Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry Quotes
125 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
I have always disbelieved that Sicilian saying about revenge being a dish best served cold. I feel that—don't you?—when I see blinking, quivering octogenarian Nazi war criminals being led away in chains. Why not then? It's too late now. I want to see them taken back in time and punished then... Blame, certainly, is a dish only edible when served fresh and warm. Old blames, grudges and scores congeal and curdle and cause the most terrible indigestion.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
Cynical is the name we give those we fear may be laughing at us.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
It's the strangest thing about this Church- it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now, they will say we, with our permissive society and our rude jokes, are obsessed. No, we have a healthy attitude, we like it, it's fun, it's jolly; because it's a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It's a bit like food in that respect only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic Church in a nutshell.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
Life, that can shower you with so much splendor, is unremittingly cruel to those who have given up.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
That one can love another of the same gender, that is what the homophobe really cannot stand.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
It is astonishing how articulate one can become when alone and raving at a radio. Arguments and counter arguments, rhetoric and bombast flow from one's lips like scurf from the hair of a bank manager.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
Music takes me to places of illimitable sensual and insensate joy, accessing points of ecstasy that no angelic lover could ever locate, or plunging me into gibbering weeping hells of pain that no torturer could ever devise".
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
There is no reason why anyone should understand how it works… and of course no reason why anyone should care … unless you are curious, in which case I love you, for curiosity about the world and all its corners is a beautiful thing.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
A university is not, thank heavens, a place for vocational instruction, it has nothing to do with training for a working life and career, it is a place for education, something quite different.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
How can I tell you what I think until I've heard what I'm going to say?
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
I shall sustain a massive erection, that's what, and I shan't be answerable for the consequences. Some kind of ejaculation is almost bound to ensue and if either of you were to become pregnant I should never forgive myself.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
[...] I suppose this was the first time I had ever felt an urge not to be. Never an urge to die, far less an urge to put an end to myself - simply an urge not to be. This disgusting, hostile and unlovely world was not made for me, nor I for it. It was alien to me and I to it.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
There is no logical explanation for despair. You can no more reason yourself into cheerfulness than you can reason yourself an extra six inches in height. You can only be better prepared.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
All the cold-reading clairvoyants and the nonsensical astrologers and absurd ESP merchants and other such people who talk about vibrations and energies.... God, if there's a word that drives me mad it's energy used in a nonsensical way—don't get me started!
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
I really do believe that there are those who would like and trust me better if they saw me weeping into a whisky, making a fool of myself, getting aggressive, maudlin and drunkenly out of control. I have never found those states in others anything other than tiring, awkward, embarrassing and fantastically dull, but I am quite sure that people would cherish a view of me in that condition at least once in a while.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
He takes coke and has slept with a prostitute - but he's a TV presenter for God's sake!
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
How can one not be fond of something that the Daily Mail despises?
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
I was at a dinner party many years ago, sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses, but between mouthfuls. An American woman watched in disbelief. "And you so intelligent!" "Excuse me?" said tom "Knowing those things are going to kill you" she said "and still you do it." "How differently I might behave" Tom said, "if immortality were an option
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
People who can change and change again are so much more reliable and happier than those who can't
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
Dacre is, all those who have had the misfortune to work for him assure me, just about as loathsome, self-regarding, morally putrid, vengeful and disgusting a man as it possible to be.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
It is, I know, for I have experienced it perhaps twice in my life, an awful privilege to be too much loved and perhaps the kindest thing I ever did in my life was never to let Matthew know to what degree he had destroyed my peace and my happiness.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
Lectures broke into one's day and were clearly a terrible waste of time, necessary no doubt if you were reading law or medicine or some other vocational subject, but in the case of English, the natural thing to do was talk a lot, listen to music, drink coffee and wine, read books, and go to plays, perhaps be in plays…
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
A month's salary, deep regret, the telephone number of some foul rehab clinic and my lance was free.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
I said it before and I'll say it again: books are dead, plays are dead, poems are dead: there's only movies. Music is still okay, because music is sound track. Ten, fifteen years ago, every arts student wanted to be a novelist or a playwright. I'd be amazed if you could find a single one now with such a dead-end ambition. They all want to make movies. Not write movies. You don't write movies. You make movies.
Stephen Fry
Source
Report...
But an Adrian also knew that an Adrian's lies were real: they were lived and felt and acted out as thoroughly as another man's truths - if other men had truths - and he believed it possible that this last lie might see him through to the grave.
Stephen Fry
1
2
3
4
5
Quote of the day
Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.
Ogden Nash
Stephen Fry
Creative Commons
Born:
August 24, 1957
(age 66)
Bio:
Stephen John Fry is an English comedian, actor, writer, presenter and activist.
Known for:
Kingdom (2007 – 2009)
A Bit of Fry & Laurie (1989 – 1995)
Jeeves and Wooster (1990 – 1993)
Stephen Fry in America (2008)
Most used words:
life
people
love
power
reason
time
movies
church
music
kind
matters
dead
self
person
happy
Stephen Fry on Wikipedia
Stephen Fry on Twitter
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Stephen Fry Quotes
Stephen Fry Short Quotes
English Activist Quotes
Activist Quotes
20th-century Activist Quotes
Related People
Hugh Laurie
British Comedian
Michael Sheen
Welsh Actor
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes