Top 100 Noel Coward Quotes
#2. You'll never decide what you want until you've decided who you are.
Noel Coward
#3. Success took me to her bosom like a maternal boa constrictor.
Noel Coward
#4. I have always been very fond of them (drama critics) ... I think it is so frightfully clever of them to go night after night to the theatre and know so little about it.
Noel Coward
#5. 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.
Noel Coward
#6. Couldn't you see that all my flippancy was only a mask, hiding my real emotions
crushing them down desperately!
Noel Coward
#7. I'm not a heavy drinker, I can sometimes go for hours without touching a drop.
Noel Coward
#8. Passion in a dromedary doesn't go so deep; a camel when it's mating never sobs itself to sleep.
Noel Coward
#9. It's like this, dear boy, the one in front is blind and the kind one behind is pushing him.
Noel Coward
#10. 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.
Noel Coward
#12. How was your flight? Well, aeronautically it was a great success. Socially, it left quite a bit to be desired.
Noel Coward
#13. Why do I drink Champagne for breakfast? Doesn't everyone?
Noel Coward
#14. Labour leaders lead us all, though we know they bleed us all. Cheer our new Decline and Fall, Gibbon might have dreamed it all.
Noel Coward
#15. I'll go through life either first class or third, but never in second.
Noel Coward
#16. An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.
Noel Coward
#18. 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.
Noel Coward
#19. You always ought to have tom cats arranged, you know - it makes 'em more companionable.
Noel Coward
#20. I don't much care for Hollywood, I'd rather have a nice cup of cocoa.
Noel Coward
#21. Time is the reef upon which all our mystic ships are wrecked.
Noel Coward
#22. The higher the building the lower the morals.
Noel Coward
#23. I'm over-educated in the things I shouldn't have known at all.
Noel Coward
#24. It's such a surprise for the Eastern eyes to see,
That though the English are effete
They're quite impervious to heat.
Noel Coward
#25. Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.
Noel Coward
#26. I'm an enormously talented man, and there's no use pretending that I'm not..
Noel Coward
#27. I write at high speed because boredom is bad for my health.
Noel Coward
#28. I've sometimes thought of marrying - and then I've thought again.
Noel Coward
#29. 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?
Noel Coward
#30. There isn't a particle of you that I don't know, remember, and want.
Noel Coward
#31. 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.
Noel Coward
#32. The pleasures that once were heaven look silly at sixty-seven.
Noel Coward
#33. Fifty-four years of love and tenderness and crossness and devotion and unswerving loyalty. Without her I could have achieved a quarter of what I have achieved, not only in terms of success and career, but in terms of personal happiness.
Noel Coward
#34. Having to read footnotes resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.
Noel Coward
#35. 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 ...
Noel Coward
#36. It is not the eyes of others that I am wary of, but my own.
Noel Coward
#37. Acting is not a state of being ... but a state of appearing to be. You can't be eight times a week without going stark staring mad. You've got to be in control.
Noel Coward
#38. For gin, in cruel sober truth, supplies the fuel for flaming youth.
Noel Coward
#39. Good heavens, television is something you appear on; you don't watch.
Noel Coward
#40. Trust your instincts. If you have no instincts, trust your impulses.
Noel Coward
#41. I don't know what London's coming to - the higher the buildings the lower the morals.
Noel Coward
#42. You ask my advice about acting? Speak clearly, don't bump into the furniture and if you must have motivation, think of your pay packet on Friday.
Noel Coward
#43. She's a self-conscious vampire ... and she goes about using sex as a sort of shrimping net.
Noel Coward
#45. It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.
Noel Coward
#46. Just say the lines and don't trip over the furniture.
Noel Coward
#47. I never cared who scored the goal, or which side won the silver cup. I never learned to bat or bowl; but I heard the curtain going up.
Noel Coward
#49. Television is for appearing on, not looking at.
Noel Coward
#50. Wouldn't it be dreadful to live in a country where they didn't have tea?
Noel Coward
#51. Squash - that's not exercise, it's flagellation.
Noel Coward
#52. Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.
Noel Coward
#53. Familiarity breeds contempt, but without a little familiarity it's impossible to breed anything.
Noel Coward
#54. It's no use to go and take courses in playwriting any more than it's much use taking courses in acting. Better play to a bad matinee in Hull - it will teach you much more than a year of careful instruction. Come to think of it, I never did play to a good matinee in Hull ...
Noel Coward
#55. Success is far more perilous than failure, isn't it? You've got to be doubly strong and watchful and wary.
Noel Coward
#56. It's a sad reflection on society how many people are shocked by honesty ... and how few by dishonesty.
Noel Coward
#57. You will know you're old when you cease to be amazed.
Noel Coward
#60. Consider the public. Never fear it nor despise it. Coax it, charm it, interest it, stimulate it, shock it now and then if you must, make it laugh, make it cry, but above all never, never, never bore the living hell out of it.
Noel Coward
#61. It's no good pacing up and down. It won't make the plane arrive any faster. Just sit down and accept that we're delayed. You're just making a fool of yourself.
Noel Coward
#62. Everybody was up to something, especially, of course, those who were up to nothing.
Noel Coward
#63. AMANDA: I think very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives.
Noel Coward
#64. Las Vegas:
It was not cafe society, it was Nescafe society.
Noel Coward
#65. I see her as one great stampede of lips directed at the nearest derriere.
Noel Coward
#67. 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.
Noel Coward
#68. A.E. Matthews ambled through This Was a Man like a charming retriever who has buried a bone and can't quite remember where.
Noel Coward
#69. He must have been an incredibly good shot.
Noel Coward
#70. Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun.
Noel Coward
#71. Never trust a man with short legs. His brains are too near his bottom.
Noel Coward
#72. If he (Peter O'Toole) had been any prettier it would have been Florence of Arabia.
Noel Coward
#73. I want a horse and plough, Chickens too, Just one cow, With a wistful moo.
Noel Coward
#74. My body has certainly wandered a good deal, but I have an uneasy suspicion that my mind has not wandered enough.
Noel Coward
#75. Criticism and Bolshevism have one thing in common. They both seek to pull down that which they could never build.
Noel Coward
#76. I like long walks, especialy when they are taken by people who annoy me.
Noel Coward
#78. Grab it while you can - grab every scrap of happiness while you can
Noel Coward
#79. Someday I suspect, when Jesus has definitely got me for a sunbeam, my works may be adequately assessed.
Noel Coward
#80. A perfect martini should be made by filling a glass with gin then waving it in the general direction of Italy.
Noel Coward
#81. 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.
Noel Coward
#82. There's always something fishy about the French.
Noel Coward
#83. My philosophy is as simple as ever - smoking, drinking, moderate sexual intercourse on a diminishing scale, reading and writing (not arithmetic). I have a selfish absorption in the well-being and achievement of Noel Coward.
Noel Coward
#84. What I adore is supreme professionalism. I'm bored by writers who can write only when it's raining.
Noel Coward
#85. Wit ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar. Never spread it about like marmalade.
Noel Coward
#86. I will accept anything in the theatre ... provided it amuses or moves me. But if it does neither, I want to go home.
Noel Coward
#87. That strange feeling we had in the war. Have you found anything in your lives since to equal it in strength? A sort of splendid carelessness it was, holding us together.
Noel Coward
#88. As one gets older, one discovers everything is going to be exactly the same with different hats on.
Noel Coward
#89. Star quality: I don't know what it is, but I've got it.
Noel Coward
#90. I can't sing, but I know how to, which is quite different.
Noel Coward
#91. Entering an white tie and tails party wearing an ordinary suit, he announced,Please, I don't want anyone to apologize for over dressing.
Noel Coward
#92. My life really has been one long extravaganza.
Noel Coward
#93. People have died from hiccups, you know.
Noel Coward
#94. It's a pity you didn't have a little more brandy. It might have made you more agreeable!
Noel Coward
#95. Wit is like caviar - it should be served in small portions and not spread about like marmalade.
Noel Coward
#96. Mona Lisa looks as if she has just been sick, or is about to be.
Noel Coward
#97. You kissed me because you were awfully nice and I was awfully nice and we both liked kissing very much. It was inevitable.
Noel Coward
#98. [Garry Essendine]: That is no prostitute, but the wife of one of my best friends!
Noel Coward
#99. 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.
Noel Coward
#100. But why, oh why, do the wrong people travel, when the right people stay at home?
Noel Coward
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