Ben Hecht > Quotes

“Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.”
― Ben Hecht

“There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind...”
― Ben Hecht

“I'll tell you a secret. We live in a mad and inspiring world.”
― Ben Hecht

“A wise man will always allow a fool to rob him of ideas without yelling “Thief.”
If he is wise he has not been impoverished.
Nor has the fool been enriched.
The thief flatters us by stealing.
We flatter him by complaining.”
― Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century

“El lector es un crítico con una ocupación importantísima: complacerse a sí mismo.”
― Ben Hecht

“I know that man who shows me his wealth
is like the beggar who shows me his poverty;
they are both looking for alms from me,
the rich man for the alms of my envy,
the poor one for the alms of my guilt.”
― Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century

“Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer's habit to remember nothing good of himself. I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.”
― Ben Hecht

“I know that a man who tries to convert me to any cause
is actually at work on his own conversion,
unless he is looking for funds under the mask of some fancied nobility.”
― Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century

“A wise man will not trust too much those who admire him, even for his wisdom. He knows that an admirer is never truly satisfied until he can substitute pity for his admiration and disdain for his applause. Our admirers are always on the lookout for evidence of our collapse. They find a solace in the fact that our superiority was transitory and that we end as they do—old and useless.”
― Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century

“Love is a hole in the heart.”
― Ben Hecht

“Tell it, Fanny. About the crowds, streets, buildings, lights, about the whirligig of loneliness, about the humpty-dumpty clutter of longings. And then explain about the summer parks and the white snow and the moon window in the sky. Throw in a poignantly ironical dissertation on life, on its uncharted aimlessness, and speak like Sherwood Anderson about the desire that stir in the heart. Speak like Remy de Gourmont and Dostoevsky and Stevie Crane, like Schopenhauer and Dreiser and Isaiah; speak like all the great questioners whose tongues have wagged and whose hearts have burned with questions. He will listen bewilderedly and, perhaps, only perhaps, understand for a moment the dumb pathos of your eyes.”
― Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

“I noticed early that pompous people have actually less a high opinion of themselves
than a desire to create such an opinion in others.”
― Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century

“Love is the magician that pulls man out of his own hat.”
― Ben Hecht

“In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel. ”
― Ben Hecht

“A sprinkling of diners saying, 'We eat, but not amid normal surroundings. We are emancipated from normal sourroundings. It is extremely important that we eat off little red circular tables instead of big brown square tables in order to conform with our mission, which is that of non-conformity.”
― Ben Hecht

“McCue: Now, Mrs. Margolies, this is Mr. McCue of the City News Bureau— City News Bureau— is it rue, Madame that you were the victim of a peeping tom?
Kruger: Ask her if she’s worth peeping at?
Wilson: Has she got a friend?”
― Ben Hecht Charles MacArthur

“They continue—tips on strange, weird, curious, odd, old, chuckling, mysterious men and women. Solitaries. Enigmatic figures moving silently through the streets. Nameless ones; exiles from the free and easy conformity of the town. If you should read these letters all through at one sitting you would get a very strange impression of the city. You would see a procession of mysterious figures flitting through the streets, an unending swarm of dim ones, queer ones. And then as you kept on reading this procession would gradually focus into a single figure. This is because all the letters are so nearly alike and because the mysterious ones offered as tips are described in almost identical terms.”
― Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

“It rains. The arc lamps gleam through the monotonous downpour. One can only stand and dream … how charming people are since they are alive … how charming the rain is and the night. … And how foolish arguments are … how banal are these cerebral monsters who pose as iconoclasts and devote themselves grandiloquently and inanely to disturbing the paper masks.”
― Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

“We have in Europe a peculiar situation," he says. "England and France, although hitched to the same wagon, pull in different directions. England must build up her trade. France must build up her morale. These involve different efforts. To build up her trade England must re-establish Germany. To build up her morale France must see that Germany is not re-established and that it remains forever a beaten enemy.”
― Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

“But in this rain at night they rest from their perfections, they lay aside for a few hours their paper masks. And one can contemplate them with a curious absence of indignation or criticism. There is something warm and intimate about the vision of many people sleeping in the beds above the darkened store fronts of this little street. Their bodies have been in the world so long—almost as long as the stones out of which their houses are made. So many things have happened to them, so many debacles and monsters and horrors have swept them off their feet … and always they have kept on—persisting through floods, volcanic eruptions, plagues and wars.”
― Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

“But there is something else. Long ago men hunted and fished to keep alive. They fought with animals and sat with empty stomachs staring at the water, not in quest of Nirvanas but of fish. So now, after ages and ages have passed, there is left a vague memory of this in the minds of these fishermen. This memory makes them still feel a certain thrill in the business of pursuit. Even as they sit, stoical and inanimate, forgetful of unpaid bills, unfinished and never-to-be-finished plans—there comes this curious thrill. A mouth tugs at the little minnow. The pole jerks electrically in the hand. Something alive is on the hook. And the fisherman for an instant recovers his past.”
― Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

“It was like this," he said. "I made up my mind that I would take in a few of the points of interest in the city I ain't ever got around to. Being a Chicagoan, like most Chicagoans I ain't ever seen any of our natural wonders at all. So first day out I figured that the place no copper would ever look for me would be like the Field Museum and in the zoo and on the beach and like that.”
― Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

“I'll give you another chance," he says. "The next time it'll be jail. Keep this in mind. If you're brought in again, no excuses will go. Call the next case." Now one can follow Fanny. She walks out of the courtroom. The street swallows her. Nobody in the crowds knows what has happened. Fanny is anybody now. Still, one may follow. Perhaps something will reveal itself, something will add an illuminating touch to the incident of the courtroom.”
― Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

“The story of the odd ones is perhaps no more interesting than the story that might be written of the letters that "tip them off." A story here, of the harried, buried little figures that make up the swarm of the city and of the way they glimpse mystery out of the corners of their eyes. Of the way they pause for a moment on their treadmill to wonder about the silent, shuffling caricature with its hooded face and its thin fingers groping under its heavy black cloak.”
― Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

“When it is light and one can see the cogs of the monstrous clock go round and the springs unwind one thinks of people as a part of this mechanism. And so people grow vague in one's mind and unhuman or only half-human.”
― Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

“was asked, ‘Can you bring six million Jews to Palestine?’ I replied, ‘No.’ . . . The old ones will pass. They will bear their fate or they will not. They were dust, economic and moral dust in a cruel world. . . . Only a branch shall survive. . . . They had to accept it . . . If they feel and suffer they will find the way—beachareth hajamin—in the fullness of time . . . I pray that we may preserve our national unity, for it is all we have.”
― Ben Hecht, Perfidy

“Art is a contagious business. Perfectly normal and marvelously wholesome-minded people are as likely to succumb to it as anybody else. It is significant that the Purity League meeting in the city a few weeks ago discussed the dangers which lay in exposing even decent, law-abiding people to art, any kind of art.”
― Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago

“Indeed there is no torture as difficult to bear as the impotence of Truth - the realization that our conception of ourselves is futile. It is this inability to endure the almost mystical pain of contradiction which makes the owner of a Truth so unreasonable and violent a custodian.”
― Ben Hecht, Count Bruga

“Immorality may be fun, but it isn't fun enough to take the place of one hundred percent virtue and three square meals a day.”
― Ben Hecht

“He half-hears the familiar accusation that the policeman drones, a terribly matter-of-fact drone. Another raid on a suspected flat. Routine, routine. Evil has its eternal root in the cities. A tireless Satan, bored with the monotony of his rôle; a tireless Justice, bored with the routine of tears and pleadings, lies and guilt. There is no story in all this.”
― Ben Hecht, A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago