Quote #15

There's a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.

More from Dorothy Parker

  1. One more drink and I'd have been under the host.
  2. It's not the tragedies that kill us; it's the messes.
  3. 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…
  4. [On being told of Calvin Coolidge's death] How do they know?
  5. I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn thin…
  6. There is no such hour on the present clock as 6:30, New York time. Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'…
  7. And I'll stay away from Verlaine too; he was always chasing Rimbauds.
  8. This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

All Dorothy Parker quotes