Dentists Quotes

Welcome to my page of quotations about dental work, dentists, teeth, toothaches, and the like. I do quite love my own dentist and hygienist so am sorry to say that these are not all positive quotes about the profession which keeps us smiling, but there's not much poetry in the drill. Well, except one quote below in which there actually is — from Mrs. Miniver, and it's my favorite dental literary harvest thus far. An author who thinks to associate John Donne with dental work has an interesting mind indeed. So floss, smile, and enjoy the quotes! —tεᖇᖇ¡·g


Be true to your teeth and they won't be false to you. ~Soupy Sales


The toothbrush doesn't remove six months of tartar 30 minutes before your appointment. ~Dental Saying


Dentistry is not expensive, neglect is. ~Dental Saying


Got teeth? Thank your dental hygienist. ~Dental Saying


Happiness is your dentist telling you it won't hurt and then having him catch his hand in the drill. ~Johnny Carson


A dentist at work in his vocation always looks down in the mouth. ~George D. Prentice


Every tooth in a man's head is more valuable than a diamond. ~Miguel de Cervantes


If suffering brought wisdom, the dentist's office would be full of luminous ideas. ~Mason Cooley


No, my friend, I am not drunk. It is that I have been to the dentist and I need not go again for six months. It is a beautiful thought. ~Agatha Christie, The Patriotic Murders (Hercule Poirot)


You don't have to brush your teeth — just the ones you want to keep. ~Author Unknown


Some tortures are physical
And some are mental,
But the one that is both
Is dental.
~Ogden Nash


Too many of today's children have straight teeth and crooked morals. ~Unidentified high school principal


The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. ~George Bernard Shaw


Dentist: a prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls coin out of your pocket. ~Ambrose Bierce


I find that most men would rather have their bellies opened for five hundred dollars than have a tooth pulled for five. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)


For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently.
~William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing


We do have a zeal for laughter in most situations, give or take a dentist. ~Joseph Heller


Even pearls are dark before the whiteness of his teeth. ~William R. Alger


If a patient cannot clean his teeth, no dentist can do it for him. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)


An aching tooth is better out than in.
To lose a rotting member is a gain.
~Richard Baxter, Poetical Fragments



A man loses his illusions first, his teeth second, and his follies last. ~Helen Rowland


Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache. ~Author Unknown


Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don't let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months. ~Clifford Stoll


There are two things in life that a sage must preserve at every sacrifice, the coats of his stomach and the enamel of his teeth. Some evils admit of consolations, but there are no comforters for dyspepsia and the toothache. ~Henry Lytton Bulwer




Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principle one was that they escaped teething. ~Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar


The tongue is ever turning to the aching tooth. ~Thomas Fuller


I've been to the dentist several times so I know the drill. ~Author Unknown


Smile, it lets your teeth breathe. ~Author Unknown


Some old women and men grow bitter with age; the more their teeth drop out, the more biting they get. ~George D. Prentice


It is guaranteed to put all teeth on edge including George Washington's, wherever they might be. ~Author Unknown


When fortune turns against you, even jelly breaks your teeth. ~Proverb


Effort is like toothpaste: you can usually squeeze out just a little bit more. ~Author Unknown


He must have seen me looking at his mouth, for he explained, 'I had very good dentures once. Some magnificent gold work. It's the only form of jewelry a man can wear that women fully appreciate. Dear things, they like to put their lips on gold.' ~Graham Greene, Travels With My Aunt


Blessed are they who hold lively conversations with the helplessly mute, for they shall be called dentists. ~Ann Landers


Dentists are medical professionals who help you put your money where your mouth is. ~Author Unknown


A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew. ~Herb Caen


Men often think submission indicates weakness, that letting someone else take charge betrays a character deficit. But we all submit to strangers who drill into our teeth as long as we can see the parchment on their wall which reads "Dentist." ~Edmond Manning, King Perry


"Quite comfortable?" asked Mr. Hinchley when he had played his usual little overture upon the various pedals and handles of his adjustable chair.
"Quite, thank you," said Mrs. Miniver. Horribly, she felt inclined to add. For really it was the refinement of civilized cruelty, this spick, span, and ingenious affair of shining leather and gleaming steel, which hoisted you and tilted you and fitted reassuringly into the small of your back and cupped your head tenderly between padded cushions. It ensured for you a more complete muscular relaxation than any armchair that you could buy for your own home: but it left your tormented nerves without even the solace of a counter-irritant. In the old days the victim's attention had at least been distracted by an ache in the back, a crick in the neck, pins and needles in the legs, and the uneasy tickling of plush under the palm. But now, too efficiently suspended between heaven and earth, you were at liberty to concentrate on hell.
~Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver, 1930s


"A lit-tle wi-der," said Mr. Hinchley indulgently, dividing the words into separate syllables as though he were teaching a very small child to read.... Mrs. Miniver obeyed meekly and resigned herself to the exquisite discomfort of the electric drill. It was a pity, she felt, that this instrument had been invented during a period when scientific images in poetry were out of favour. To the moderns, who had been brought up with it, it was presumably vieux jeu. They took it for granted; it did not fire their imagination like the pylons and the power-houses which were now the fashionable emotive symbols. But oh, what Donne could have made of it, if it had been invented in his time! With what delight he would have seized upon it, with what harsh jostling and grinding of consonants he would have worked out metaphor after metaphor, comparing its action to that of all the worst tormentors of the heart: to jealousy, to remorse, to the sharp gnawing of a bad conscience and the squalid nagging of debt....
Oh! page John Donne.... Run, buttoned cherubim, through the palm lounges and gilt corridors of heaven.... And tell him that there are at least two poems waiting to be written in Mr. Hinchley's surgery. Miss Bligh will hand him a pen.
~Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver, 1930s


Mrs. Miniver kept her eyes focused as long as possible upon the far distance, hoping that they would take her other senses with them. But they didn't. The drill was too insistent. So presently she brought them back and cast a reproachful spaniel-glance upwards at Mr. Hinchley, which he was too much absorbed to see. She devoted the next few minutes to making a slow, dispassionate study of his left eyebrow, which was a good enough shape as eyebrows go; and then decided that nothing but a deep romantic love could make the human face tolerable at such close quarters.
The far and the near having both failed her, she explored the middle distance: the embossed plaster patterns on the ceiling; the round, white lamp—an albino moon—which hung between her and the window; the X-ray machine; the sterilizer; the glass bowl on her left with the tumbler of pink mouth-wash beside it; and on her right the large composite fitment, so absurdly like a porcelain snowman, out of which burgeoned, among other things, this insufferable, this inescapable, this altogether abominable drill.
~Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver, 1930s


Miss Bligh, as though by prestidigitation, suddenly held a syringe between her scarlet finger-tips.... The prick of the injection was sharp, but its effect was magical. In an instant the left-hand side of her face ceased to belong to her. She put up one finger and stroked her cheek curiously. It was like stroking somebody else's; and therefore it was, tactually, like seeing herself clearly for the first time. Not in a mirror, where the eyes must always bear the double burden of looking and being looked into; but from outside, through a window, catching herself in profile and unawares. ~Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver, 1930s


When a thief kisses you, count your teeth. ~Proverb


Dental hygienists are boss of the floss. ~Dental Saying


A good dentist never gets on your nerves. ~Author Unknown


The grinding of the intellect is for most people as painful as a dentist's drill. ~Leonard Sidney Woolf


I'm always amazed to hear of air crash victims so badly mutilated that they have to be identified by their dental records. What I can't understand is, if they don't know who you are, how do they know who your dentist is? ~Paul Merton


Life is short. Smile while you still have teeth. ~Mallory Hopkins


Tooth decay was a perennial national problem that meant a mouthful of silver for patients, and for dentists a pocketful of gold. ~Claudia Wallis


A dentist gets to the root of the problem. ~Dental Humor


When a writer becomes a reader of his or her own work, a lot can go wrong. It's like do-it-yourself dentistry. ~William Collins


You can't escape history, or the needs and neuroses you've picked up like layers and layers of tartar on your teeth. ~Charles Johnson


I won't have to brush my teeth or floss tonight. Any food trapped in my teeth got knocked out. ~Charles Thomas


The harsh, useful things of the world, from pulling teeth to digging potatoes, are best done by men who are as starkly sober as so many convicts in the death-house, but the lovely and useless things, the charming and exhilarating things, are best done by men with, as the phrase is, a few sheets in the wind. ~H.L. Mencken


The trick to not growing old is to: Stay curious. Keep your teeth. Stay hopeful. Do everything gracefully, yet kick when you have to. ~Carew Papritz