Russell Lynes's Quotes

If you can't ignore an insult, top it; if you can't top it, laugh it off; and if you can't laugh it off, it's probably deserved.

The true snob never rests; there is always a higher goal to attain, and there are, by the same token, always more and more people to look down upon.

Camouflage is a game we all like to play, but our secrets are as surely revealed by what we want to seem to be as by what we want to conceal.

Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence.

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 almost never coincide.

A truly appreciative child will break, lose, spoil, or fondle to death any really successful gift within a matter of minutes.

Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.

In my estimation, the only thing that is more to be guarded against than bad taste is good taste.

It is always well to accept your own shortcomings with candor but to regard those of your friends with polite incredulity.

Ragtime was a fanfare for the 20th century.

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 our history.

When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.

Being rich and famous isn't all happiness and at times the pressures have got to me.

I like to think of myself as being fashion-conscious without being a slave to fashion.

I must have some sort of record in failing to get into the charts.

Money cannot buy happiness.

The kind of music I like depends very much on my mood.