 22, 1893
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“You want to take me to a movie?" I asked.
"Well, not really," he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I thought saying that might scare you off.”
― Sarah Dessen, quote from What Happened to Goodbye
“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed men to endure them and often to look on them as benefits.
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, quote from Democracy in America
“Pham Nuwen plunked himself down, stretching indolently.”
― Vernor Vinge, quote from A Fire Upon the Deep
“I haven't the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Naked
“The righteous ones are always exhausting to have around.”
― Alexandra Adornetto, quote from Hades
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