Clever jabs
277 quotes from 161 people
Little men in lofty places, who throw long shadows, because our sun is setting.
Walter Savage Landor1775–1864Imaginary Conversations (1824-1829), “Andrew Marvel and Bishop Parker”
D. H. Lawrence1885–1930Pansies (1929)All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.
Fran Lebowitzborn 1950“Manners” (p. 6).I once said cynically of a politician, ‘He’ll doublecross that bridge when he comes to it.’
Oscar Levant1906–1972The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965), p. 13It would have been better if you had died and Gershwin had written the elegy.
Oscar Levant1906–1972On a friend’s elegy for Gershwin; recounted in The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965)Tell me, George, if you had it to do all over, would you fall in love with yourself again?
Oscar Levant1906–1972To George Gershwin; recounted in A Smattering of Ignorance (1940)The difference between Los Angeles and yogurt is that yogurt comes with less fruit.
He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Letter to Isham Reavis (5 November 1855)- Abraham Lincoln1809–1865On popular sovereignty; rejoinder in the Sixth Lincoln-Douglas Debate (13 October 1858); reported in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (1953), vol. 3, p. 279
When I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Statement to an Indiana Regiment passing through Washington (17 March 1865)
David Lloyd George1863–1945Remark to Arthur Salter and A. L. Rowse at dinner (29 August 1938), quoted in A. J. Sylvester, Life With Lloyd George (1975), p. 216I grew up here in Washington, D.C., back during the quaint, old-fashioned “Rule of Law” period.
Julia Louis-Dreyfusborn 1961Mark Twain Prize Acceptance Speech (2018)Nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean wouldn’t cure.
Ross Macdonald1915–1983The Moving Target (1949)
