Noel Coward Quotes - Page 2

He's completely unspoiled by failure.

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

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

Christmas is at our throats again.

Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Madame Bovary is the sexiest book imaginable. The woman's virtually a nyphomaniac but you won't find a vulgar word in the entire thing.

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

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

She stopped the show - but then the show wasn't traveling very fast.

Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.

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 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.

Hollywood is a place where some people lie on the beach and look up at the stars, whereas other people lie on the stars and look down at the beach.

I do not intend to let myself down more than I can possibly help, and I find that the fewer illusions I have about myself or the world around me, the better company I am for myself.

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

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.

Acting is not a state of being ... but a state of appearing to be.

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