Alexander Woollcott Quotes
January 19, 1887 – January 23, 1943
More Alexander Woollcott Quotes
The scenery was beautiful, but the actors got in front of it.
Alexander Woollcott— Play review.
The two oldest professions in the world — ruined by amateurs.
Alexander Woollcott— On actors and prostitutes, from his column, as republished in Shouts and Murmurs: Echoes of a Thousand and One First Nights (1922), p. 57
Once in pre-war days, when curiously-bonneted women drivers were familiar sights at the taxi-wheels, I cried out to one in my dismay: "Is there no speed limit in this mad city?""Oh, yes, monsieur," she answered sweetly over her shoulder, "but no one has ever succeeded in reaching it."
Alexander Woollcott— "The Paris Taxi-Driver Considered as an Artist," in Enchanted Aisles (1924)
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
Alexander Woollcott— "The Knock at the Stage Door" in Reader's Digest (December 1933); also in A Dictionary of Catch Phrases : British and American, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day (1986) by Eric Partridge and Paul Beale, ISBN 041505916X, ISBN 9780415059169
At 83 Shaw's mind was perhaps not quite as good as it used to be, but it was still better than anyone else's.
Alexander Woollcott— Referring to George Bernard Shaw in While Rome Burns (1934)
I have no need of your God-damned sympathy. I only wish to be entertained by some of your grosser reminiscences.
Alexander Woollcott— Letter to Rex O'Malley (1942)
[You look like] a dishonest Abe Lincoln.
Alexander Woollcott— Describing Harold Ross, fellow Round Table member and founder of The New Yorker, as quoted in The American Treasury, 1455-1955 (1955) by Clifton Fadiman, Charles Lincoln Van Doren, p. 461; variants of this quote begin "He looks like..." "He looked like..." etc.
I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.
Alexander Woollcott— Reported as a misattribution in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 132.
