Quotes to inspire and reflect

Every post tends to be occupied by an employee incompetent to execute its duties.

The work is done by people who have not yet attained final placement at their level of incompetence.

Was it worthy? Everything is worthy.

The poet is a pretender.

It belongs to my lord the Marquis of Carabas.

Wit invents ; inspiration reveals .

We are condemned

No doubt the nearness of death and the brotherhood of men-at-arms, at whatever time and in whatever country, always produces an atmosphere favorable to the extraordinary, to all that rises above the human condition and breaks the circle of solitude that surrounds each one of us.

Weltschmerz .

The North American wants to use reality rather than to know it.

No second Johannesburg is needed upon the earth. One is enough.

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear.

I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men . . . desiring only the good of their country, come together to work for it. . . . I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.

Yet the order of the acts is planned

One day Lara went out and did not come back. . . . She died or vanished somewhere, forgotten as a nameless number on a list which was afterwards mislaid.

All customs and traditions, all our way of life, everything to do with home and order, has crumbled into dust in the general upheaval and reorganization of society. The whole human way of life has been destroyed and ruined. All that’s left is the naked human soul stripped to the last shred, for which nothing has changed because it was always cold and shivering and reaching out to its nearest neighbor, as cold and lonely as itself.

Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point .

Pesons le gain et la perte, en prenant croix que Dieu est. Estimons ces deux cas: Si vous gagnez, vous gagnez tout; si vous perdez, vous ne perdez rien. Gagez donc qu’il est, sans hésiter!

L’homme n’est qu’un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c’est un roseau pensant .

Dieu est, ou il n’est pas. Mais de quel côté pencherons-nous? La raison n’y peut rien déterminer. Il y’a un chaos infini qui nous sépare. Il se joue un jeu, à l’extrémité de cette distance infinie, où il arrivera croix ou pile: que gagerez-vous?

We shall die alone.

What is it, then, that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

How vain painting is, exciting admiration by its resemblance to things of which we do not admire the originals.

Le nez de Cléopâtre s’il eût été plus court toute la face de la terre aurait changé .

The two ladies [Dorothy Parker and Clare Boothe Luce] were trying to get out of a doorway at the same time. Clare drew back and cracked, “Age before beauty, Miss Parker.” As Dotty swept out, she turned to the other guests and said, “Pearls before swine.”

Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parce que je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte .

And there was that wholesale libel on a Yale prom. If all the girls attending it were laid end to end, Mrs. Parker said, she wouldn’t be at all surprised.

Then I remember her comment on one friend who had lamed herself while in London. It was Mrs. Parker who voiced the suspicion that this poor lady had injured herself while sliding down a barrister.

People ought to be one of two things, young or old. No; what’s the use of fooling? People ought to be one of two things, young or dead.

[ On being warned by her doctor that if she didn’t stop drinking she would be dead within a month :] Promises, promises!

[ Habitual response upon hearing the doorbell or telephone ring :] What fresh hell is this?

I was the toast of two continents: Greenland and Australia.

[ On being told at a party that people were ducking for apples :] There, but for a typographical error, is the story of my life.

[ Upon being challenged to use the word horticulture in a sentence :] You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.

[ On being informed that editor Harold Ross had called her on her honeymoon demanding a belated article :] Tell Ross I’m too fucking busy and vice versa.

[ Completing the nursery rhyme “Higgledy piggledy, my white hen; / She lays eggs for gentlemen” :] You cannot persuade her with gun or lariat To come across for the proletariat.

[ Advice to a friend whose ailing cat had to be “put away” :] Have you tried curiosity?

[ On women writers :] As artists they’re rot, but as providers they’re oil wells; they gush. Norris said she never wrote a story unless it was fun to do. I understand Ferber whistles at her typewriter. And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.

[ Of an actress who was said to be kind to her inferiors :] Where does she find them?

[ Responding to a hostess being described as “outspoken” :] Outspoken by whom?

[ Of a cocktail party she had attended :] One more drink and I’d have been under the host!

[ When told of the death of Calvin Coolidge :] How can they tell?

[ Of a performance by Katharine Hepburn :] Let’s all go to see Miss Hepburn and hear her run the gamut of emotions from A to B!

[ Telegram to Mary Sherwood, who finally had her baby after a much-ballyhooed pregnancy, 1915 :]

That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can’t say No in any of them.

[ When asked about the most beautiful words in the English language :] The ones I like . . . are “cheque” and “inclosed.”

Sorrow is tranquility remembered in emotion.

[ Her suggested epitaph for herself :] Excuse My Dust.