Quotes by J. Russel 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.
– J. Russel Lynes
A truly appreciative child will break, lose, spoil, or fondle to death any really successful gift within a matter of minutes.
– J. Russel Lynes
Any real New Yorker is a you-name-it-we-have-it-snob whose heart brims with sympathy for the millions of unfortunates who through misfortune, misguidedness or pure stupidity live anywhere else in the world.
– J. Russel 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.
– J. Russel Lynes
Cynicism is the intellectual cripple's substitute for intelligence.
– J. Russel Lynes
Every journalist has a novel in him, which is an excellent place for it.
– J. Russel Lynes
In my estimation, the only thing that is more to be guarded against than bad taste is good taste.
– J. Russel Lynes
It is always well to accept your own shortcomings with candor but to regard those of your friends with polite incredulity.
– J. Russel Lynes
It rides horses and is rare in Southern California, except in Pasadena. In Texas it trades at Neiman-Marcus.
– J. Russel Lynes
Ragtime was a fanfare for the 20th century.
– J. Russel Lynes
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.
– J. Russel 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.
– J. Russel Lynes
The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it; if you can't ignore it, top it; if you can't top it, laugh at it; if you can't laugh at it, it's probably deserved.
– J. Russel 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.
– J. Russel Lynes
There are times when you just get down, you feel like nobody likes you. We're in high school forever. It's just what we do with it.
– J. Russel 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.
– J. Russel Lynes
When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.
– J. Russel Lynes