The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same - dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits - the repetition through the ages is comedy.
Every man is his own greatest dupe.
'Tis writ on Paradise's gate, Woe to the dupe that yields to fate!
PHRENOLOGY, n. The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with.
If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together,--a main plot and an under-plot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress.
It is admirable to die the victim of one's faith; it is sad to die the dupe of one's ambition.
It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep.
Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself--by his incomparable talent for searching out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what is true.
The ancient gentleman who has seen the world, who is profoundly experienced, and much too deep to be the dupe of an age so shallow as this, is to be won by an admiring glance at the brilliancy of his knee-buckle; praise his very pigtail, and you may lead him by it.
Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate!
In friendship, as well as in love, the mind is often the dupe of the heart.
The weak-minded man is the slave of his vices and the dupe of his virtues.
The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.
A man's own vanity is a swindler that never lacks for a dupe.
When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe.
As to the deceit perpetrated upon women, let it pass, for, when love is in the way, men and women as a general rule dupe each other.
The greatest joy a petty soul can taste is to dupe a great soul and catch it in a snare.
One dupe is as impossible as one twin.
Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one's life.
