Quote of the Day (Frederick Douglass, on When Political Parties Are Strong)

“[P]olitical parties, like individual men, are only strong while they are consistent and honest, and… treachery and deception are only the sand on which political fools vainly endeavor to build.”— American abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892)

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show,’ With Lou on What Mary’s Parties Are Like)

Lou Grant [played by Ed Asner]: “It's not that I don't have a good time at your parties, Mary. I've had some of the worst times in my life. Agony.”—The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Season 4, Episode 10, “The Dinner Party,” original air date November 17, 1973, teleplay by Ed. Weinberger, directed by Jay Sandrich

This particular party must have been pretty bad. Even Ted Baxter (played by Ted Knight) is consoling Lou!

Quote of the Day (John Cheever, on a Frequent Occurrence in a Suburban Party)

“At the tag end of nearly every long, large Saturday night party in the suburb of Shady Hill, when almost everybody who was going to play golf or tennis in the morning had gone hours ago and the ten or twelve people remaining seemed powerless to bring the evening to an end although the gin and whiskey were running low, and here and there a woman who was sitting with her husband would have begun to drink milk; when everybody had lost track of time, and the babysitters who were waiting at home for these diehards would have long stretched out on the sofa into a deep sleep, to dream about cooking-contest prizes, ocean voyages, and romance; when the bellicose drunk, the crapshooter, the pianist, and the woman faced with the expiration of her hopes had all expressed themselves; when every proposal — to go to the Farquarsons for breakfast, to go swimming, to go and wake up the Townsends, to go here and go there — died as soon as it was made, then Tracy Bearden would begin to chide Cash Bentley about his age and thinning hair.”—American novelist and short-story writer John Cheever (1912-1982), “O Youth and Beauty!”, originally published in The New Yorker, Aug. 22, 1953, reprinted in The Housebreaker of Shady Hill and Other Stories (1958)

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show,’ With Her Latest Party Disaster)

[Mary Richards is anxious to make a good impression on a congresswoman coming to her dinner party. Unfortunately, the food is not cooperating.]

“Happy Homemaker” Sue Ann Nivens [played by Betty White]: “Mary, dear, do you have any idea what happens when you let Veal Prince Orloff sit in an oven too long?”

Mary Richards [played by Mary Tyler Moore]: “No, what?”

Sue Ann: “He dies.” —The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Season 4, Episode 10, “The Dinner Party,” original air date November 17, 1973, teleplay by Ed. Weinberger, directed by Jay Sandrich

Tweet of the Day (Comic Robin McCauley, on Parties and Aging)

“You know you're getting old when you're more worried about what time the party ends than when it starts.”— Robin McCauley, tweet of March 6, 2013

Obviously, she never attended a St. Cecilia High School reunion!!!