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Alan Bennett Quotes
102 Sourced Quotes
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One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
Alan Bennett
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If you live to be ninety in England and can still eat a boiled egg they think you deserve the Nobel Prize.
Alan Bennett
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Headmaster: I have never understood this liking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
Alan Bennett
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Franklin:
Have you ever thought, Headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
Headmaster:
Of course they're out of date. Standards always are out of date. That is what makes them standards.
Alan Bennett
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You are thirty-two. You are rapidly approaching the age when your body, whether it embarrasses you or not, begins to embarrass other people.
Alan Bennett
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Writer: I don't know whether you've ever looked into a miner's eyes – for any length of time, that is. Because it is the loveliest blue you've ever seen. I think perhaps that's why I live in Ibiza, because the blue of the Mediterranean, you see, reminds me of the blue of the eyes of those Doncaster miners.
Alan Bennett
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If I am doing nothing, I like to be doing nothing to some purpose. That is what leisure means.
Alan Bennett
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To be heir to the throne is not a position; it is a predicament.
Alan Bennett
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I'm all in favour of free expression provided it's kept rigidly under control.
Alan Bennett
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You only have to survive in England and all is forgiven you … if you can eat a boiled egg at ninety in England they think you deserve a Nobel Prize.
Alan Bennett
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Schoolmaster: But God, whatever else He is, and of course He is everything else, is not a fool.
Alan Bennett
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Language is balls coming at you from every angle.
Alan Bennett
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They are rolling up the maps all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.
Alan Bennett
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If you think squash is a competitive activity, try flower arranging.
Alan Bennett
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Cloisters, ancient libraries... I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
Alan Bennett
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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
Alan Bennett
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Clichés can be quite fun. That's how they got to be clichés.
Alan Bennett
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You don't put your life into your books, you find it there.
Alan Bennett
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After the Evening News had called him to ask for a comment on Harold Pinter's fiftieth birthday:
I don't; it's only later I realize I could have suggested two minutes' silence.
Alan Bennett
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Deluded liberal that I am, I persist in thinking that those with a streak of sexual unorthodoxy ought to be more tolerant of their fellows than those who lead an entirely godly, righteous and sober life. Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy.
Alan Bennett
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At the drabber moments of my life (swilling some excrement from the steps, for instance, or rooting with a bent coat-hanger down a blocked sink) thoughts occur like 'I bet Tom Stoppard doesn't have to do this' or There is no doubt David Hare would have deputed this to an underling'.
Alan Bennett
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The longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don't.
Alan Bennett
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It's the one species I wouldn't mind seeing vanish from the face of the earth. I wish they were like the White Rhinosix of them left in the Serengeti National Park, and all males.
Alan Bennett
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The nearest my parents came to alcohol was at Holy Communion and they utterly overestimated its effects. However bad the weather, Dad never drove to church because Mam thought the sacrament might make him incapable on the return journey.
Alan Bennett
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Remember. You are a physician. You are not a policeman nor are you a minister of religion. You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom. You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
Alan Bennett
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Quote of the day
Be a sinner and sin strongly, but more strongly have faith and rejoice in Christ.
Martin Luther
Alan Bennett
Creative Commons
Born:
May 9, 1934
(age 89)
Bio:
Alan Bennett is an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. He was born in Leeds and attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with the Oxford Revue.
Known for:
The Lady in the Van (2015)
Talking Heads (1988 – 1998)
On the Margin (1966)
Fortunes of War (1987)
A Dance to the Music of Time (Since 1997)
Most used words:
life
read
reading
people
book
headmaster
literature
thought
writing
left
war
time
history
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