Ivor Quotes

#1. Britain's counterespionage officers saw signs of treachery in everything Ivor Montagu did: they saw it in his friends, his appearance, his opinions, and his behavior. But above all, they saw it in his passionate, and dubious, love of table tennis.

Ben Macintyre

#2. I'm sure there isn't an after-life. If there were, Ivor Novello would have got a message to us.

John Gielgud

#3. Night, and besides, was ably helped by brave comrades." "The comrades he speaks of," Ivor said, "were too busy

Kazuo Ishiguro

#4. Imperfection is an end. Perfection is only an aim.

Ivor Cutler

#5. An experience has to be formed, no doubt, before it is communicated, but it takes the form it does largely because it may have to be communicated.

Ivor A. Richards

#6. Mathematics is one of the most basic
and most ancient
types of knowledge. Yet the details of its historical development remain obscure to all but a few specialists.

Ivor Grattan-Guinness

#7. To hunt words is to do no trespass.

Ivor Brown

#8. Non-Newtonian calculi ... have considerable potential as alternative approaches to traditional problems.

Ivor Grattan-Guinness

#9. Actors who are lovers in real life are often incapable if playing the part of lovers to an audience. It is equally true that sympathy between actors who are not lovers may create a temporary emotion that is perfectly sincere.

Ivor Novello

#10. There's something Vichy about the French.

Ivor Novello

#11. Every blessed one of you feels better for that burst of laughter.

Ivor Novello

#12. How do you know
you're a girl?
I'm wearing a frock.
And if you take
it off?
I get cold, so I put
it back on.
If I was a boy,
I don't know what
I'd do.

Ivor Cutler

#13. You cannot isolate yourself from the crowd - even if you want to.

Ivor Novello

#14. A visit to a cinema is a little outing in itself. It breaks the monotony of an afternoon or evening; it gives a change from the surroundings of home, however pleasant.

Ivor Novello

#15. After the war, in which I served as a pilot in the Air Force, I took up films.

Ivor Novello

#16. British girls are as temperamental as Americans.

Ivor Novello

#17. The cinema is an institution nowadays, with its roots sunk deep in the hearts of the millions of people who find enjoyment and entertainment in going to the pictures.

Ivor Novello

#18. The best thing about being dead is you no longer have to say 'I wish I were dead.'
The best thing about being alive is that you can still say 'I wish I were dead'

Ivor Cutler

#19. There's nothing quite like a Scotch education. One is left with an irreparable debt. My head is full of irregular verbs still.

Ivor Cutler

#20. A book is a machine to think with.

Ivor A. Richards

#21. I began my career with infantile dreams of becoming a composer.

Ivor Novello

#22. There are strange hells within the minds war made ...

Ivor Gurney

#23. The public must suffer untold pangs from the stiffness, the deliberate stifling of emotion, on the part of many British actors.

Ivor Novello

#24. From the 3rd century onwards, orthodox Christianity, based on a Hebrew story and worshipping the Jew Jesus, also led many campaigns of anti-Semitism.

Ivor Grattan-Guinness

#25. There are very few misanthropes, thank goodness!

Ivor Novello

#26. It has been argued that British girls are incapable of deep feeling or brilliant acting owing to their lack of temperament. This, I am positive, is not true.

Ivor Novello

#27. We were asked to believe that the variety and the novelty of even the crude films of the early days would provide a means of entertainment which would cut out the stage.

Ivor Novello

#28. What's your usual gig?"

"Physical fitness coach. I find it rather humdrum. Your assignment will be a welcome break in the quotidian ennui.

Julian May

#29. A sense of beauty is every hindrance to a soldier; yet there would be no soldiers - or none such soldier had not men dead and living cherished and handed on the sacred fire.

Ivor Gurney

#30. Why are you afraid of death?

Because you don't understand the perfect love of Jesus.
Because perfect love casts out
fear.

Ivor Myers

#31. Modern invention has been a great leveler. A machine may operate far more quickly than a political or economic measure to abolish privilege and wipe out the distinctions of class or finance.

Ivor Brown

#32. In the mind of all the English soldiers there is absolutely no hate for the Germans, but a kind of brotherly though slightly comtemptuous kindness - as to men who are going through a bad time as well as ourselves.

Ivor Gurney

#33. If you put everyone else first you'll always be last, but if you always put yourself first you will never last.

Ivor W. Hartmann

#34. If thou art able, O stranger, to find out all these things and gather them together in your mind, giving all the relations, thou shalt depart crowned with glory and knowing that thou hast been adjudged perfect in this species of wisdom.

Ivor Bulmer-Thomas

#35. The inconvenience, the glaring lights, the long hours of waiting, and the repetition of every scene are all calculated to defeat anything more than a real mastery of love technique.

Ivor Novello

#36. The chief lesson to be learnt from it is the futility of all argumentation that precedes understanding. We cannot profitably attack any opinion until we have discovered what it expresses as well as what it states.

Ivor A. Richards

#37. I was stuck on the side of a mountain in Scotland. I was looking down on emptiness. I lay on my back and looked around in panic. I prayed to God and relaxed. I realised if I turned carefully on my front I could see bits of grass to hold on to.

Ivor Cutler

#38. The songs I had are withered Or vanished clean. Yet there are bright tracks Where I have been.

Ivor Gurney

#39. Things which do not require effort of some sort are seldom worth having.

Ivor Novello

#40. Love-making is an art which must be studied.

Ivor Novello

#41. The crowd may be influenced easily, largely because it is a crowd.

Ivor Novello

#42. A couple of seats at a good picture house cost comparatively little but give a generous return in the shape of freshened minds and freedom from the worries that even the best regulated homes cannot always avoid.

Ivor Novello

#43. Poetry is capable of saving us.

Ivor A. Richards

#44. A book is a machine to think with, but it need not, therefore, usurp the functions either of the bellows or the locomotive.

Ivor A. Richards

#45. In addition, the teaching of theories from axioms, or some close imitation of them such as the basic laws of an algebra, is usually an educational disaster.

Ivor Grattan-Guinness

#46. It [ non-Euclidean geometry ] would be ranked among the most famous achievements of the entire [nineteenth] century, but up to 1860 the interest was rather slight.

Ivor Grattan-Guinness

#47. Television, they say, will permit a person to be entertained at home, without the effort of going to a picture house, without the trouble of booking seats, without the presence of other people.

Ivor Novello

#48. The average person is gregarious; there is something in the spirit of the crowd that adds to the enjoyment of entertainment.

Ivor Novello

#49. When the cinematograph first made its appearance, we were told that the days of the ordinary theatre were numbered.

Ivor Novello

#50. There is an atmosphere about the picture theatre that speaks of entertainment and relaxation. The charming surroundings, good music, and the fact that each visitor is determined to enjoy a few hours of holiday all exert an influence on the mind.

Ivor Novello

#51. Behind the footlights there is always the applause, which stimulates the actors. On the screen it is a different matter.

Ivor Novello

#52. The beautiful heroine might be thinking, How long must I bury my face on this wretched man's shoulder? Such is not the always the case, but quite often it is.

Ivor Novello