Noel Coward Quotes

Exercise is the most awful illusion. The secret is a lot of aspirin and marrons glaces.

That strange feeling we had in the war. Have you found anything in your lives since to equal it in strength? A sort of splendid carelessness it was, holding us together.

I see her as one great stampede of lips directed at the nearest derriere.

Fifty-four years of love and tenderness and crossness and devotion and unswerving loyalty. Without her I could have achieved a quarter of what I have achieved, not only in terms of success and career, but in terms of personal happiness.

AMANDA: I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives.

The human race is a letdown, Ernest - a bad, bad letdown. And I'm disgusted with it. It thinks it's progressed, but it hasn't. It thinks it's risen above the primeval slime, but it hasn't. It's wallowing in it. It's still clinging to us, clinging to our hair and to our eyes and to our souls. We've invented a few things that make noises, but we haven't invented one big thing that creates quiet. Endless, peaceful quiet. Something to pull over us like a gigantic eiderdown, something to deaden the sound of our emotional yellings and screechings and suffocate our psychological confusions.

You always ought to have tom cats arranged, you know - it makes 'em more companionable.

A perfect martini should be made by filling a glass with gin then waving it in the general direction of Italy.

Television is for appearing on, not looking at.

It is not the eyes of others that I am wary of, but my own.

To hell with God damned "L'Amour." It always causes far more trouble than it is worth. Don't run after it. Don't court it. Keep it waiting off stage until you're good and ready for it and even then treat it with the suspicious disdain that it deserves ...

If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it.

Success is far more perilous than failure, isn't it? You've got to be doubly strong and watchful and wary.

Criticism and Bolshevism have one thing in common. They both seek to pull down that which they could never build.

Conceit is an outward manifestation of inferiority.

People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it.

He's completely unspoiled by failure.

How was your flight? Well, aeronautically it was a great success. Socially, it left quite a bit to be desired.

Comedies of manners swiftly become obsolete when there are no longer any manners.

It's no good pacing up and down. It won't make the plane arrive any faster. Just sit down and accept that we're delayed. You're just making a fool of yourself.

Labour leaders lead us all, though we know they bleed us all. Cheer our new Decline and Fall, Gibbon might have dreamed it all.

I have always paid income tax. I object only when it reaches a stage when I am threatened with having nothing left for my old age - which is due to start next Tuesday or Wednesday.

Having to read footnotes resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.

Wit ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar. Never spread it about like marmalade.

He must have been an incredibly good shot.

I never cared who scored the goal, or which side won the silver cup. I never learned to bat or bowl; but I heard the curtain going up.

It is my considered opinion that the human race (soi disant) is cruel, idiotic, sentimental, predatory, ungrateful, ugly, conceited and egocentric to the last ditch and that the occasional discovery of an isolated exception is as deliciously surprising as finding a sudden brazil nut in what you know to be five pounds of vanilla creams. These glorious moments, although not making life actually worth living, perhaps, at least make it pleasanter.

It's such a surprise for the Eastern eyes to see,
That though the English are effete
They're quite impervious to heat.

I can't sing, but I know how to, which is quite different.

To take a gloomy view of life is not part of my philosophy; to laugh at the idiocies of my fellow creatures is. However, at this particular moment I cannot find so much to laugh at as I would like.

I want a horse and plough, Chickens too, Just one cow, With a wistful moo.

It's like this, dear boy, the one in front is blind and the kind one behind is pushing him.

I don't much care for Hollywood, I'd rather have a nice cup of cocoa.

We have no reliable guarantee that the afterlife will be any less exasperating than this one, have we?

For gin, in cruel sober truth, supplies the fuel for flaming youth.

I don't believe in astrology. The only stars I can blame for my failures are those that walk about the stage.

The pleasures that once were heaven look silly at sixty-seven.

[Garry Essendine]: That is no prostitute, but the wife of one of my best friends!

Marriage is the aftermath of love.

Wit is like caviar - it should be served in small portions and not spread about like marmalade.

Success took me to her bosom like a maternal boa constrictor.

Everybody was up to something, especially, of course, those who were up to nothing.

The higher the building the lower the morals.

Acting is not a state of being ... but a state of appearing to be. You can't be eight times a week without going stark staring mad. You've got to be in control.

Though the fact that they have to be rebuilt And frequently mortgaged to the hilt Is inclined to take the gilt Off the gingerbread, And certainly damps the fun Of the eldest son.

Here ends the story of a ship, but there will always be other ships, for we are an island race. Through all our centuries, the sea has ruled our destiny. There will always be other ships and men to sail in them. It is these men, in peace or war, to whom we owe so much. Above all victories, beyond all loss, in spite of changing values in a changing world, they give to us, their countrymen, eternal and indomitable pride.

The theatre should be treated with respect. The theatre is a wonderful place, a house of strange enchantment, a temple of illusion. What it most emphatically is not and never will be is a scruffy, ill-lit, fumed-oak drill hall serving as a temporary soap box for political propaganda.

Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.

It's no use to go and take courses in playwriting any more than it's much use taking courses in acting. Better play to a bad matinee in Hull - it will teach you much more than a year of careful instruction. Come to think of it, I never did play to a good matinee in Hull ...

Someday I suspect, when Jesus has definitely got me for a sunbeam, my works may be adequately assessed.

A bloody good thing, but too late.

CHRISTMAS is at our throats again.

I write at high speed because boredom is bad for my health.

People have died from hiccups, you know.

Never trust a man with short legs. His brains are too near his bottom.

I have always been very fond of them (drama critics) ... I think it is so frightfully clever of them to go night after night to the theatre and know so little about it.

Squash - that's not exercise, it's flagellation.

There's always something fishy about the French.

It'll never get well if you pick it.

Just say the lines and don't trip over the furniture.

Work is much more fun than fun.

Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon The author of Lear remains unshaken Willie Herbert or Mary Fitton What does it matter? The Sonnets were written.

I love criticism just so long as it's unqualified praise.

If you must have motivation, think of your paycheck on Friday.

My life really has been one long extravaganza.

But why, oh why, do the wrong people travel, when the right people stay at home?

My philosophy is as simple as ever - smoking, drinking, moderate sexual intercourse on a diminishing scale, reading and writing (not arithmetic). I have a selfish absorption in the well-being and achievement of Noel Coward.

I've sometimes thought of marrying - and then I've thought again.

There isn't a particle of you that I don't know, remember, and want.

Consider the public. Never fear it nor despise it. Coax it, charm it, interest it, stimulate it, shock it now and then if you must, make it laugh, make it cry, but above all never, never, never bore the living hell out of it.

It's never too early for a cocktail.

I can take any amount of criticism, as long as it is unqualified praise.

You ask my advice about acting? Speak clearly, don't bump into the furniture and if you must have motivation, think of your pay packet on Friday.

Work is more fun than fun.

She had much in common with Hitler, only no mustache.

Dear 338171 (May I call you 338?)

Trust your instincts. If you have no instincts, trust your impulses.

How about slipping out of those wet things and into a dry Martini?

If he (Peter O'Toole) had been any prettier it would have been Florence of Arabia.

Of course, the age-old tradition that a star must appear even if he or she is practically dying is an excellent one, but it can be carried too far. I one played a performance of The Knight of the Burning Pestle with a temperature of 103 and gave sixteen members of the company mumps, thereby closing the play and throwing everybody out of work. There may be a moral lurking somewhere in this, but I cannot for the life of me discover what it is.

I'm an enormously talented man, and there's no use pretending that I'm not..

Wouldn't it be dreadful to live in a country where they didn't have tea?

My body has certainly wandered a good deal, but I have an uneasy suspicion that my mind has not wandered enough.

I like long walks, especialy when they are taken by people who annoy me.

I will accept anything in the theatre ... provided it amuses or moves me. But if it does neither, I want to go home.

I don't know what London's coming to - the higher the buildings the lower the morals.

An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.

It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

I'm not a heavy drinker, I can sometimes go for hours without touching a drop.

Work hard, do the best you can, don't ever lose faith in yourself and take no notice of what other people say about you.

Thousands of people have talent. I might as well congratulate you for having eyes in your head. The one and only thing that counts is: Do you have staying power?