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Trying 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.

Ben Hecht

I have written a raucous valentine to a poet’s dream and agony.
BEN HECHT

Agony Day Dream Valentines
That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
BEN HECHT

Atheism Existence Proof
In moderating, not satisfying desires, lies peace.
BEN HECHT

Deceit Desire Lying
A movie is never any better than the stupidest man connected with it.
BEN HECHT

Connected Men Stupidest
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.
BEN HECHT

Blessing Money People
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.
BEN HECHT

Christmas Criticism Dubious News Praise
The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.
BEN HECHT

Forget Way World
Out of the seventy movies I’ve written some ten of them were not entirely waste product.
BEN HECHT

Product Seventies Waste
In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.
BEN HECHT

Hollywood Names Thirty
Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
BEN HECHT

Giving Loyalty Men
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.
BEN HECHT

Admire Always Dislike Obvious Work
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.
BEN HECHT

Fighting Heart Kindness
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.
BEN HECHT

Fake Men People Thinking
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.
BEN HECHT

Intellectual People Writing
I’ll tell you a secret. We live in a mad and inspiring world.
BEN HECHT

Mad Secret World
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

Bible Book League

Trying 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.

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Trying 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.

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