Top 100 Quotes About Noel Coward: Famous Quotes & Sayings About Noel Coward

#1. Frost interviewing Noel Coward and Margaret Mead. Sir Noel's view of life is Sir Noel. Mead's mind is large and open, like Buckminster Fuller's. She found thoughts dull that suggest that men are superior to animals or plants.

John Cage

#2. At 11, I went to live with my maternal nan and granddad temporarily, after my parents separated, and Nan would let me have a go on her piano. My grandparents were like something out of the Noel Coward play, 'This Happy Breed,' and it was magical to hear them sing music-hall songs.

Jools Holland

#3. The first play I ever saw - I was in junior high school - was a high school production of Noel Coward's 'Blithe Spirit,' which seemed to me absolutely magical.

Terry Teachout

#4. There have been many gay knights in the past - like Sir Noel Coward or Sir John Gielgud.

Ian McKellen

#5. I couldn't write a happy movie or romantic comedy to save my life. Yes, Noel Coward's an idol, but his plays are serious to me. 'Private Lives' and 'Design for Living' both have an edge. Without psychoanalyzing myself, I think I exorcise my demons in my work.

John Logan

#6. Noel Coward said work is more fun than fun, but then he didn't work in the Bird's Eye factory packing frozen fish fingers nine hours a day, did he?

Paul O'Grady

#7. I've rarely gotten a good review in my life, yet, to paraphrase Noel Coward, I am happy to console myself with the bitter palliative of commercial success.

Steven Weber

#8. It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. - Noel Coward

Jinx Schwartz

#9. They're great devotees of Noel Coward in England, of course, he's a favorite son, and so to play Coward in London is such fun, and anyway, the role is such a crazy lady. I just love doing that.

Angela Lansbury

#10. I'm not temperamentally into high comedy. I'm not a Noel Coward kind of girl.

Kelly Reilly

#11. It was Noel Coward whose technique I envied and tried to emulate. I collected all his records and writing.

Kenneth Williams

#12. 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

#13. People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it.

Noel Coward

#14. Marriage is the aftermath of love.

Noel Coward

#15. You'll never decide what you want until you've decided who you are.

Noel Coward

#16. Success took me to her bosom like a maternal boa constrictor.

Noel Coward

#17. 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

#18. 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

#19. Am reading more of Oscar Wilde. What a tiresome, affected sod.

Noel Coward

#20. Judith (sadly): A change has come over my children of late. I have tried to shut my eyes to it, but in vain. At my time of life one must face bitter facts!

Noel Coward Sir

#21. Couldn't you see that all my flippancy was only a mask, hiding my real emotions
crushing them down desperately!

Noel Coward

#22. I'm not a heavy drinker, I can sometimes go for hours without touching a drop.

Noel Coward

#23. Passion in a dromedary doesn't go so deep; a camel when it's mating never sobs itself to sleep.

Noel Coward

#24. It's like this, dear boy, the one in front is blind and the kind one behind is pushing him.

Noel Coward

#25. Exercise is the most awful illusion. The secret is a lot of aspirin and marrons glaces.

Noel Coward

#26. 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

#27. It'll never get well if you pick it.

Noel Coward

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

Noel Coward

#29. Why do I drink Champagne for breakfast? Doesn't everyone?

Noel Coward

#30. 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

#31. I'll go through life either first class or third, but never in second.

Noel Coward

#32. 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

#33. 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.

Noel Coward

#34. We have no reliable guarantee that the afterlife will be any less exasperating than this one, have we?

Noel Coward

#35. Strange how potent cheap music is.

Noel Coward

#36. 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

#37. I have a memory like an elephant. In fact, elephants often consult me.

Noel Coward

#38. You always ought to have tom cats arranged, you know - it makes 'em more companionable.

Noel Coward

#39. I don't much care for Hollywood, I'd rather have a nice cup of cocoa.

Noel Coward

#40. Time is the reef upon which all our mystic ships are wrecked.

Noel Coward

#41. The higher the building the lower the morals.

Noel Coward

#42. I'm over-educated in the things I shouldn't have known at all.

Noel Coward

#43. 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

#44. Extraordinary how potent cheap music is.

Noel Coward

#45. There are dark times just around the corner. There are dark clouds travelling through the sky. And it's no good whining about a silver lining. For we know from experience they won't roll by.

Noel Coward

#46. 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.

Noel Coward

#47. I'm an enormously talented man, and there's no use pretending that I'm not..

Noel Coward

#48. I write at high speed because boredom is bad for my health.

Noel Coward

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

Noel Coward

#50. Let's drink to the spirit of gallantry and courage that made a strange Heaven out of unbelievable Hell, and let's drink to the hope that one day this country of ours, which we love so much, will find dignity and greatness and peace again.

Noel Coward

#51. 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

#52. There isn't a particle of you that I don't know, remember, and want.

Noel Coward

#53. 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

#54. The pleasures that once were heaven look silly at sixty-seven.

Noel Coward

#55. 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

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

Noel Coward

#57. Your motivation is your pay packet on Friday. Now get on with it.

Noel Coward

#58. How about slipping out of those wet things and into a dry Martini?

Noel Coward

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

Noel Coward

#60. 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

#61. It is not the eyes of others that I am wary of, but my own.

Noel Coward

#62. She had much in common with Hitler, only no mustache.

Noel Coward

#63. 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

#64. For gin, in cruel sober truth, supplies the fuel for flaming youth.

Noel Coward

#65. Good heavens, television is something you appear on; you don't watch.

Noel Coward

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

Noel Coward

#67. I don't know what London's coming to - the higher the buildings the lower the morals.

Noel Coward

#68. 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

#69. She's a self-conscious vampire ... and she goes about using sex as a sort of shrimping net.

Noel Coward

#70. It's never too early for a cocktail.

Noel Coward

#71. All that technical expertise isn't worth a damn if you don't get the best out of people, though ... These were leaders who saw strength in ordinary people and showed them how to break tyranny.

Noel Coward

#72. It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

Noel Coward

#73. Just say the lines and don't trip over the furniture.

Noel Coward

#74. I don't think pornography is harmful, but it is terribly, terribly boring.

Noel Coward

#75. 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

#76. Work is much more fun than fun.

Noel Coward

#77. Television is for appearing on, not looking at.

Noel Coward

#78. Television is for appearing on - not for looking at.

Noel Coward

#79. Wouldn't it be dreadful to live in a country where they didn't have tea?

Noel Coward

#80. Squash - that's not exercise, it's flagellation.

Noel Coward

#81. Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.

Noel Coward

#82. Familiarity breeds contempt, but without a little familiarity it's impossible to breed anything.

Noel Coward

#83. 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

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

Noel Coward

#85. Success is far more perilous than failure, isn't it? You've got to be doubly strong and watchful and wary.

Noel Coward

#86. It's a sad reflection on society how many people are shocked by honesty ... and how few by dishonesty.

Noel Coward

#87. Dear 338171 (May I call you 338?)

Noel Coward

#88. The air is like a draught of wine.
The undertaker cleans his sign,
The Hull express goes off the line,
When it's raspberry time in Runcorn.

Noel Coward

#89. You will know you're old when you cease to be amazed.

Noel Coward

#90. CHRISTMAS is at our throats again.

Noel Coward

#91. He's completely unspoiled by failure.

Noel Coward

#92. 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

#93. 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