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
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.
In practice
In a speech about embracing our flaws, you might use this quote to illustrate the human condition.
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.
My 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.
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.
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.
It is that word 'hunny,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
I canβt write five words but that I change seven.
Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.
Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt
We both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble.
The town has a sense, not of history, but of time, and the telephone poles seem to know this. If you lay your hand against one, you can feel the vibration from the wires deep within the wood, as if souls had been imprisoned in there and were struggling to get out.
I may be mistaken but it seems to me that a man may be judged by his laugh, and that if at first encounter you like the laugh of a person completely unknown to you, you may say with assurance that he is good.
It is most cheering and encouraging for me to know that in the efforts which I have made and am making for the restoration of a righteous peace to our country, I am upheld and sustained by the good wishes and prayers of God's people. No one is more deeply than myself aware that without His favor our highest wisdom is but as foolishness and that our most strenuous efforts would avail nothing in the shadow of His displeasure.
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