There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.
Dorothy ParkerRead
That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote humorously reflects on the tendency to make choices contrary to one's better judgment.
Dorothy Parker's quote reveals a witty perspective on the human condition, suggesting that life often involves decisions that defy our better instincts. It captures the inner conflict many face between rational thought and impulsive action, indicating that even in retrospect, one might acknowledge how these choices led them to their current state.
Themes
JudgmentDecisionsHumorLifeWisdom
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about embracing our flaws, you might use this quote to illustrate the human condition.
More from Dorothy Parker
All quotes βMy land is bare of chattering folk; / the clouds are low along the ridges, / and sweet's the air with curly smoke / from all my burning bridges.
Dorothy ParkerRead
Prince or commoner, tenor or bass, Painter or plumber or never-do-well, Do me a favor and shut your face - Poets alone should kiss and tell.
Dorothy ParkerRead
They say of me, and so they should, It's doubtful if I come to good. I see acquaintances and friends Accumulating dividends And making enviable names In science, art and parlor games. But I, despite expert advice, Keep doing things I think are nice, And though to good I never come Inseparable my nose and thumb.
Dorothy ParkerRead
It is that word 'hunny,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
Dorothy ParkerRead
I canβt write five words but that I change seven.
Dorothy ParkerRead
Similar quotes
Ask yourself whether you are happy', observed the philosopher John Stuart Mill, 'and you cease to be so.' At best, it would appear, happiness can only be glimpsed out of the corner of an eye, not stared at directly.
Oliver BurkemanRead
I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.
Mahatma GandhiRead
So much of the past in encapsulated in the odds and ends. Most of us discard more information about ourselves than we ever care to preserve. Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted by our faulty perception of events remembered but skewed by those forgotten. The memory is like twin orbiting stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what's evident forever affected by the gravity of what's concealed.
Sue GraftonRead
We all have to die a bit every now and then and usually it's so gradual that we end up more alive than ever. Infinitely old and infinitely alive.
Roberto BolanoRead
In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion-, and even nation-centred cultures.
Jordan PetersonRead
There is a case for telling the truth; there is a case for avoiding the scandal; but there is no possible defense for the man who tells the scandal, but does not tell the truth
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead