Dorothy Parker on quotations

Guns aren’t lawful; nooses give; gas smells awful. So you might as well live.

If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Oscar Wilde1854–1900De Profundis (1897)

A witty saying proves nothing.

Voltaire1694–1778Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Deuxième Entretien

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882May 1849