Noël Coward Quotes

95 Sourced Quotes

Charles Condomine refusing to see a psychoanalyst:
I refuse to endure months of expensive humiliation only to be told at the end of it that at the age of four I was in love with my rocking-horse.

Noël Coward
Wit is like caviar; it should be savored in small elegant proportions, and not spread about like marmalade.

Noël Coward
He loved me true did Harry-boy and I loved him true, and if the happiness we gave each other was wicked and wrong in the eyes of the Law and the Church and God Almighty, then the Law and the Church and God Almighty can go dig a hole and fall down it.

Noël Coward
Your motivation is your pay packet on Friday. Now get on with it.

Noël Coward
Christopher Marlowe or Francis Bacon
The author of Lear remains unshaken
Willie Herbert or Mary Fitton
What does it matter? The Sonnets were written.

Noël Coward
Charles: Anything interesting in The Times?
Ruth: Don't be silly, Charles.

Noël Coward
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.

Noël Coward
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.

Noël Coward
Every wise and thoroughly worldly wench
Knows there's always something fishy about the French!

Noël Coward
We hope to amuse the customers with music and with rhyme
But ninety minutes is a long, long time.

Noël Coward
In tropical climes
There are certain times
Of day
When all the citizens retire
To take their clothes off and perspire.
It's one of those rules
That the greatest fools
Obey,
Because the sun is far too sultry
And one must avoid its ultry-
Vi'let ray.

Noël Coward
I have no more faith in men of science being infallible than I have in men of God being infallible, principally on account of them being men.

Noël Coward
Sunburn is very becoming—but only when it is even—one must be careful not to look like a mixed grill.

Noël Coward
In Bengal,
To move at all
Is seldom if ever done.

Noël Coward
Morris: I'll never speak to you again until the day I die!
Gary: Well, we can have a nice little chat then, can't we?

Noël Coward
On being asked what he was like as a child:
When paid constant attention, extremely lovable. When not, a pig.

Noël Coward
The natives grieve
When the white men leave
Their huts.
Because they're obviously,
Definitely
Nuts.

Noël Coward
Have moved hotel excelsior coughing myself into a firenze.
Telegram from Florence

Noël Coward
Have you had any word
Of that bloke in the 'Third',
Was it Southerby, Sedgwick or Sim?
They had him thrown out of the club in Bombay
For, apart from his mess bills exceeding his pay,
He took to pig-sticking in quite the wrong way.
I wonder what happened to him!

Noël Coward
In Hong Kong
They strike a gong
And fire off a noonday gun
To reprimand
Each inmate
Who's in late.

Noël Coward
Don't put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington,
Don't put your daughter on the stage.
Though they said at the school of acting
She was lovely as Peer Gynt,
I'm afraid on the whole
An ingénue role
Would emphasize her squint.

Noël Coward
In a jungle town
Where the sun beats down
To the rage of man and beast,
The English garb
Of the English sahib
Merely gets a bit more creased.
In Bangkok
At twelve'o'clock
They foam at the mouth and run,
But mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun.

Noël Coward
The world has treated me very well, but then I haven't treated it so badly either.

Noël Coward
Poor Uncle Harry
Having become a missionary
Found the natives' morals rather crude.
He and Aunt Mary
Quickly imposed an arbitrary
Ban upon them shopping in the nude…
Uncle Harry's not a missionary now.

Noël Coward
Dance, dance, dance, little lady!
Leave tomorrow behind.

Noël Coward