SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS QUOTES

American writer (1871-1958)

Work won't do me any good ... I've tried it, and it bored me worse than the other thing.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Our Square and the People In It

Tags: work


All I want is to be in the game.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Wanted: A Husband


Boredom is simply romanticism with a morning-after thirst.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Average Jones

Tags: boredom


I'd sell my soul to the devil if he'd buy such a weakly, puny, piffling little soul, just really to live and be something besides a "thoroughly nice girl" for one short year.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Wanted: A Husband

Tags: life


You never get bored ... when you have the probabilities of your next meal to speculate on, pro and con.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Our Square and the People In It

Tags: boredom


A wasted human being--that's a sort of practical blasphemy, according to my religion.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Wanted: A Husband


Never before has the message of solidarity been so gravely needed. We are living at a time when creeds and ideologies vary and clash. But the gospel of human sympathy is universal and eternal.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

attributed, Samuel Hopkins Adams and the Business of Writing

Tags: sympathy


Any physician who advertises a positive cure for any disease, who issues nostrum testimonials, who sells his services to a secret remedy, or who diagnoses and treats by mail patients he has never seen, is a quack.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

"The Sure-Cure School", Collier's Weekly, Jul. 14, 1906

Tags: doctors


The secret of happiness. Those dancing kiddies have got it. I want it. I want to know what makes 'em so happy.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Our Square and the People In It

Tags: happiness


Ignorance and credulous hope make the market for most proprietary remedies.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

"The Subtle Poisons", Collier's Weekly, Dec. 2, 1905

Tags: ignorance


According to the estimate of a prominent advertising firm, above 90 per cent, of the earning capacity of the prominent nostrums is represented by their advertising. And all this advertising is based on the well-proven theory of the public's pitiable ignorance and gullibility in the vitally important matter of health.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

"The Fundamental Fakes", Collier's Weekly, Feb. 17, 1906

Tags: advertising


Success: a marvelous stimulant, bubbling with inspiration and incitement. But for all except the few who are strong and steadfast, there lurks beneath the effervescence a subtle poison.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Success: A Novel

Tags: success


Our square lies broad and green and busy, in the forgotten depths of the great city. By day its is bright with the laughter of children and shrill with the bickering of neighbors. By night the voice of the spellbinder is strident on its corners, but from the remoter benches float murmurs where the young couples sit, and sighs where the old folk relax their weariness. New York knows little of Our Square, submerged as we are in a circle of slums. Yet for us, as for more Elysian fields, the crocus springs in the happy grass, the flash and song of the birds stir our trees, and Romance fans us with the wind of its imperishable wing.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Our Square and the People In It

Tags: New York


Boredom and booze--cause and effect.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Our Square and the People In It

Tags: alcoholism, beer


Shortest straw pulls the skunk's tail.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

"Baseball in Mumford's Pasture Lot", Grandfather Stories


You can, when you choose, sharpen the pencil of your mind to a very fine point. Specialize, my boy, specialize.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Average Jones

Tags: mind


Average Jones had come by his nickname inevitably. His parents had foredoomed him to it when they furnished him with the initials A. V. R. E. as preface to his birthright of J for Jones. His character apparently justified the chance concomitance. He was, so to speak, a composite photograph of any thousand well-conditioned, clean-living Americans between the ages of twenty-five and thirty.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Average Jones


I'm a suicide. I walked right spang over the edge of life and disappeared. Splash! Bubble-bubble! There goes nothing.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Our Square and the People In It

Tags: suicide


The path of the pursuer and the prey often run obscurely parallel.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Average Jones


The ordinary run of advertising is nothing more than an effort to sell something by yelling in print.

SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS

Average Jones

Tags: advertising