2026 Reading Challenge

Joe Poe > Joe's Quotes

Showing 1-30 of 464
« previous 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 15 16
sort by

    like
  • #1
    Sydney Smith
    “Live always in the best company when you read.”
    ― Sydney Smith
    4 likes

    • like
  • #2
    Sydney Smith
    “The main question to a novel is -- did it amuse? were you surprised at dinner coming so soon? did you mistake eleven for ten? were you too late to dress? and did you sit up beyond the usual hour? If a novel produces these effects, it is good; if it does not -- story, language, love, scandal itself cannot save it. It is only meant to please; and it must do that or it does nothing.”
    ― Sydney Smith, The Edinburgh review: or Critical journal
    tags: craft, enjoyment, novels, pleasure, writing
    25 likes

    • like
  • #3
    “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
    ― Sid Ziff
    tags: bad-reviews, book, humorist, misattributed-dorothy-parker, wit
    1614 likes

    • like
  • #4
    Sydney Smith
    “I never read a book before reviewing it: it prejudices a man so.”
    ― Sydney  Smith, Bon-mots of Sydney Smith and R. Brinsley Sheridan 1893 [Leather Bound]
    26 likes

    • like
  • #5
    Dorothy Parker
    “I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.”
    ― Dorothy Parker
    tags: humor
    1262 likes

    • like
  • #6
    Sydney Smith
    “I am glad you like what I said of Mrs. Elizabeth Fry (prison and mental hospital reformer). She is very unpopular with the clergy; examples of living, active virtue disturb our repose and give one to distressing comparisons; we long to burn her alive.”
    ― Sydney Smith
    5 likes

    • like
  • #7
    Dorothy Parker
    “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
    ― Dorothy Parker
    tags: god, humor, money
    3322 likes

    • like
  • #8
    Sydney Smith
    “No furniture is so charming as books, even if you never open them or read a single word.”
    ― Sydney Smith
    11 likes

    • like
  • #9
    Dorothy Parker
    “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”
    ― Dorothy Parker
    tags: beauty, classic-insult, humor, ugly
    3583 likes

    • like
  • #10
    Sydney Smith
    “If you want to improve your understanding, drink coffee.”
    ― Sydney Smith
    33 likes

    • like
  • #11
    Dorothy Parker
    “What fresh hell is this?”
    ― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker
    1033 likes

    • like
  • #12
    Sydney Smith
    “Madam, I have been looking for a person who disliked gravy all my life; let us swear eternal friendship.”
    ― Sydney Smith
    tags: food, friendship, gravy
    29 likes

    • like
  • #13
    Dorothy Parker
    “If I didn't care for fun and such,
    I'd probably amount to much.
    But I shall stay the way I am,
    Because I do not give a damn.”
    ― Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope
    tags: apathy, fame, pleasure
    814 likes

    • like
  • #14
    Dorothy Parker
    “They sicken of the calm who know the storm.”
    ― Dorothy Parker, Sunset Gun: Poems
    tags: calm, excitement, storm, women
    888 likes

    • like
  • #15
    Sydney Smith
    “No furniture is so charming as books.”
    ― Sydney Smith , A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith; 2 volume set
    tags: books, literature, reading, words
    429 likes

    • like
  • #16
    Dorothy Parker
    “By the time you swear you're his,
    Shivering and sighing.
    And he vows his passion is,
    Infinite, undying.
    Lady make note of this --
    One of you is lying.”
    ― Dorothy Parker
    tags: courtship, cynicism, love, lying, passion
    1954 likes

    • like
  • #17
    Richard Bach
    “don't you think between here and now we will see each other once or twice?”
    ― Richard Bach
    tags: friendship, inspirational
    44 likes

    • like
  • #18
    Dorothy Parker
    “Don't look at me in that tone of voice.”
    ― Dorothy Parker
    tags: disapproval, humor, wordplay
    1425 likes

    • like
  • #19
    Dorothy Parker
    “Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common.”
    ― Dorothy Parker
    tags: dorothy-parker, heterosexuality, homosexuality, humor, wit
    1629 likes

    • like
  • #20
    W.H. Auden
    “The friends who met here and embraced are gone,
    Each to his own mistake;”
    ― W.H. Auden
    93 likes

    • like
  • #21
    Dorothy Parker
    “Résumé
    Razors pain you,
    Rivers are damp,
    Acids stain you,
    And drugs cause cramp.
    Guns aren't lawful,
    Nooses give,
    Gas smells awful.
    You might as well live.”
    ― Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope
    tags: dark-humor, humor, suicide
    2225 likes

    • like
  • #22
    Dorothy Parker
    “The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”
    ― Dorothy Parker
    1980 likes

    • like
  • #23
    Dorothy Parker
    “That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.”
    ― Dorothy Parker
    tags: epitaph, humor, the-new-yorker
    850 likes

    • like
  • #24
    Agatha Christie
    “No, my friend, I am not drunk. I have just been to the dentist, and need not return for another six months! Is it not the most beautiful thought?
    --Poirot”
    ― Agatha Christie, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
    tags: dentist, humor, the-patriotic-murders
    120 likes

    • like
  • #25
    Dorothy Parker
    “She was pleased to have him come and never sorry to see him go.”
    ― Dorothy Parker
    604 likes

    • like
  • #26
    Dorothy Parker
    “I'm never going to accomplish anything; that's perfectly clear to me. I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more.”
    ― Dorothy Parker, Here Lies: The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker
    360 likes

    • like
  • #27
    Johnny Depp
    “Trips to the dentist-I like to postpone that kind of thing.”
    ― Johnny Depp
    134 likes

    • like
  • #28
    Dorothy Parker
    “Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”
    ― Dorothy Parker
    586 likes

    • like
  • #29
    Albert Camus
    “Query: How contrive not to waste one's time?
    Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while.
    Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting-room; by remaining on one's balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language on doesn't know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth.”
    ― Albert Camus
    tags: time
    33 likes

    • like
  • #30
    Groucho Marx
    “I've had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.”
    ― Groucho Marx
    tags: classic-insult
    1651 likes



Rss
« previous 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 15 16
All Quotes



Tags From Joe’s Quotes

craft
enjoyment
novels
pleasure
writing
bad-reviews
book
humorist
misattributed-dorothy-parker
wit
humor
god
money
beauty
classic-insult
ugly
food
friendship
gravy
apathy
fame
calm
excitement
storm
women
books
literature
reading
words
courtship
cynicism
love
lying
passion
inspirational
disapproval
wordplay
dorothy-parker
heterosexuality
homosexuality
dark-humor
suicide
epitaph
the-new-yorker
dentist
the-patriotic-murders
time