WIST Quotations https://wist.info Wish I'd Said That! Fri, 24 Apr 2026 22:16:01 +0000 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://wist.info/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/little-w-little-box-60x60.jpg challengers – WIST Quotations https://wist.info 32 32 43606282 Fowler, Gene -- (Attributed) https://wist.info/fowler-gene/80854/ https://wist.info/fowler-gene/80854/#respond Thu, 18 Dec 2025 01:58:33 +0000 Dave https://wist.info/?p=80854 What is success? It is a toy balloon among children armed with pins.


Gene Fowler (1890-1960) American journalist, author, and dramatist. [b. Eugene Devlan]
(Attributed)

This is attributed in multiple sources to Fowler's Skyline: A Reporter's Reminiscence of the 1920s (1961), but searches of two copies do not find this text.

In her biography The Whole Truth and Nothing But (1963), Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper wrote:

One of the men I loved most above all others was Gene Fowler. He once wrote me a letter from London. “What is success?" he asked. “I shall tell you out of the wisdom of my years. It is a toy balloon among children armed with sharp pins."

The line is also shows up in Art Cohn, The Nine Lives of Michael Todd, ch. 19 "I Love You" (1958). ]]> https://wist.info/fowler-gene/80854/feed/ 0 80854