P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Some tortures are physical And some are mental, But the one that is both Is dental.

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.

Everyone knows what toothache's like: it's one of those dull pains that just won't go away.

I've had dentists who have wanted to help me out, but I say, 'You know, I won't work again if you fix my teeth.'

When you think of the good old days, think one word: dentistry.

Dentistry is more impressive in town-what the rural man calls cleaning the teeth is called "prophylaxis" in New York.

Rid the mind of knowledge when looking for pleasure. Or start thinking and find a lot of pain.

Bad dental hygiene can lead to respiratory infections and an increased risk for heart disease and strokes.

The trouble with America is that there are far too many wide open spaces surrounded by teeth.

Ben rubbed his muzzle over Kyle’s shoulder in a way that I think was supposed to be reassuring. Kyle sucked in a breath. Either it hurt, or the reminder that the werewolf was big enough to rub his shoulder without much effort wasn’t exactly reassuring. “Ben, when was the last time you brushed your teeth?” asked Kyle. Or else Ben’s breath was really bad.

The higher animals get their teeth without pain or inconvenience. Man gets his through months and months of cruel torture; he will never get a set which can really be depended on 'till a dentist makes him one.

To live only to suffer—only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged—it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer?

I hoped our lives would continue this way forever, but inevitably the past came knocking. Not the good kind that was collectible but the bad kind that had arthritis.

I was certified to take x-rays, but you can't just show up and start cleaning people's teeth.

We have seen better days.

Faint is the bliss, that never past thro' pain.

The past is a closed door.

I cannot think of a thing that was better in those good old days.

It is no wonder if, under the pressure of these possibilities of suffering, men are accustomed to moderate their claims to happiness - just as the pleasure principle itself, indeed, under the influence of the external world, changed into the more modest reality principle -, if a man thinks himself happy merely to have escaped unhappiness or to have survived his suffering, and if in general the task of avoiding suffering pushes that of obtaining pleasure into the background.

To look back into the past only makes sense if it serves the future.

I didn't dare think of the future; the past was still happening.

If we seek to keep the past alive, we end, I think, by distorting it.

Like anyone nostalgic for a time he didn't live through, I chose to weed out the little inconveniences: polio, say, or the thought of eating stewed squirrel. The world was simply grander back then, somehow more civilized, and nicer to look at.

Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.

Nice teeth is a turn on for me. If you open your mouth and it looks like a battle of epic proportions, I don't like it.