Emotions and Feelings

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.

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.

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.”

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

[ 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.

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

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

[ 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.

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

[ 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.

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,

[ Reviewing A. A. Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner in her “Constant Reader” column :] Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.

[ Of Ernest Hemingway :] He has a capacity for enjoyment so vast that he gives away great chunks to those about him, and never even misses them. . . . He can take you to a bicycle race and make it raise your hair.

It may be that this autobiography [Aimee Semple McPherson’s] is set down in sincerity, frankness, and simple effort. It may be, too, that the Statue of Liberty is situated in Lake Ontario.

Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.

Salary is no object; I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.

It costs me never a stab nor squirm

To do anything that suggested a taste for solitude, even to go for a walk by yourself, was always slightly dangerous. There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife , it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity.