Mae West: You Can Quote Me

MAE WEST said it best.
• • A hard man is good to find.
• • Such a big issue — — over a little tissue.
• • Diamonds? Diamonds is my career!
• • Beulah, peel me a grape!
• • Goodness had nothing to do with it.
• • I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
• • He who hesitates is a damned fool.
• • It's the fairy princess, ya mug!
• • When I'm bad, I'm better.
• • I like restraint, if it doesn't go too far.
• • I'm single because I was born that way.
• • Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.
• • It's better to be looked over than overlooked.
• • I didn't discover curves; I only uncovered them.
• • When women go bad, men go right after them.
• • It's not the men in my life. It's the life in my men.
• • An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises.
• • Is that a gun in your pocket? Or are you glad to see me?
• • Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you.
• • A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up.
• • Cultivate your curves. They may be dangerous but they won't be avoided.
• • Don't marry a man to reform him — — that's what reform schools are for.
• • Don't let a man put anything over you except a umbrella.
• • Every man I meet wants to protect me. I can't figure out what from.
• • Mmmm! Tall, dark, and handsome!
• • He's the kind of man a woman would have to marry to get rid of.
• • His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.
• • I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.
• • Marriage is a great institution. But I'm not ready for an institution.
• • A woman in love can't be reasonable — — or she probably wouldn't be in love.
• • All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else.
• • I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
• • I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.
• • Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
• • I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond.
• • I only like two kinds of men — — domestic and foreign.
• • I see you're a man with ideals. I better be going while you've still got them.
• • I speak two languages — — body and English.
• • I'm no model lady. A model's just an imitation of the real thing.
• • Any time you've got nothing to do and lots of time to do it come on up.
• • Come up sometime and see me. I'll tell your fortune.
• • Come up sometime when I've nothing on but the radio.
• • My right leg is Thanksgiving. My left leg is Xmas. Come up and see me between the holidays.
• • Mae also has terrific and original one-liners in the play Courting Mae West.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • on the cover of Theatre Arts, 1950 • •
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Mae West.

Mae West: A New Book

MAE WEST shows up on the best sheets. In this case, the freshly printed sheets lie between the covers of a new book: Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists by James Geary [Bloomsbury, 437 pages].
• • Discussing this new release in the Washington Post, journalism Michael Dirda praised this new compendium of wise words in "short, sharp shocks."
• • According to Michael Dirda, The aphorism is the prose equivalent of a memorable line of poetry, a bit of worldly wisdom or self-understanding reduced to a short, sharp shock: "It is a rule of God's Providence that we should succeed by failure" (John Henry Newman). In The World in a Phrase, his 2005 history of the form, James Geary laid down his "Five Laws of the Aphorism: It Must Be Brief, It Must Be Personal, It Must Be Definitive, It Must Be Philosophical, and It Must Have A Twist."
• • Need some examples? Here are three, honestly chosen at random, from Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists:
• • "Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before." (Mae West)
• • "To live is to lose ground." (E.M. Cioran)
• • "The only things one never regrets are one's mistakes." (Oscar Wilde)
• • Anyone who enjoys such quotations with an attitude probably owns — — or should acquire — — The Viking Book of Aphorisms, compiled by W.H. Auden and Louis Kronenberger, and The Oxford Book of Aphorisms, edited by John Gross. They remain invaluable and irreplaceable collections. But their emphasis is on the great maxims of the past, and they are organized by theme — — that is, chapters proffer a hodge-podge of epigrammatic observations, by various authors, about love, ambition, or human suffering (to name three popular subjects). . . .
— — excerpt — —
• • Source: Book review from The Washington Post
• • Critic: Michael Dirda
• • Published on: 21 October 2007 [page BW10]
• • In this unedited extract from Dirda's recent column, it is more than pleasing to see that a quote by Mae West rises to the top.
• • The quote is in a film scene from "Klondike Annie" [1935-36].
• • If you're going to quote, quote from the best.
• • Come up and see Mae every day online: http://MaeWest.blogspot.com/
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Mae West
• • Photo: • • Mae West • • none • •
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Mae West.