“Pencey was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has - I'm not kidding.”

As quoted and paraphrased in "I Have Been a Babe and a Boob" by Joe Winkworth, in Collier's (October 31, 1925), p. 15
Context: "I am through—through with the pests and the good-time guys. Between them and a few crooks I have thrown away more than a quarter of a million dollars. I have been a Babe—and a Boob. I'm through." [Ruth] confesses he faces either oblivion or the hard task of complete reformation. [He] realizes that he must make good all over again. "I am going to do it," he said. "I was going to be the exception, the popular hero who could do as he pleased. But all those people were right. Babe and Boob—that was me all over. Now, though, I know that if I am to wind up sitting pretty on the world I've got to face the facts and admit I have been the sappiest of saps. All right, I admit it. I haven't any desire to kid myself."

Source: Good Government: Hope or Illusion? (1978), p. 14

Address in Memphis, Tennessee (25 October 1905) http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly
1900s

The New Gods (1969)

Part I, chapter 11.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Miles "Pudge" Halter, p. 218
Looking for Alaska (2005)

Say Yes.
Lyrics, Either/Or (1997)