Russell Lynes Quotes

38 quotes in 443 categories

• Tennis is an addiction that once it has truly hooked a man will not let him go.
• It is always well to accept your own shortcomings with candor but to regard those of your friends with polite incredulity.
• A lady is nothing very specific. One man's lady is another man's woman; sometimes, one man's lady is another man's wife. Definitions overlap but they…
• Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
• No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.
• Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. It is the dishonest businessman's substitute for conscience. It is the communicator's substitute, whether he is advertising…
• Any real New Yorker is a you-name-it-we-have-it-snob whose heart brims with sympathy for the millions of unfortunates who through misfortune, misguidedness or pure stupidity live…
• The bungalow had more to do with how Americans live today than any other building that has gone remotely by the name of architecture in…
• The world of the arts is by no means always comfortable, but neither is it likely ever to be boring. It is full of surprises,…
• Clutter is what happens to things when they become useless but friendly.
• The shaping of taste is essentially the science of merchandising, whether of detergents or cars or books or objects of fine and decorative art.
• For all its flexibility, television is more a mirror of taste than a shaper of it.
• In my estimation, the only thing that is more to be guarded against than bad taste is good taste.
• Ragtime was a fanfare for the 20th century.
• Friends never make assumptions about you. They never expect a reason to go out with you. In fact friends only expect you to be you.
• Calling you an idiot would be an insult to all the stupid people.
• I don't know what makes you so dumb but it really works.
• Anybody who told you to be yourself simply couldn't have given you worse advice...
• Hi there, I'm a human being! What are you?
• Your village just called. They're missing an idiot.

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