Articles of the year 2021

I recently got into a debate over the riposte : “Pearl before swine”, with a friend and I could not remember the other half of the exchange. Amazingly, Google came to the rescue and delivered the entire exchange thus.
Dorothy Parker was a famous novelist who possessed an acerbic wit.
One evening Clare Boothe Luce, a famous author married to Henry Booth Luce, the founder of Time/ Life and Fortune magazine met Dorothy Parker who was a famous novelist married to Alan Campbell, a Hollywood screen play-writer.

Needless to say these people were at the top of the social ladder when the following exchange took place at a chic dinner party.
As they were headed toward the exit together, Luce hesitated allowing Dorothy Parker to exit first and remarked “Age before beauty.”
Without missing a beat, Parker replied: “ Pearl before swine, dear.” The players were celebrities in their own right. Their husbands were among the rich and powerful. However, this exchange stood on its own.

Not to be out done of course the pedigree and rank of the players made for an immediate entry picked up by the New York Times and the Wall Street journal into the quote of the day, where it is still repeated in awe and is remembered thus.
This one remark took New York to the lead from London society.