Noël Coward citations

“Amanda: Whose yacht is that?
Elyot: The Duke of Westminster's I expect. It always is.
Amanda: I wish I were on it.
Elyot: I wish you were too.
Amanda: There's no need to be nasty.
Elyot: Yes, there is every need. I've never in my life felt a greater urge to be nasty.”

“Television is for appearing on, not looking at.”

“I like long walks, especialy when they are taken by people who annoy me.”

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

“Wouldn't it be dreadful to live in a country where they didn't have tea?”

“Having to read footnotes resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.”

“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?”

“Amanda: Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.”

“Work is more fun than fun.”

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

“Work hard, do the best you can, don't ever lose faith in yourself and take no notice of what other people say about you.”

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

“I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me.”

“I love criticism just so long as it's unqualified praise.”

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

“Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon
The author of Lear remains unshaken
Willie Herbert or Mary Fitton
What does it matter? The Sonnets were written.”

“On the silverscreen
He melts my foolish heart in every single scene
Although I'm quite aware that here and there are traces of the cad
About the boy”

“Gary: You ought never to have joined the Athenaeum Club, Henry: it was disastrous.
Henry: I really don’t see why.
Gary: It’s made you pompous.
Henry: It can’t have. I’ve always been too frightened to go into it.”

“He loved me true did Harry-boy and I loved him true, and if the happiness we gave each other was wicked and wrong in the eyes of the Law and the Church and God Almighty, then the Law and the Church and God Almighty can go dig a hole and fall down it.”

“People are wrong when they say that the opera isn't what it used to be. It is what it used to be — that's what's wrong with it!”

“The stately homes of England we proudly represent,
We only keep them up for Americans to rent.
Tho' the pipes that supply the bathroom burst
And the lavat’ry makes you fear the worst
It was used by Charles the First (quite informally),
And later by George the Fourth on a journey north,
The state apartments keep their historical reknown,
It's wiser not to sleep there in case they tumble down;
But still if they ever catch on fire
Which with any luck they might,
We'll fight for the stately homes of England.”

“Gary: Beryl Willard is extremely competent. Beryl Willard has been extremely competent, man and boy, for forty years. In addition to her extreme competence, she has contrived, with uncanny skill, to sustain a spotless reputation for being the most paralysing, epoch-making, monumental, world-shattering, God-awful bore that ever drew breath…I will explain one thing further - it is this. No prayer, no bribe, no threat, no power, human or divine, would induce me to go to Africa with Beryl Willard. I wouldn't go as far as Wimbledon with Beryl Willard.
Liz: What he's trying to say is that he doesn't care for Beryl Willard.”

“In a jungle town
Where the sun beats down
To the rage of man and beast,
The English garb
Of the English sahib
Merely gets a bit more creased.
In Bangkok
At twelve'o'clock
They foam at the mouth and run,
But mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun.”

“Wrongly attributed to Noel Coward is a quotation about the Queen of Tonga. He is alleged to have been sitting under cover from the heavy rain with Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent at the Coronation in London in 1953. Opposite them was the vast Queen Salote of Tonga. Princess Marina is supposed to have asked "Noel, who is that little man sheltering under Queen Salote's umbrella?" Coward is said to have peered through the rain and said "Oh, her lunch, my dear." In a later interview with Walter Harris, Coward revealed it had been said by someone at White's Club and was immediately attributed to Coward. "It was very flattering of course, except that I had intended to visit Tonga the following winter, and after that of course it was quite impossible."”

“It seems such a shame
When the English claim
The Earth,
That they give rise
To such hilarity
And mirth.”

“In Hong Kong
They strike a gong
And fire off a noonday gun
To reprimand
Each inmate
Who's in late.”

“In Bengal,
To move at all
Is seldom if ever done.”

“Elyot: I met her on a house party in Norfolk.
Amanda: Very flat, Norfolk.
Elyot: There's no need to be unpleasant.
Amanda: That was no reflection on her, unless of course she made it flatter.”

“Our families have traditions
We've heard of a thousand times
Our ancestors were unequivocally right.
They frequently went on missions
To rather peculiar climes
To lead the wretched heathen to the light.
Though some of them got beaten up and some of them stampeded
And quite a lot were eaten up - a few of them succeeded.
On one of these expeditions
An uncle we thought a bore
Turned out to be more spirited than ever he'd been before. Poor Uncle Harry
Wanted to be a missionary
So he took a ship and sailed away.
This visionary
Hotly pursued by dear Aunt Mary
Found a South Sea isle on which to stay.
The natives greeted them kindly,
And invited them to dine
On yams and clams and human hams and vintage coconut wine
The taste of which was filthy
But the after-effects divine.”