A Quote by Dorothy Parker

I don't want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I've never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn't do it. A "smartcracker" they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

Dorothy Parker

Quote Topics

Between Calisthenics Distance Feel Female Good Guilty Hell Humorist Makes Me Myself Never Read Sick Simply Tough Truth Unhappy Want Wit Words

Quote Author

Dorothy Parker
American - Poet
August 22, 1893 - June 7, 1967

There's a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.

Dorothy Parker

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

James Thurber

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

James Thurber

But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit - and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist - and a Catholic.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

By wit we search divine aspect above, By wit we learn what secrets science yields, By wit we speak, by wit the mind is rul'd, By wit we govern all our actions; Wit is the loadstar of each human thought, Wit is the tool by which all things are wrought.

Robert Greene

Unhappy is that Grandeur which makes us too great to be good; and that Wit which sets us at a distance from true Wisdom.

Mary Astell

Wit - the salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

Ambrose Bierce

Music makes me alive in a way that nothing quite does. Good art, good film, good books, good dance. Exhibitions, history. Nature makes me feel alive. Georgia in the rain - that makes me feel alive. Compassion makes me feel alive. Hard fought victories for social rights.

Emily Saliers

The truth is, I can’t read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better.

Marc Maron

Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinctions. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It makes me very hard on myself when I don't achieve the goals I want to achieve. But I feel like that's what makes me as good as I am at times - I push myself to be better, constantly.

Denny Hamlin

I think my whole life, work has been a very important and positive thing for me. It never was something that made me feel unhappy or disengaged from life. It always makes me feel like I'm plugged in, in a really healthy way.

Drew Barrymore

If a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.

Francis Bacon

Of course I want to look good in clothes. And it never makes me feel good when somebody who has an insane figure tells me, 'I eat whatever I want.'

Drew Barrymore

Focusing on the way I look makes me uncomfortable. I try to focus on the way I feel - I know what makes me feel better about myself. Reading my child a story makes me feel great, doing my hair nicely doesn't.