Alexander Humphreys Woollcott (January 19, 1887 - January 23, 1943) was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, a member of the Algonquin Round Table. An essayist, playwright, editor, actor, raconteur, and radio personality, he was the inspiration for Sheridan Whiteside, the main character in the play The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939). (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A combination of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth. (on Dorothy Parker)
A hick town is one in which there is no place to go where you shouldn't be.
A sensitive, creative artist with a fine sense of double-entry bookkeping. (re: Samuel Goldwyn)
All the things I really like to do are either illegal, immoral, or fattening.
Germany was the cause of Hitler as much as Chicago is responsible for the Chicago Tribune.
His huff arrived and he departed in it.
I am tired of hearing that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.
I have no need of your God-damned sympathy; I wish only to be
entertained by some of your grosser reminiscences.
(In a reply to a
get well card)
In the world we must be unworldly, in the theatre the actor must be untheatrical.
It comes from the likes of you! Take what you can get! Grab the chances as they come along! Act in hallways! Sing in doorways! Dance in cellars!
Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing.
Nothing risqué, nothing gained.
Reading Proust is like bathing in someone else's dirty water.
The English have an extraordinary ability for flying into a great calm.
The scenery in the play was beautiful, but the actors got in front of it.
The two oldest professions in the world- ruined by amateurs. (re: acting and prostitution)
There is no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day.
To all things clergic
I am allergic.
You haven't lived until you died in New York.
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(January 19 is also the birthday of Edgar Allan Poe.)
Categories: Alexander Woollcott, Quotes of the day
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