John Ashbery Quotes

One of the most surprising forms of nonverbal communication is the way we automatically adjust the amount of time we spend looking into another's eyes as a function of our relative social position.

From the height from which the great look down on the world all the rest of mankind seem equal.

In the hierarchy, the artist faces outward. Meeting someone new he asks himself, What can this person do for me? How can this person advance my standing? In the hierarchy, the artist looks up and looks down. The one place he can't look is that place he must: within.

To me there is no difference whether president, beggar, or king.

You humiliate a rich person and they're still rich. You humiliate a brilliant person and they're still smart. A person who is well connected is still the king of England. But if you humiliate a young person, you take away the only form of power they have.

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I interrupt some sort of dominance foreplay?

The amount of energy spent laughing at a joke should be directly proportional to the hierarchical status of the joke teller.

Knowledge without wisdom is adequate for the powerful, but wisdom is essential to the survival of the subordinate

The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that.

They looked down on her; and she looked up through them.

If one has one cow, it is always better not to be too familiar with those who have seven.

Strip the human race, absolutely naked, and it would be a real democracy. But the introduction of even a rag of tiger skin, or a cowtail, could make a badge of distinction and be the beginning of a monarchy.

Money sometimes makes fools of important persons, but it may also make important persons of fools.

Kings stand more in need of the company of the intelligent than the intelligent do of the society of kings.

Privilege, in any society, is the reward of duties performed.

It's a cocktail-party circuit in D.C., That guy who couldn't master the guitar and get in a band and get laid, he ends up there. Gary Condit make sense to me. He's away from his family, he's in D.C. - if he was a car dealer in the [San Fernando] Valley somewhere out there, he'd be the guy who was trying to get laid by offering you the free undercoating package.

The real beggar is indeed the true and only king.

The servant may not look to be in better case than his master.

The consolations of the vulgar are bitter in the royal ear. Let physicians and confectioners and servants in the great houses be judged by what they have done, and even by what they have meant to do; the great people themselves are judged by what they are. I have been told that lions, trapped and shut up in cages, grieve from shame more than from hunger.

It's in the eyes, mostly. Don't listen just to the other actor's lines. Look at - and listen to - their eyes. That's where the emotion comes through.

Money confounds subordination.

Class is an intangible quality which commands, rather than demands, the respect of others.

What makes you a real girl or boy is that no one laughs at you. If you are imitation or unreal, the rules give you a right to exist provided you do what the real ones or brutes say. What makes you into me or Charles Morgan is that the rules allow all the girls to be better than me and all the boys better than Charles Morgan.

When they're standing right in front of you, kings are a kind of speech impediment.