Franklin P. Adams Quotes

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.

I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.

Having imagination, it takes you an hour to write a paragraph that, if you were unimaginative, would take you only a minute. Or you might not write the paragraph at all.

I am easily influenced. Compared with me a weather vane is Gibraltar.

Health is the thing that makes you feel that now is the best time of the year.

Too much truth is uncouth.

Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.

There must be a day or two in a man's life when he is the precise age for something important.

The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time.

Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.

Remember how excited you were when you turned five years old. Today, you should be 10 times that excited. Happy 50th birthday!

You do not know what you can miss before you try.

There are hundreds who can stand failure to one who can stand success; the good loser is far more common than the good winner.

Day after day, night after night, my life at home is far from bright, but even home has more variety, than I can find in cafe society.

Seeing ourselves as others see us would probably confirm our worst suspicions about them.

Middle age occurs when you are too young to take up golf and too old to rush up to the net.

We deny that it is fun to be saving. It is fun to be prodigal. Go to the butterfly, thou parsimonious sluggard; consider her ways and get wise.

When a man you like switches from what he said a year ago, or 4 years ago, he is a broad-minded person who has courage enough to change his mind with changing conditions. When a man you don't like does it, he is a liar who has broken his promises.

To err is human; to forgive, infrequent.

We have nothing in our history or position to invite aggression; we have everything to beckon us to the cultivation of relations of peace and amity with all nations.

Money isn't everything, but lack of money isn't anything.

There are plenty of good five-cent cigars in the country. The trouble is they cost a quarter. What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.

In the order named, these are the hardest to control - wine, women and song.

Our notion of an optimist is a man who knowing that each year was worse than the preceding, thinks next year will be better. And a pessimist is a man who knows the next year can't be worse than the last one.

The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are purely imaginary.

Accustomed as I am to public speaking, I know the futility of it.

Life, lift the full goblet--away with all sorrow-- The circle of friendship what freedom would sever? To-day is our own, and a fig for to-morrow-- Here's to the Fourth and our country forever.

As we see censorship it is a stupid giant traffic policeman answering "Yes" to "Am I my brother's copper?" He guards a one-way street and his semaphore has four signs, all marked "stop.

Prohibition is an awful flop. We like it. It can't stop what it's meant to stop. We like it. It's left a trail of graft and slime It don't prohibit worth a dime It's filled our land with vice and crime, Nevertheless, we're for it.

Christmas is over and Business is Business.

One man's pointlessness is another's barbed satire.

These are the saddest of possible words, Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance. Trio of Bear Cubs fleeter than birds, Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance. Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble, Making a Giant hit into a double, Words that are weighty with nothing but trouble, Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance. This brief poem, immortalized the Chicago Cubs' double-play combination: Shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance.

Chaos breeds life, while order breeds success.

Ninety-two percent of the stuff told you in confidence you couldn't get anyone else to listen to.

When the political columnists say 'Every thinking man' they mean themselves, and when candidates appeal to 'Every intelligent voter' they mean everybody who is going to vote for them

The best bet you get is an even break.

If, my dear, you seek to slumber; Count of stars an endless number; If you will continue wakeful; Count the drops that make a lakeful; Then if vigilance yet above you Hover, Count the times I love you; And if slumber sill repel you Count the times I do not tell you.

And of all glad words of prose or rhyme, The gladdest are Act while there yet is time

An extravagance is something you buy which is no earthly use to your wife.

I hate the pollyanna pest who says that all is for the best.

Conscience: A small, still voice that makes minority reports.

If a man keeps his trap shut, the world will beat a path to his door.

The rich man has his motorcar, His country and his town estate, He smokes a fifty-cent cigar And jeers at Fate. He frivols through the livelong day, He knows not Poverty, her pinch. His lot seems light, his heart seems gay; He has a cinch. Yet though my lamp burns low and dim, Though I must slave for livelihood- Think you that I would change with him? You bet I would!

Every time we tell anybody to cheer up, things might be worse, we run away for fear we might be asked to specify how.

There is no accounting for tastes, as the woman said when someone told her her son was wanted by the police.

Drinking is bad taste but tastes good.

While the work or play is on, it is a lot of fun if while you are doing one you don't constantly feel that you ought to be doing the other.

Nobody can write such ironic things unless he has a deep sense of injustice-injustice to those members of the race who are victims of the stupid, the pretentious and the hypocritical.

Count the day won, when the earth, turning on its axis, imposes no additional taxes