WAITERS
When those waiters ask me if I want some fresh ground
pepper, I ask if they have any aged pepper.
ANDY ROONEY
WAR
War is, at first, the hope that one will be better
off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off;
then, the satisfaction that he isn’t any better off; and, finally,
the surprise at everyone’s being worse off.
KARL KRAUS
As long as war is looked upon as wicked, it will
always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it
will cease to be popular.
OSCAR WILDE
War is like love; it always finds a way.
BERTOLT BRECHT
Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate
our allies.
W. L. GEORGE
Human war has been the most successful of our
cultural traditions.
ROBERT ARDREY
How is the world ruled and how do wars start?
Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they
read.
KARL KRAUS
I have given two cousins to war and I stand ready to
sacrifice my wife’s brother.
ARTEMUS WARD
WAR CRIMES
Only the winners decide what were war crimes.
GARY WILLS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
People come to Washington believing it’s the center
of power. I know I did. It was only much later that I learned that
Washington is a steering wheel that’s not connected to the
engine.
RICHARD GOODWIN
Washington is . . . a city of cocker spaniels. It’s a
city of people who are more interested in being petted and admired,
loved, than rendering the exercise of power.
ELLIOT RICHARDSON
Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and
Northern charm.
JOHN F. KENNEDY
Washington is an endless series of mock palaces
clearly built for clerks.
ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE
Washington is the only place where sound travels
faster than light.
C. V. R. THOMPSON
The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a
nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn't for any religious
reasons. They couldn't find three wise men and a virgin.
JAY LENO
Standing, standing, standing—why do I have to stand
all the time? That is the main characteristic of social
Washington.
DANIEL BOORSTIN
WEDDING
Wedding, n. A ceremony at which two persons
undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing and
nothing undertakes to become supportable.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The music at a wedding procession always reminds me
of the music of soldiers going into battle.
HEINRICH HEINE
A wedding is just like a funeral except that you get
to smell your own flowers.
GRACE HANSEN
WELFARE
As far as unwed mothers on welfare are concerned, it
seems to me they must be capable of some other form of labor.
AL CAPP
A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always
depend upon the support of Paul.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
WEST, MAE
A plumber’s idea of Cleopatra.
W. C. FIELDS
WESTERN CIVILIZATION
It would be a good idea.
MOHANDAS K. GANDHI
WHITE BARBECUE
Going to a white-run barbecue is, I think, like going
to a gentile internist: it might turn out all right, but you
haven’t made any attempt to take advantage of the
percentages.
CALVIN TRILLIN
WHITE RACE
The white race is the cancer of history. It is the
white race and it alone—its ideologies and inventions—which
eradicates autonomous civilizations wherever it spreads, which has
upset the ecological balance of the planet, which now threatens the
very existence of life itself.
SUSAN SONTAG
WICKEDNESS
I prefer the wicked rather than the foolish. The
wicked sometimes rest.
ALEXANDRE DUMAS père
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to
account for the curious attractiveness of others.
OSCAR WILDE
WIVES
Wife: a former sweetheart.
H. L. MENCKEN
Wife: one who is sorry she did it, but would
undoubtedly do it again.
H. L. MENCKEN
A man likes his wife to be just clever enough to
comprehend his cleverness, and just stupid enough to admire
it.
ISRAEL ZANGWILL
Never feel remorse for what you have thought about
your wife. She has thought much worse things about you.
JEAN ROSTAND
Men’s wives are usually their husbands’ mental
inferiors and spiritual superiors; this gives them double
instruments of torture.
DON HEROLD
The only time some fellows are ever seen with their
wives is after they’ve been indicted.
KIN HUBBARD
The comfortable estate of widowhood is the only hope
that keeps up a wife’s spirits.
JOHN GAY
WOMEN
Woman would be more charming if one could fall into
her arms without falling into her hands.
AMBROSE BIERCE
A woman will always sacrifice herself if you give her
the opportunity. It’s her favorite form of self-indulgence.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The way to fight a woman is with your hat. Grab it
and run.
JOHN BARRYMORE
A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long
as other people are looking on.
OSCAR WILDE
A woman occasionally is quite a serviceable
substitute for masturbation. It takes an abundance of imagination,
to be sure.
KARL KRAUS
Brigands demand your money or your life; women
require both.
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER
After years of effort, women have won the right to be
taken more seriously than they deserve.
STANLEY BING
It’s not the frivolity of women that makes them so
intolerable. It’s their ghastly enthusiasm.
HORACE RUMPOLE (JOHN MORTIMER)
No woman has ever stepped on Little America— and we
have found it to be the most silent and peaceful place in the
world.
RICHARD E. BYRD
Women are like elephants to me—I like to look at ’em,
but I wouldn’t want to own one.
W. C. FIELDS
Never try to impress a woman, because if you do
she’ll expect you to keep up to the standard for the rest of your
life.
W. C. FIELDS
Woman was God’s second mistake.
FRIEDRICH WILHELM NIETZSCHE
Nature has given woman so much power that the law
cannot afford to give her more.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
On one issue, at least, men and women agree: they
both distrust women.
H. L. MENCKEN
Women who insist upon having the same options as men
would do well to consider the option of being the strong, silent
type.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
That woman speaks eighteen languages, and she can’t
say “No” in any of them.
DOROTHY PARKER
The charms of a passing woman are usually in direct
relation to the speed of her passing.
MARCEL PROUST
Friendship among women is only a suspension of
hostilities.
ANTOINE DE RIVAROL
When women kiss, it always reminds one of
prize-fighters shaking hands.
H. L. MENCKEN
Women give us solace, but if it were not for women we
should never need solace.
DON HEROLD
There is nothing that binds one to a woman like the
benefits one confers on her.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
The prostitute is the only honest woman left in
America.
TI-GRACE ATKINSON
What passes for woman’s intuition is often nothing
more than man’s transparency.
GEORGE JEAN NATHAN
There’s nothing so similar to one poodle dog as
another poodle dog, and that goes for women, too.
PABLO PICASSO
A woman without a man is like a fish without a
bicycle.
GLORIA STEINEM
The history of woman is the history of the worst form
of tyranny the world has ever known: the tyranny of the weak over
the strong. It is the only tyranny that lasts.
OSCAR WILDE
Why is the word tongue feminine in Greek,
Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, and German?
AUSTIN O’MALLEY
To win a woman in the first place one must please
her, then undress her, and then somehow get her clothes back on
her. Finally, so she will allow you to leave her, you’ve got to
annoy her.
JEAN GIRAUDOUX
The allurement that women hold out to men is
precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors:
they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously
fascinating.
H. L. MENCKEN
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men
to be thought half as good. Luckily this is not difficult.
CHARLOTTE WHITTON
Most women are not so young as they are
painted.
MAX BEERBOHM
He gets on best with women who knows how to get on
without them.
AMBROSE BIERCE
Women should be obscene and not heard.
GROUCHO MARX
I hate women because they always know where things
are.
JAMES THURBER
Wicked women bother one. Good women bore one. That is
the only difference between them.
OSCAR WILDE
What do women want?
SIGMUND FREUD
WOMEN’S STUDIES
Women’s studies is a jumble of vulgarians, bunglers,
whiners, French faddicts, apparatchiks, doughface party-liners,
pie-in-the-sky utopianists, and bullying, sanctimonious
sermonizers.
CAMILLE PAGLIA
WORK
I do not like work even when someone else does
it.
MARK TWAIN
Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of
matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other matter;
second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant
and ill-paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t
the work he’s supposed to be doing at that moment.
ROBERT BENCHLEY
By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may
eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
ROBERT FROST
Everything considered, work is less boring than
amusing oneself.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Anyone who works is a fool. I don’t work—I merely
inflict myself on the public.
ROBERT MORLEY
Hard work is damn near as overrated as
monogamy.
HUEY P. LONG
WORLD
The world is something that had better not have
been.
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER
The world is a vast temple dedicated to
Discord.
VOLTAIRE
In this world, nothing is certain but death and
taxes.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered
minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The world is a prison in which solitary confinement
is preferable.
KARL KRAUS
The whole world is a scab. The point is to pick it
constructively.
PETER BEARD
In the fight between you and the world, back the
world.
FRANK ZAPPA
Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation to
which the filing system has been lost?
QUENTIN CRISP
The world is a funny paper read backwards—and that
way it isn’t so funny.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
It’s a man’s world, and you men can have it.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
This world is a comedy for those who think and a
tragedy for those who feel.
HORACE WALPOLE
If the world were a logical place, men would ride
side-saddle.
RITA MAE BROWN
The world is a spiritual kindergarten where
bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong
blocks.
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
God created the world, but it is the Devil who keeps
it going.
TRISTAN BERNARD
When you leave New York, you are astonished at how
clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
It is not a fragrant world.
RAYMOND CHANDLER
The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows
to whom to complain.
RONALD FIRBANK
We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered
minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.
GOETHE
The world is divided into people who do things—and
people who get the credit.
DWIGHT MORROW
The world is made up for the most part of morons and
natural tyrants, sure of themselves, strong in their own opinions,
never doubting anything.
CLARENCE DARROW
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are
cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one
thinks of changing himself.
TOLSTOY
WRITERS
One reason the human race has such a low opinion of
itself is that it gets so much of its wisdom from writers.
WILFRID SHEED
The dubious privilege of a freelance writer is he’s
given the freedom to starve anywhere.
S. J. PERELMAN
There are no dull subjects. There are only dull
writers.
H. L. MENCKEN
WRITING
All writing is garbage. People who come out of
nowhere to try to put into words any part of what goes on in their
minds are pigs.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in
writing.
KINGSLEY AMIS
If I didn’t have writing, I’d be running down the
street hurling grenades in people’s faces.
PAUL FUSSELL