DARK AGES
Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be
thought of as including our own.
G. C. LICHTENBERG
DARLING
Darling: the popular form of address used in speaking
to a person of the opposite sex whose name you cannot at the moment
recall.
OLIVER HERFORD
DAY
Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly
misspent.
AMBROSE BIERCE
It was such a lovely day I thought it a pity to get
up.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
DAY, DORIS
I knew her before she was a virgin.
OSCAR LEVANT
DEATH
It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to
be there when it happens.
WOODY ALLEN
Sleep is lovely, death is better still, not to have
been born is of course the miracle.
HEINRICH HEINE
Those who welcome death have only tried it from the
ears up.
WILSON MIZNER
Death will be a great relief. No more
interviews.
KATHARINE HEPBURN
DEBT
A man properly must pay the fiddler. In my case it so
happened that a whole symphony orchestra had to be
subsidized.
JOHN BARRYMORE
DECENCY
Decency . . . must be an even more exhausting state
to maintain than its opposite. Those who succeed seem to need a
stupefying amount of sleep.
QUENTIN CRISP
DECISION
Every decision you make is a mistake.
EDWARD DAHLBERG
DELIBERATION
Deliberation, n. The act of examining one’s
bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
AMBROSE BIERCE
DELUSION
The final delusion is the belief that one has lost
all delusions.
MAURICE CHAPELAIN
DEMAGOGUE
Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be
untrue to men he knows to be idiots.
H. L. MENCKEN
DEMOCRACY
A democracy is a government in the hands of men of
low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.
ARISTOTLE
Democracy encourages the majority to decide things
about which the majority is blissfully ignorant.
JOHN SIMON
The substitution of election by the incompetent many
for appointment by the corrupt few.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
The bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the
people.
OSCAR WILDE
Democracy is a process by which the people are free
to choose the man who will get the blame.
LAURENCE J. PETER
The worship of jackals by jackasses.
H. L. MENCKEN
Democracy becomes a government of bullies, tempered
by editors.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own
oppressor.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
An aristocracy of blackguards.
LORD BYRON
In every well-governed state wealth is a sacred
thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing.
ANATOLE FRANCE
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the
proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the
bourgeois.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be
governed no better than we deserve.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Democracy is an abuse of statistics.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
The crude leading the crud.
FLORENCE KING
Democracy is the name we give to the people each time
we need them.
ROBERT DE FLERS
Democracy means government by discussion, but it is
only effective if you can stop people talking.
CLEMENT ATLEE
Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after
they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.
ALAN COREN
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief
energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to
rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.
H. L. MENCKEN
We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior
wisdom of the ignorant.
DANIEL J. BOORSTIN
Every government is a parliament of whores. The
trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
P. J. O’ROURKE
DEMOCRATS VS. REPUBLICANS
The Republican and Democratic parties, ancient
rivals, do not exist any more as such, there being more fun
watching Harvard and Yale. This has brought about a condition where
Republican conventions are sometimes attended by Democrats by
mistake, and Democratic conventions attended by Republicans on
purpose. The only way to tell them apart is by the conditions of
the hotel rooms after the convention is over. The Republicans have
more gin bottles and the Democrats seem to have gone in more for
rye.
ROBERT BENCHLEY
The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but
they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management
skills of celery. They’re the kind of people who’d stop to help you
change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I
would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the
economy. The Republicans, on the other hand, would know how to fix
your tire, but they wouldn’t bother to stop because they’d want to
be on time for Ugly Pants Night at the country club.
DAVE BARRY
When you looked at the Republicans you saw the scum
off the top of business. When you looked at the Democrats you saw
the scum off the top of politics. Personally, I prefer business. A
businessman will steal from you directly instead of getting the IRS
to do it for him. And when the Republicans ruin the environment,
destroy the supply of affordable housing, and wreck the industrial
infra-structure, at least they make a buck off it. The Democrats
just do these things for fun.
P. J. O’ROURKE
The only difference between the Democrats and the
Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt,
too.
OSCAR LEVANT
DIAGNOSIS
One of the most common of all diseases is
diagnosis.
KARL KRAUS
DIARY
Keep a diary and one day it’ll keep you.
MAE WEST
DIETS
My soul is dark with stormy riot, Directly traceable
to diet.
SAMUEL HOFFENSTEIN
I’ve been on a constant diet for the last two
decades. I’ve lost a total of 789 pounds. By all accounts, I should
be hanging from a charm bracelet.
ERMA BOMBECK
DINNER PARTY
The best number for a dinner party is two—myself and
a damn good head waiter.
NUBAR GULBENKIAN
DINNER THEATER
“Dinner theater,” a way of positively guaranteeing
that both food and theater will be amateur and mediocre, which
means unthreatening and therefore desirable.
PAUL FUSSELL
DIPLOMACY
The patriotic art of lying for one’s country.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The principle of give and take is the principle of
diplomacy— give one and take ten.
MARK TWAIN
In archaeology you uncover the unknown. In diplomacy
you cover the known.
THOMAS PICKERING
Diplomacy is to do and say The nastiest thing in the
nicest way.
ISAAC GOLDBERG
I’m convinced there’s a small room in the attic of
the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to
stammer.
PETER USTINOV
DISHONESTY
There’s one way to find out if a man is honest: ask
him; if he says yes, you know he is crooked.
MARK TWAIN
DISNEYLAND
Disneyland is a white pioneer’s idea of what America
is. Wacky American animals. American conviviality, zappy, zany,
congenial and nice, like a parade of demented, bright
Shriners.
JONATHAN MILLER
DISTRUST
We have to distrust each other. It’s our only defense
against betrayal.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Joyous distrust is a sign of health. Everything
absolute belongs to pathology.
FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE
DOCTORS
Doctors cut, burn, and torture the sick, and then
demand of them an undeserved fee for such services.
HERACLITUS
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient
while nature cures the disease.
VOLTAIRE
They murmured as they took their fees, “There is no
cure for this disease.”
HILAIRE BELLOC
A doctor’s reputation is made by the number of
eminent men who die under his care.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
God heals, and the doctor takes the fee.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
The best doctor is the one you run for and can’t
find.
DENIS DIDEROT
Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they
know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human
beings of whom they know nothing.
VOLTAIRE
Doctors are just the same as lawyers; the only
difference is that lawyers merely rob you, whereas doctors rob you
and kill you, too.
ANTON CHEKHOV
DOGS
Dog, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary
Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world’s
worship. The Divine being in some of his smaller and silkier
incarnations, takes, in the affection of Woman, the place to which
there is no human male aspirant. The Dog is a survival—an
anachronism. He toils not, neither does he spin, yet Solomon in all
his glory never lay upon a door-mat all day long, sun-soaked and
fly-fed and fat, while his master worked for the means wherewith to
purchase an idle wag of the Solomonic tail, seasoned with a look of
tolerant recognition.
AMBROSE BIERCE
Reading about dogs is almost as bad as having them
stand on your chest and lick you.
WILFRID SHEED
The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a
fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but
he will make a fool of himself too.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity
of dogs than of friends.
ALEXANDER POPE
The average dog is a nicer person than the average
person.
ANDREW A. ROONEY
If you pick up a starving dog and make him
prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference
between a dog and a man.
MARK TWAIN
The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up
to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog
down to his.
JAMES THURBER
To be sure, the dog is loyal. But why, on that
account, should we take him as an example? He is loyal to men, not
to other dogs.
KARL KRAUS
Has he bit any of the children yet? If he has, have
them shot, and keep him for curiosity, to see if it was the
hydrophobia.
CHARLES LAMB
DOG OWNERS
To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant
popularity of dogs.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who
haven’t got the guts to bite people themselves.
AUGUST STRINDBERG
DRINKING
Alcohol is a very necessary article. . . . It enables
Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person
would do at eleven in the morning.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
An alcoholic is someone you don’t like who drinks as
much as you do.
DYLAN THOMAS
If the headache would only precede the intoxication,
alcoholism would be a virtue.
SAMUEL BUTLER
I called a detox center—just to see how much it would
cost: $13,000 for three and a half weeks! My friends, if you can
come up with thirteen grand, you don’t have a problem yet!
SAM KINISON
Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are
such fools to begin with that it’s compounding a felony.
ROBERT BENCHLEY
I envy people who drink—at least they know what to
blame everything on.
OSCAR LEVANT
I only drink to make other people seem
interesting.
GEORGE JEAN NATHAN
I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has
taken out of me.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
So who’s in a hurry?
ROBERT BENCHLEY in response to a warning that drinking is “slow
poison.”
DRUGS
Half of the modern drugs could well be thrown out of
the window, except that the birds might eat them.
DR. MARTIN HENRY FISCHER
DUTY
When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed
of, he always declares that it is his duty.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Duty, n. That which sternly impels us in the
direction of profit, along the line of desire.
AMBROSE BIERCE