Joyce Grenfell Quotes

13 Sourced Quotes

Progress everywhere today does seem to come so very heavily disguised as chaos.

Joyce Grenfell
Let me give freely lest my giving take
With it freedom. Not the frailest strand
Of obligation must go with my gift.

Joyce Grenfell
They look quite promising in the shop, and not entirely without hope when I get them back into my wardrobe. But then, when I put them on they tend to deteriorate with a very strange rapidity and one feels sorry for them.

Joyce Grenfell
The thing I would wish for anybody I loved would be the possibility of never coming to the end of discovery. I think it is what makes life worth living.

Joyce Grenfell
On dancing waltz with another woman due to the lack of men at the dance club:
Stately as a galleon, I sail across the floor,
Doing the Military Two-step, as in the days of yore…
So gay the band,
So giddy the sight,
Full evening dress is a must,
But the zest goes out of a beautiful waltz
When you dance it bust to bust.

Joyce Grenfell
I was allowed to slave for them
For ever and evermore.
Oh, I was allowed to fetch and carry
For my Three Brothers,
Jim and Bob and Harry.

Joyce Grenfell
He's a professional musician. I mean, he can do it even when he's not in the mood.

Joyce Grenfell
If I should go before the rest of you,
Break not a flower, nor inscribe a stone,
Nor, when I'm gone, speak in a Sunday voice,
But be the usual selves That I have known.

Joyce Grenfell
I have a theory that I did most of my observing probably before I was twenty, stored it, and am still drawing on it.

Joyce Grenfell
I have come to believe that giving and receiving are really the same. Giving and receiving — not giving and taking.

Joyce Grenfell
I don't understand Ethel.
I don't, I don't really.
She's one of my very best friends,
Just about the best, nearly.
She's an awfully nice girl, Ethel is,
Dainty and refined,
I mean she'd never do or say
Anything unkind.
But get her inside a stadium
And she seems to go out of her mind.

Joyce Grenfell
Ideas are never scarce; it is only one's panic sense of limitation that blocks the way.

Joyce Grenfell
Weep if you must Parting is hell But life goes on So sing as well.

Joyce Grenfell