I have written a raucous valentine to a poet’s dream and agony.
BEN HECHTTrying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.
More Ben Hecht Quotes
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That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
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In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
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A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
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When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance.
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Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer’s habit to remember nothing good of himself.
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The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.
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Out of the seventy movies I’ve written some ten of them were not entirely waste product.
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In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.
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Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
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I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.
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They’re a symbol of the whole town, pretending to fight, love, weep and laugh all the time – and they’re phonies, all of them. And I head the list…their phony hearts were dripping with the milk of human kindness.
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A man nearly always loves for other reasons than he thinks. A lover is apt to be as full of secrets from himself as is the object of his love from him.
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The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century.Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them.
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I’ll tell you a secret. We live in a mad and inspiring world.
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Immorality, perversion, infidelity, cannibalism, etc., are unassailable by church and civic league if you dress them up in the togas and talliths of the Good Book.
BEN HECHT