Katharine Whitehorn Quotes - Page 2

It's a pity more men are not bastards by birth instead of vocation.

The disease is painless; it's the cure that hurts.

As ridiculous to approve of property and let a few men have a grossly unfair share of it, as say you are all for marriage, and then let one man have all the wives.

It beats me how Freud could say "What do women want?" as if we all must want the same thing.

There's comfort to an awful old dressing-gown a pretty peignoir is powerless to provide, and aging bra elastic, is, I suspect, as near to liberation as most women ever get.

I used to think the only use for sport was to give small boys something else to kick besides me.

I suppose we all share this pipe-dream of being able to reach out a hand and find anything at will; what is amazing is that we think that good filing could somehow make it comes true. On the contrary: putting a letter into a filing system is like releasing your ferret in the Hampton Court maze.

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.

A good listener is not someone with nothing to say. A good listener is a good talker with a sore throat.

Spring makes everything look filthy.

The case against censoring anything is absolute: ... nothing that could be censored can be so bad in its effects, in the long run, as censorship itself.

A food is not necessarily essential just because your child hates it.

In hell they will bore you, in heaven you will bore them.

Children and zip fasteners do not respond to force ... except occasionally.

As I look around the West End these days, it seems to me that outside every thin girl is a fat man, trying to get in.

Too great a preoccupation with motives (especially one's own motive) is liable to lead to too little concern for consequences.

In our society mothers take the place elsewhere occupied by the Fates, the System, Negroes, Communism or Reactionary Imperialist Plots; mothers go on getting blamed until they're eighty, but shouldn't take it personally.

a perfectly managed Christmas correct in every detail is, like basted inside seams and letters answered by return, a sure sign of someone who hasn't enough to do.

And what would happen to my illusion that I am a force for order in the home if I wasn't married to the only man north of the Tiber who is even untidier than I am?

I wouldn't say when you've seen one Western you've seen the lot; but when you've seen the lot you get the feeling you've seen one.

Does anybody who gave up smoking to save a pound a week have a pound at the end of the week? Not on your life.

Perennials are the ones that grow like weeds, biennials are the ones that die this year instead of next and hardy annuals are the ones that never come up at all.

An office party is not, as is sometimes supposed, the Managing Director's chance to kiss the tea-girl. It is the tea-girl's chance to kiss the Managing Director (however bizarre an ambition this may seem to anyone who has seen the Managing Director face on).

Newish friends, if they get ghastly, can be weighed and found wanting, but you'd never do a thing like that to old ones; their terrible habits are just part of the universe.

I yield to no one in my admiration for the office as a social center, but it's no place actually to get any work done.