Noel Coward Quotes

To know you are among people whom you love, and who love you – that has made all the successes wonderful, much more wonderful than they'd have been anyway.

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

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.

He's completely unspoiled by failure.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

What I adore is supreme professionalism. I’m bored by writers who can write only when it’s raining.

My life really has been one long extravaganza.

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

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?

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 matinée in Hull, it will teach you much more than a year of careful instruction.

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

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.

Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.

Passion in a dromedary doesn't go so deep; a camel when it's mating never sobs itself to sleep.

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

How foolish to think that one can ever slam the door in the face of age. Much wiser to be polite and gracious and ask him to lunch in advance.

An infant prodigy of nine is shoved upon the stage in white. She starts off in a dismal whine about a dark and stormy night, a burglar, whose heart is true, despite his wicked-looking face, who puts the little child in doom, to save her mamma's jewel case. This may bring tears to every eye; it does not set my heart on fire. I'd like to stand serenely by and watch that horrid child expire.

At twelve noon, The natives swoon And no further work is doneBut mad dogs and Englishmen, Go out in the midday sun.

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

He must have been an incredibly good shot.

Grab it while you can — grab every scrap of happiness while you can

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

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

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

Wit ought to be a glorious treat like caviar; never spread it about like marmalade.

I'll go through life either first class or third, but never in second.

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

Many years ago I remember a famous actress explaining to me with perfect seriousness that before making an entrance she always stood aside to allow God to go on first. I can also remember that on that particular occasion He gave a singularly uninspired performance.

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.

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

Work is much more fun than fun.

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

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

I don't think pornography is harmful, but it is terribly, terribly boring.

Why do I drink Champagne for breakfast? Doesn't everyone?

Everybody worships me, it's nauseating.

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

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

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

A bloody good thing, but too late.

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

It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

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

As one gets older, one discovers everything is going to be exactly the same with different hats on.

I'm over-educated in the things I shouldn't have known at all.

Sunburn is very becoming - but only when it is even - one must be careful not to look like a mixed grill.

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.

The higher the building the lower the morals.