Great Throughts Treasury

"He tells you when you've got on too much lipstick, and helps you with your girdle when your hips stick."

"He without benefit of scruples his fun and money soon quadruples."

"He who has never tasted jail Lives well within the legal pale, while he who's served a heavy sentence Renews the racket, not repentance."

"Here is a pen and here is a pencil, here's a typewriter, here's a stencil, here's a list of today's appointments, and all the flies in all the ointments, the daily woes that a man endures -- take them, George, they're yours!"

"Here's a good rule of thumb: Too clever, is dumb."

"Here lies my past, Goodbye I have kissed it; Thank you kids, I wouldn't have missed it."

"Home is heaven and orgies are vile but you need an orgy, once in a while."

"How confusing the beams from memory's lamp are; one day a bachelor, the next a grampa. What is the secret of the trick? How did I get so old so quick?"

"His fun and money soon quadruples."

"How easy for those who do not bulge to not overindulge!"

"How do I feel today? I feel as unfit as an unfiddle, and it is the result of a certain turbulence in the mind and an uncertain burbulence in the middle. What was it, anyway, that angry thing that flew at me? I am unused to banshees crying Boo at me. Your wife can?t be a banshee? Or can she?"

"I am a conscientious man, when I throw rocks at seabirds, I leave no tern unstoned"

"I believe that people believe what they believe they believe."

"I claim there ain't another Saint as great as Valentine."

"I don't mean the kind of apologies people make when they run over you or borrow five dollars or step on your feet,"

"I can't say that I feel particularly one way or the other towards bell-boy, but I do admit that I haven't much use for the it's-just-as-well boys, the cheery souls who drop around after every catastrophe and think they are taking the curse off by telling you about somebody who is even worse off. No matter how deep and dark your pit, how dank your shroud, their heads are heroically unbloody and unbowed."

"I don't mind eels except as meals. And the way they feels."

"I don't mind their having a lot of money, and I don't care how they employ it, but I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it."

"I dread these apologizers even as I am depicting them."

"I give you now Professor Twist the conscientious scientist. Trustees exclaimed, He never bungles and sent him off to distant jungles. Camped on a tropic riverside one day he missed his lovely bride. The guide informed him later she had been eaten by an alligator. Professor Twist could not but smile. You mean, he said a crocodile."

"I dreamt that my hair was kempt. Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it."

"I have an idea that the phrase 'weaker sex' was coined by some woman to disarm the man she was preparing to overwhelm."

"I have a bone to pick with Fate / Come here and tell me, girlie, / Do you think my mind is maturing late,/ Or simply rotting early?"

"I hope of lightning our supply will never be exhausted; you know it's lanterns in the sky for angels who are losted."

"I myself am more and more inclined to agree with Omar and Satchel Paige as I grow older: Don't try to rewrite what the moving finger has writ, and don't ever look over your shoulder."

"I prefer to forget both pairs of glasses and pass my declining years saluting strange women and grandfather clocks."

"I shudder as I think of the hours that must be spend in contradicting them."

"I think that comparisons are truly odious, I do not approve of this constant proud or envious to-do; and furthermore, dear friends, I think that you and yours are delightful and I also think that me and mine are delightful too."

"I hope my tongue in prune juice smothers, If I belittle dogs and mothers."

"I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it."

"I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all."

"I was born a jackdaw; why should I try to be an owl?"

"I wish to retire till the party's over."

"I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance."

"In the words of the poet, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, this erstwhile youth replies, I just can't."

"I'd rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet."

"If they give you a book by Dickens they apologize because it isn't by Scott."

"If called by a Panther, don't anther."

"If some confectioners were willing to let the shape announce the filling, we'd encounter fewer assorted chocs, bitten into and returned to the box."

"Indeed, everybody wants to be a wow, But not everybody knows exactly how. Some people think they will eventually wear diamonds instead of rhinestones only by everlastingly keeping their noses to their ghrinestones"

"In the world of mules there are no rules."

"Indoors or out, no one relaxes in March, that month of wind and taxes, the wind will presently disappear, the taxes last us all the year."

"If you are really Master of your Fate, it shouldn't make any difference to you whether Cleopatra or the Bearded Lady is your mate."

"Is that half the time you have to politely contradict them when you rudely agree with them."

"It is an indication that my mental buttery is butterless and my mental larder lardless, and it consists not of "Stop me if you've heard this one," but of "I know you've heard this one because I told it to you myself, but I'm going to tell it to you again regardless."

"It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts, that all sin is divided into two parts. One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important and it is what you are doing when you are doing something you oughtn't..."

"It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin that lays eggs under your skin."

"It is my duty, gentlemen, to inform you that women are dictators all, and I recommend to you this moral: in real life it takes only one to make a quarrel."

"Isabel, Isabel, didn't worry, Isabel didn't scream or scurry. She washed her hands and she straightened her hair up, then Isabel quietly ate the bear up."

"I've earned repose to heal the ravages of these angelic-looking savages. Oh, progeny playing by itself is a lonely little elf, but progeny in roistering batches would drive St. Francis from here to Natchez."