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
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
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
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
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
A wasted human being--that's a sort of practical blasphemy, according to my religion.
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
Wanted: A Husband
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
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
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
Ignorance and credulous hope make the market for most proprietary remedies.
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
"The Subtle Poisons", Collier's Weekly, Dec. 2, 1905
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
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
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
Boredom and booze--cause and effect.
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
Our Square and the People In It
Shortest straw pulls the skunk's tail.
SAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
"Baseball in Mumford's Pasture Lot", Grandfather Stories
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
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