October 2006 Archives

"He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire."

Winston Churchill

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about."

Winston Churchill

"I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure."

Clarence Darrow

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."

William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"

Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it."

Moses Hadas

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know."

Abraham Lincoln

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."

Groucho Marx

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it."

Mark Twain

"He has no enemies , but is intensely disliked by his friends."

Oscar Wilde

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play, bring a friend... if you have one."

George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second... if there is one."

Winston Churchill, in response

"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here."

Stephen Bishop

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator."

John Bright

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."

Irvin S. Cobb

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others."

Samuel Johnson

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up."

Paul Keating

"He had delusions of adequacy."

Walter Kerr

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure."

Jack E. Leonard

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt."

Robert Redford

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge."

Thomas Brackett Reed

"He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them."

James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily."

Charles, Count Talleyrand

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him."

Forrest Tucker

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?"

Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork."

Mae West

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go."

Oscar Wilde

"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination."

Andrew Lang (1844-1912)

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music."

Billy Wilder

More, from various sources:

"The Physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines."

Frank Lloyd Wright

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Oscar Wilde

"Egad, sir. I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox."
"That will depend, my lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."

John Wilkes, to the Earl of Sandwich

"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

H.L. Mencken

"Canada could have had French culture, American know-how, and English government. Instead, it got French government, English know-how, and American culture."

John Colombo

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

Dorothy Parker

"He's the only man who can strut sitting down."

Harry Truman, on Thomas Dewey

"Sir, you are drunk."
"Bessie, you're ugly. But in the morning, I'll be sober."

Winston Churchill, to Bessie Braddock

"I know why the sun never sets on the British Empire. God wouldn't trust an Englishman in the dark."

Duncan Spaeth

"Not all God's children are beautiful. Some of God's children are, in fact, barely passable."

Fran Lebowitz, on New Yorkers

"America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization."

Georges Clemenceau

"The reason there are so many tree-lined boulevards in Paris is so the German Army can march in the shade."

George Patton

"Man is the only animal that blushes — or needs to."

Mark Twain

"If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell."

General Philip Sheridan