Quotes by Noël Coward

If by any chance a playwright wishes to express a political opinion or a moral opinion or a philosophy, he must be a good enough craftsman to do it with so much spice of entertainment in it that the public get the message without being aware of it.

Television is for appearing on - not for looking at.

What I adore is supreme professionalism. I’m bored by writers who can write only when it’s raining.

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

All that technical expertise isnt worth a damn if you dont get the best out of people, though. . . . These were leaders who saw strength in ordinary people and showed them how to break tyranny.

Strange how potent cheap music is.

An echo from the past when, innocentWe looked upon the present with delightAnd doubted not the future would be kinderAnd never knew the loneliness of night.

Its discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

I dont know what Londons coming to — the higher the buildings the lower the morals.

The human race is a letdown, Ernest — a bad, bad letdown. And I’m disgusted with it. It thinks it’s progressed, but it hasn’t. It thinks it’s risen above the primeval slime, but it hasn’t. It’s wallowing in it. It’s still clinging to us, clinging to our hair and to our eyes and to our souls. We’ve invented a few things that make noises, but we haven’t invented one big thing that creates quiet. Endless, peaceful quiet. Something to pull over us like a gigantic eiderdown, something to deaden the sound of our emotional yellings and screechings and suffocate our psychological confusions.

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

Wit ought to be a glorious treat, like caviar. Never spread it about like marmalade.