“Well, he would, wouldn't he?”
28 June 1963, appearing as a witness in the trial of Stephen Ward, in reply to the defence barrister putting it to her that one of the men on a certain list, Lord Astor, had denied any involvement with her. The court burst into laughter and the phrase came to be used in various circumstances, helped by the touch of innuendo from the court case.
Reference: Nigel Rees, Sayings of the Century, page 253.
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Mandy Rice-Davies 1
British actress 1944–2014Related quotes
“He that alone would wise and mighty be,
Commands that others love as well as he.”
Canto III.
Of Divine Love (c. 1686)
Context: He that alone would wise and mighty be,
Commands that others love as well as he.
Love as he lov'd! — How can we soar so high?—
He can add wings when he commands to fly.
Nor should we be with this command dismay'd;
He that examples gives will give his aid:
For he took flesh, that where his precepts fall,
His practice, as a pattern, may prevail.
“I was thinking to myself out there — well, you wouldn't think you're anybody else, would you?”
Live from the West End (1995)
“It is well that there is no one without a fault; for he would not have a friend in the world.”
No. 66
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
“The Devil was sick,—the Devil a monk would be;
The Devil was well,—the devil a monk was he.”
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fourth Book (1548, 1552), Chapter 24.
Self-written "Obituary" (24 March 1932), published 16 years prior to his actual death, as quoted in The Voice of Small-Town America : The Selected Writings of Robert Quillen, 1920-1948 (2008) by John Hammond Moore, p. 181
Context: He was a writer of paragraphs and short editorials. He always hoped to write something of permanent value, but the business of making a living took most of his time and he never got around to it. In his youth he felt an urge to reform the world, but during the latter years of his life he decided that he would be doing rather well if he kept himself out of jail. … When the last clod had fallen, workmen covered the grave with a granite slab bearing the inscription: "Submitted to the Publisher by Robert Quillen."
Act V., Scene II. — (Cornelio).
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 274.
I Lucidi (published 1549)