Quotes from Noel Coward

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

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

Time is the reef upon which all our mystic ships are wrecked.

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

You kissed me because you were awfully nice and I was awfully nice and we both liked kissing very much. It was inevitable.

I'll go and see anything so long as it amuses me, or moves me. If it doesn't do either I want to go home.

Television is for appearing on - not for looking at.

It's a sad reflection on society how many people are shocked by honesty... and how few by dishonesty.

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.

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.

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 a pity you didn't have a little more brandy. It might have made you more agreeable!

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...

People have died from hiccups, you know.

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

CHRISTMAS is at our throats again.

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.

Couldn't you see that all my flippancy was only a mask, hiding my real emotions--crushing them down desperately!

Your motivation is your pay packet on Friday. Now get on with it.

It'll never get well if you pick it.

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

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

ERNEST FRIEDLANDER: Be quiet! Be quiet! LEO MERCURÉ: Why should we be quiet? You're making enough row to blast the roof off! Why should you have the monopoly of noise? Why should your pompous moral pretensions be allowed to hurdle across the city without any competition? We've all got lungs. Let's use them! Let's shriek like mad! Let's enjoy ourselves!