J Russell Lynes Quotes & Sayings

The Art Snob can be recognized in the home by the quick look he gives the pictures on your walls, quick but penetrating, as though he were undressing them. This is followed either by complete and pained silence or a comment such as 'That's really a very pleasant little water color you have there. — Russell Lynes

Hi there, I'm a human being! What are you? — Russell Lynes

Brains aren't everything. In fact in your case they're nothing. — Russell Lynes

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. — Russell Lynes

Every journalist has a novel inside him, which is an excellent place for it. — Russell Lynes

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

I'm sorry, I'm a little busy. Can i ignore you later? — Russell Lynes

I'd love to ask how old you are, but unfortunately I know you can't count that high. — Russell Lynes

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. — Russell Lynes

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. — Russell Lynes

Shouldn't you have a license for being that ugly? — Russell Lynes

And I thought I had problems? Look at your face! — Russell Lynes

Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence. — Russell Lynes

The Art Snob will stand back from a picture at some distance, his head cocked slightly to one side — Russell Lynes

The shaping of taste is essentially the science of merchandising, whether of detergents or cars or books or objects of fine and decorative art. — Russell Lynes

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. — Russell Lynes

The world of the arts is by no means always comfortable, but neither is it likely ever to be boring. It is full of surprises, humor, traps for the unwary, and challenges to smugness. It is a world of moods as well as of revelation, of beliefs and fears, of unpleasant truth as well as of delicious fantasy. Perhaps it is arrogant to say that anyone who does not venture into this world is only half-interested in life. I say it, nonetheless. — Russell Lynes

Improvisation was the blood and bone of jazz, and in the classic, New Orleans jazz it was collective improvisation in which each performer, seemingly going his own melodic way, played in harmony, dissonance, or counterpoint with the improvisations of his colleagues. Quite unlike ragtime, which was written down in many cases by its composers and could be repeated note for note (if not expression for expression) by others, jazz was a performer's not a composer's art. — Russell Lynes

Wasting time is negative, but there is something positive about idleness. — Russell Lynes

Sure, I've seen people like you before - but I had to pay an admission. — Russell Lynes

Tennis is an addiction that once it has truly hooked a man will not let him go. — Russell Lynes

The Good Quality Snob, or wearer of muted tweeds, cut almost exactly the same from year to year, often with a hat of the same material, [is] native to the Boston North Shore, the Chicago North Shore, the North Shore of Long Island, to Westchester County, the Philadelphia Main Line and the Peninsula area of San Francisco. — Russell Lynes

The most effective comeback to an insult is silence. — Russell Lynes

I don't know what makes you so dumb but it really works. — Russell Lynes

The only graceful way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you cant ignore it, top it; if you cant top it, laugh at it; if you cant laugh at it, its probably deserved — Russell Lynes

There is a distinction to be drawn between true collectors and accumulators. Collectors are discriminating; accumulators act at random. The Collyer brothers, who died among the tons of newspapers and trash with which they filled every cubic foot of their house so that they could scarcely move, were a classic example of accumulators, but there are many of us whose houses are filled with all manner of things that we can't bear to throw away. — Russell Lynes

What we are headed for is a sort of social structure in which the highbrows are the elite, the middlebrows are the bourgeoisie and the lowbrows are hoi polloi. — Russell Lynes

No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published. — Russell Lynes

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. — Russell Lynes

A lady is a woman who makes a man behave like a gentleman. — Russell Lynes