dorothy parker
American journalist, writer and wit Dorothy Parker at a restaurant. with her husband, Alan Campbell. Evening Standard/Getty Images

The legendary writer, critic and poet Dorothy Parker was born in New Jersey on Aug. 22, 1893. She sold her first poem at the age of 21 to Vanity Fair and took an editorial job at Vogue the very next year. Parker was one of the founding members of the Algonquin Round Table and the New Yorker.

She died in 1967 and left her entire estate to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Foundation. She also left her ashes to playwright Lillian Hellman, who did not collect it. It was passed around unceremoniously after going unclaimed for 17 years.

Here are 15 sayings by the legend on her 125th birthday, courtesy Goodreads and Bookriot.

1. “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”

2. “Razors pain you, Rivers are damp, Acids stain you, And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren’t lawful, Nooses give, Gas smells awful. You might as well live.”

3. “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

4. “Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.”

5. “I'd like to have money. And I'd like to be a good writer. These two can come together, and I hope they will, but if that's too adorable, I'd rather have money.”

6. “Misfortune and recited misfortune especially, can be prolonged to the point where it ceases to excite pity and arouses only irritation.”

7. “There must be courage; there must be no awe. There must be criticism, for humor, to my mind, is encapsulated in criticism. There must be a disciplined eye and a wild mind...There must be a magnificent disregard of your reader, for if he cannot follow you, there is nothing you can do about it. “

8. “There's life for you. Spend the best years of your life studying penmanship and rhetoric and syntax and Beowulf and George Eliot, and then somebody steals your pencil.”

8. “It turns out that, at social gatherings, as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, I rank somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate.”

9. “Salary is no object: I want only enough to keep body and soul apart.”

10. “If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you.”

11. “The two most beautiful words in the English language are ‘cheque enclosed.’”

12. “I'll think about something else. I'll just sit quietly. If I could sit still. If I could sit still, maybe I could read. Oh, all the books are about people who love each other, truly and sweetly. What do they want to write about that for? Don't they know it isn't true? Don't they know it's a lie, it's a God-damned lie? What do they have to tell about that for, when they know how it hurts?”

13. “Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”

14. “Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!”

15. “You do what you can, and you do it because you should. But all you can do is all you can do.”

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