Ilka Chase Quotes

The only people who never fail are those who never try

You can always spot a well informed man his views are the same as yours.

To me travel is triple delight: anticipation, performance, and recollection.

Democracy is not an easy form of government, because it is never final; it is a living, changing organism, with a continuous shifting and adjusting of balance between individual freedom and general order.

When he said we were trying to make a fool of him, I could only murmur that the Creator had beat us to it.

It is usually when men are at their most religious that they behave with the least sense and the greatest cruelty.

Among famous traitors of history one might mention the weather.

America's best buy is a telephone call to the right man.

I think it is every woman's duty to make herself as attractive as her time and means permit. After all, there you are, in your person- a living symbol of the progress of art, science and imagination. To be as attractive as we can be is almost a civic duty; there are so many sad and ugly things in the world that I think women should say to themselves humbly, not with vanity, 'I will try to be as pretty as I can, so that when people look at me, they will feel refreshed. I will make an effort to be easy on the eye.'

when men don't like another man everyone assumes he's no good and that the men know what they are talking about, yet when women dislike another woman people just think they're being catty.

in love, gallantry is necessary. Even when the first wild desire is gone, especially then, there is an inherent need for good manners and consideration, for the putting forth of effort. Two courteous and civilized human beings out of the loneliness of their souls owe that to each other.

Believe me, nothing is so calculated to lose you audience sympathy as too many tears. Move your listeners all you can but let them do the crying.

Keeping your coat on indoors in Russia, no matter how public the place, is far worse than keeping your hat on as the flag goes by. It is worse than going into a Catholic church in Spain with your upper arms bare. It is worse than telling a mother her baby bores you.

People are subject to moods, to temptations and fears, lethargy and aberration and ignorance, and the staunchest qualities shift under the stresses and strains of daily life.

The very fact that we make such a to-do over golden weddings indicates our amazement at human endurance. The celebration is more in the nature of a reward for stamina.

The theater is a baffling business, and a shockingly wasteful one when you consider that people who have proven their worth, who have appeared in or been responsible for successful plays, who have given outstanding performances, can still, in the full tide of their energy, be forced, through lack of opportunity, to sit idle season after season, their enthusiasm, their morale, their very talent dwindling to slow gray death. Of finances we will not even speak; it is too sad a tale.

On the whole, I haven't found men unduly loath to say, 'I love you.' The real trick is to get them to say, 'Will you marry me?

everything you experience is what constitutes you as a human being, but the experience passes away and the person's left. The person is the residue.

We've surrounded the most vital and commonplace human function with a vast morass of taboos, convention, hypocrisy, and plain claptrap.

All the humiliating, tragicomic, heartbreaking things happened to me in my girlhood, and nothing makes me happier than to realize I cannot possibly relive my youth.

Some objects and events may be photographed, others, if one is to render their true quality, should be painted or set to music, since their essence is more faithfully reproduced through imagination than by the journalistic report.

There are three things the prospective traveler to Russia does well to bear in mind. One: It is their country. Two: Most foreigners are profoundly relieved that this is so. Three: You don't have to go.

Like building a house, travel always costs more than you estimate.

Wart hogs should sue for libel. It is a terrible name and they are fine fellows and devoted family men and it is rare to see one by himself; the little woman and the kiddies are usually close at hand.

That is what is so marvelous about Europe; the people long ago learned that space and beauty and quiet refuges in a great city, where children may play and old people sit in the sun, are of far more value to the inhabitants than real estate taxes and contractors' greed.