"Leave the earth to the strong and athletic, And the sea to adventure upon. But the sun and the sand No contractor can copy; We lie in the land Of the lotus and poppy; We vegetate, calm and aesthetic, On the beach, on the sand, in the sun."

"People who have what they want are very fond of telling people who haven't what they want that they really don't want it, And I wish I could afford to gather all such people into a gloomy castle on the Danube and hire half a dozen capable Draculas to haunt it. I dont' mind their having a lot of money, and I don't care how they employ it, But I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it."

"Perhaps indeed the possession of wealth is constantly distressing, But I should be quite willing to assume every curse of wealth if I could at the same time assume every blessing. The only incurable troubles of the rich are the troubles that money can't cure, Which is a kind of trouble that is even more troublesome if you are poor. Certainly there are lots of things in life that money won't buy, but it's very funny — Have you ever tried to buy them without money?"

"Time is timelessness for you; Calendars for the human; What's a year, or thirty, to Loveliness made woman?"

"It is my duty, gentlemen, to inform you that women are dictators all, and I recommend to you this moral: In real life it takes only one to make a quarrel."

"I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall, I'll never see a tree at all."

"When called by a panther, Don't anther."

"The turtle trapped 'twixt plated decks Doth practically conceal its sex I think it clever of the turtle In such a fix to be so fertile."

"Don't Cry Darling, It's Blood All Right"

"Purity Is obscurity."

"People expect old men to die, They do not really mourn old men. Old men are different. People look At them with eyes that wonder when... People watch with unshocked eyes; But the old men know when an old man dies."

"And what really turns my corpuscles to ice, I carry around clippings and read them to people twice. And I know what I am doing while I am doing it and I don't want to do it but I can't help doing it and I am just another Ancient Mariner, And the prospects for my future social life couldn't possibly be barrener. Did I tell you that the prospects for my future social life couldn't be barrener?"

"Naturally I am not pointing a finger at me, But I must admit that I find Mr. Ickes or any other speaker far more convincing when I agree with him than when I disagree."

"O all ye exorcizers come and exorcize now, and ye clergymen draw nigh and clerge, For I wish to be purged of an urge. It is an irksome urge, compounded of nettles and glue, And it is turning all my friends back into acquaintances, and all my acquaintances into people who look the other way when I heave into view."

"And I have no desire to get ugly, But I cannot help mentioning that the door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly."

"Passivity can be a provoking modus operandi; Consider the Empire and Gandhi."

"May I join you in the doghouse, Rover? I wish to retire till the party's over."

"When people reject a truth or an untruth it is not because it is a truth or an untruth that they reject it. No, if it isn't in accord with their beliefs in the first place they simply say, "Nothing doing," and refuse to inspect it."

"These are enlightened days in which you can get hot water and cold water out of the same spigot, And everybody has something about which they are proud to be broad-minded but they also have other things about which you would be wasting your breath if you tried to convince them that they were a bigot."

"It is an indication that my mental buttery is butterless and my mental larder lardless, And it consists not of "Stop me if you've heard this one," but of "I know you've heard this one because I told it to you myself, but I'm going to tell it to you again regardless...""

"I believe that people believe what they believe they believe."

"And I also say Pooh for sweetness and light, And if you want to get the most out of life, why the thing to do is to be a gossiper by day and gossipee by night."

"Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor."

"Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody's reach, And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech, Because suppose you eschew gossip and just say Mr. Smith is in love with his wife. Why that disposes the Smiths as a topic of conversation for the rest of their life, But suppose you say with a smile, that poor little Mrs. Smith thinks her husband is in love with her, he must be very clever, Why then you can enjoyably talk about the Smiths forever."

"Oh, sometimes I sit around and think, what would you do if you were up a dark alley and there was Caesar Borgia, And he was coming torgia…"

"There are two kinds of people who blow through life like a breeze, And one kind is gossipers, and the other kind is gossipees, And they certainly annoy each other, But they certainly enjoy each other, Yes, they pretend to flout each other, But they couldn't do without each other..."

"God in his wisdom made the fly And then forgot to tell us why."

"Listen, buds, it's March twenty first; Don't you know enough to burst? Come on, birds, unlock your throats! Come on, gardeners, shed your coats!"

"Camped on a tropic riverside, One day he missed his loving bride. She had, the guide informed him later, Been eaten by an alligator. Professor Twist could not but smile. "You mean," he said, "a crocodile.""

"There is one thing that ought to be taught in all the colleges, Which is that people ought to be taught not to go around always making apologies."

"Whether elected or appointed He considers himself the Lord's annointed, And indeed the ointment lingers on him So thick you can't get your fingers on him."

"Some primal termite knocked on wood And tasted it, and found it good! And that is why your Cousin May Fell through the parlor floor today."

"Every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz.: That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is."

"How easy for those who do not bulge To not overindulge!"

"So I think there is one rule every host and hostess ought to keep with the comb and nail file and bicarbonate and aromatic spirits on a handy shelf, Which is don't spoil the denouement by telling the guests everything is terrible, but let them have the thrill of finding it out for themselves."

"Most bankers dwell in marble halls, Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits and discourage withdrawals, And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe betides the banker who fails to heed it, Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless they don't need it."

"The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control."

"Remorse is a violent dyspepsia of the mind."

"I can't say that I feel particularly one way or the other towards bell-boys, But I do admit that I haven't much use for the it's-just-as-well boys, The cheery souls who drop around after every catastrophe and think they are taking the curse off By telling you about somebody who is even worse off. No matter how deep and dark your pit, how dank your shroud, Their heads are heroically unbloody and unbowed."

"The song of canaries Never varies, And when they're moulting They're pretty revolting."

"Children aren't happy with nothing to ignore, And that's what parents were created for."

"I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it."

"The cow is of the bovine ilk; One end is moo, the other, milk."

"When smut's to be smitten Smoot will smite For G-d, for country, And Fahrenheit."

"Senator Smoot is an institute Not to be bribed with pelf; He guards our homes from erotic tomes By reading them all himself."

"Senator Smoot (Republican, Ut.) Is planning a ban on smut. Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut. And his reverend occiput. Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut., Grit your molars and do your dut., Gird up your l__ns, Smite h_p and th_gh, We'll all be Kansas By and by."