Intelligent and alert, wistful but enthusiastic, frank yet tactful, assured without conceit and tender without sentimentality.
Cecil BeatonBe daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Cecil BeatonI have the worst ear for criticism, even when I have created a stage set I like, I always hear the woman in the back of the dress circle, who says she doesn't like blue.
Cecil BeatonYou can't teach people photography, they've got to learn how to do it the best way possible for them. They can learn from looking at pictures taken by well-known people, but they don't really get intimate with the medium until they've made a few bad shots!
Cecil BeatonAmericans have an abiding belief in their ability to control reality by purely material means... airline insurance replaces the fear of death with the comforting prospect of cash.
Cecil BeatonNever in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly.
Cecil Beaton[He stared into the camera] like some sort of an animal gazing from across the back of its sty. (On Winston Churchill)
Cecil BeatonA technical failure that shows some attempt at aesthetic expression is of infinitely more value than uninspired success.
Cecil BeatonOn close inspection, this device turned out to be a funereal juke box - the result of mixing Lloyd's of London with the principle of the chewing gum dispenser.
Cecil BeatonMiss Marilyn Monroe calls to mind the bouquet of a fireworks display, eliciting from her awed spectators an open-mouthed chorus of ohs and ahs.
Cecil BeatonMore varied than any landscape was the landscape in the sky, with islands of gold and silver, peninsulas of apricot and rose against a background of many shades of turquoise and azure.
Cecil Beaton