Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am afraid that, like Timon of Athens, I just cannot let go of my friendships.
To Harry Secombe: I hope you die first as I don't want you singing at my funeral.
Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.
My father confused me. From the ages of one to seven, I thought my name was Jesus Christ!
General: Where are you from? Spike: London. General: Which part? Spike: ... Well, all of me.
Said Hamlet to Ophelia, I'll draw a sketch of thee. What kind of pencil shall I use? 2B or not 2B?
The most difficult book I have ever read was a manual on the use of iron bangles by A.J. Thompson.
I spent many years laughing at Harry Secombe's singing until somebody told me that it wasn't a joke.
There are holes in the sky Where the rain gets in, But they're ever so small That's why rain is thin.
For ten years Caesar ruled with an iron hand. Then with a wooden foot, and finally with a piece of string.
There is a time to live, a time to die, a time to laugh, and at no time are the three of them very far apart.
If a robin redbreast in a cage Puts all heaven in a rage, How feels heaven when Dies the billionth battery hen?
In India a farmhand was caught in the act with his cow. He said he had bad eyesight and thought it was his wife.
Never return to a doctor whose office plants have died. After five days in hospital, I took a turn for the nurse.
Australia, Australia, we love you from the heart. The kidneys, the liver & the giblets too. And every other part.
I thought I'd begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.
I had stopped going to church the moment I joined the Regiment. No more could my mother nag me into God's presence.
One important thing I recall about India was that it was quiet. It was never noisy in the way that life was noisy in London.
When I get depressed, I try to get something for the terrible sadness that comes over me and create something in terms of poetry.
As I kept having episodes of depression, I realized that it was not a one-off: that I had, well, not a disease, really - more an illness.
And God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light, but the Electricity Board said He would have to wait until Thursday to be connected.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all the people some of the time, which is just long enough to be president of the United States.
Only on the third class tourist class passengers' deck was it a sultry overcast morning, but then if you do things on the cheap you must expect these things.
The night before Tilbury, the Cordon Bleu gourmet dinner turned out Cordon Brown. Six out of ten to the chef for trying and ten out of ten to us for eating it.
Driver Shepherd and I had been detailed to drive Lt. Budden in the Wireless Truck. We had been standing by vehicles for an hour, and nothing had happened, but it happened frequently.
It was implanted in me that I came from a different class - an elevated class. I was cushioned by servants. I don't remember doing anything for myself. I only played and went to school.
My parents always threw everything out, gave everything away. I'm surprised they never threw me away. That's why I've always kept my children's things. My parents had no feelings for belongings.
My father was a soldier, which meant that he was a warrior, which meant that he was important. My mother rode a horse and sang in the Governor-General's band, so that made her important as well.
Things began to improve when I went to Rangoon. To begin with, my father was promoted, which meant he was at home more. The matriarchal society was ended, and for the first time, I went to a boys' school.
May 8th 1943. Deluge. The rain not only fell mainly on the plain in Spain; it also fell mainly on the back of the bloody neck, dripping down the spine into the socks where it came out of the lace-holes in the boots.
The experience of being in the Army changed my whole life; I never believed that an organization such as ours could ever go to war, leave alone win it. It was, as Yeats remarked of the Easter Rising, 'A terrible beauty.'
I don't think of depression as contagious. Other depressed people challenge the idea - which can be very persistent and irritating - that there is something odd about you: that you are unique with regard to this wretched state.
The lunacy continues and has every chance of becoming a way of life unless we stop it soon. Men are getting so used to wars that the psychiatric wing of the RAMC are planning how to break the news to the men when the war is over.
This silent call you make, A silence so loud I fear the world knows it's meaning If you fill every corner of a room Where can I look? If I close my eyes the silence becomes louder! There is no escape from you The only way out is in
We come across thirty or so hurried graves with makeshift wooden markers. 'Private Edwards, E.', a number, and that was all. Fourteen days ago he was alive, thinking feeling, hoping... If war was a game of cards, I'd say someone was cheating.
You couldn't enclose people in institutions or hospitals or almshouses in the way the Victorians managed to do. India was too big. Seeing the suffering people was terrible, but I think I was more distraught at the needless cruelty to so many animals.
My father being a soldier, every time I saw soldiers marching - 'Well,' I thought, 'my father's that,' and these soldiers were always looking magnificent. And I thought they were powerful; they were all-powerful. I knew that they were an elite in India.
I can't stand being late. I try to be professional. I try not to let people down. But people let me down. That's why I don't rely on anyone to call me. That's why I have clocks as well as people. I have to be able to call myself; it's the only way to be sure.
Is the modern social pattern of unending change and movement the cause of two modern diseases, insecurity and dissatisfaction? How lucky Thomas Hood was to be able to write, 'I remember, I remember the house where I was born.' I don't even know what mine looked like!
I remember lying out in my bed and looking at the vast, quiet sky. Right up above my head, there were three stars in a row, and I remember thinking, 'Well, I'll have those three stars all my life, and wherever I am, they will be. They are my stars, and they belong to me.'
Unbeknown to me, my manager, under my very nose (in a crouching position) has all these years been secretly compiling a book from my correspondence. I often wondered what she was doing in my office. She never did a stroke of work for me. All the time, I have been working for her.
We reach a secondary road and - here comes the bonus - we pass the Temple of Neptune and Cerene, at Paestum, both looking beautiful in the sunlight. Strung from the Doric columns are lines of soldiers' washing. At last they had been put to practical use. If only the ancient Greeks had known.
On the Ning Nang Nong Where the Cows go Bong! And the Monkeys all say Boo! Theres a Nang Nong Ning Where the trees go Ping! And the tea pots Jibber Jabber Joo On the Nong Ning Nang All the Mice go Clang! And you just cant catch em when they do! So its Ning Nang Nong! Cows go Bong! Nong Nang Ning! Trees go Ping! Nong Ning Nang! The mice go Clang! What a noisy place to belong,Is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!
I have got so low that I have asked to be hospitalized and for deep narcosis (sleep). I cannot stand being awake. The pain is too much... Something has happened to me, this vital spark has stopped burning - I go to a dinner table now and I don't say a word, just sit there like a dodo. Normally I am the centre of attention, keeps the conversation going, - so that is depressing in itself. It's like another person taking over, very strange. The most important thing I say is 'good evening' and then I go quiet.