All Quotes

"The proprietor had hair so red that pigmentation had flowed out into every visible inch of his skin and even into the pinks of his eyes, as the colour of flowering cherry trees stains their leaves."

"I never saw Portsmouth by day."

"All liaisons between homosexuals are conducted as though they were between a chorus girl and a bishop. In some cases both parties think they are bishops."

"I was amazed to receive later a substantial sum for sitting in my room and talking about myself. If only I could get some of the back pay!"

"There was no need to do any housework at all. After four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse."

"The measure of woman’s distaste for any part of her life lies not in the loudness of her lamentations (these are only an attempt to buy a martyr’s crown at a reduced price) but in her persistent pursuit of that occupation of which she never ceases to complain."

"God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen. It had become obvious that he was never going to do a thing I said."

"The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to place their entire life in the hands of some other person. For this purpose they frequently choose someone who doesn’t even want the beastly thing."

"You'll never be wanted," [a draft board official] said, and thrust at me a smaller piece of paper. This described me as being incapable of being graded in grades A, B, etc., because I suffered from sexual perversion. When the story of my disgrace became one of the contemporary fables of Chelsea, a certain Miss Marshall said, "I don't much care for the expression 'suffering from.' Shouldn't it be 'glorying in'?"

"When a third wave of poverty overwhelmed me, I knew with even greater certitude than when I lived in Clerkenwell that the only complete solution to my problems was suicide. I never brought it off. I was afraid... Hopelessness was thinly spread like a drizzle over my whole outlook. But, in an emergency, I could not find a puddle of despondency deep enough to drown in."

"Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave."

"If I have any talent at all, it is not for doing but for being."

"Posing was the first job I did in which I understood what I was doing."

"Michelangelo worked from within. He described not the excitements of touching or seeing a man but the excitement of being Man."

"When stripped, I looked less like "Il David" than a plucked chicken that died of myxomatosis."

"The young always have the same problem — how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this problem by defying their elders and copying each other."

"There are girls who do not like real life... Some of these girls are innocent enough to think that these unreal friendships [with homosexuals] will lead to true love — a kind of sexual intercourse that will happen to them without their having to take too horribly much notice. Even those who are sufficiently sophisticated to know that this will not be so persist in these relationships. They provide an opportunity to lavish emotion on a pseudo-man without paying the price that in heterosexual circumstances would be inevitable."

"I found that I had become so spinsterish that I was made neurotic not only by my life of domesticity but by the slightest derangement of my room. I would burst into a fit of weeping if the kettle was not facing due east."

"Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbours."

"I became one of the stately homos of England."

"I now know that if you describe things as better as they are, you are considered to be romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you are called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you are called a satirist."

"The simplest comment on my book came from my ballet teacher. She said, "I wish you hadn’t made every line funny. It’s so depressing.""

"The low dive had set a standard that only middle-aged hooligans could remember and to which they looked back as Mrs Lot at Sodom."

"Even hooligans marry, though they know that marriage is for a little while. It is alimony that is for ever."

"Laudem virtutis necessitati damus."

"Atque eam natura ipsa videtur ad tolerandos facilius labores velut muneri nobis dedisse, si quidem et remigem cantus hortatur; nec solum in iis operibus in quibus plurium conatus praeeunte aliqua iucunda voce conspirat, sed etiam singulorum fatigatio quamlibet se rudi modulatione solatur."

"Quamlibet multa egerimus, quodam tamen modo recentes sumus ad id quod incipimus. quis non obtundi potest, si per totum diem cuiuscunque artis unum magistrum ferat? mutatione recreabitur sicut in cibis, quorum diversitate reficitur stomachus et pluribus minore fastidio alitur."

"Adeo facilius est multa facere quam diu."

"Vtrubique autem orator meminisse debebit actione tota quid finxerit, quoniam solent excidere quae falsa sunt: verumque est illud quod vulgo dicitur, mendacem memorem esse oportere."

"Modesto tamen et circumspecto iudicio de tantis viris pronuntiandum est, ne, quod plerisque accidit, damnent quae non intellegunt."

"Historia et scribitur ad narrandum non ad probandum."

"Nihil enim rerum ipsa natura voluit magnum effici cito, praeposuitque pulcherrimo cuique operi difficultatem: quae nascendi quoque hanc fecerit legem, ut maiora animalia diutius visceribus parentis continerentur."

"Pectus est enim quod disertos facit, et vis mentis."

"Qui stultis videri eruditi volunt stulti eruditis videntur."

"Sit ergo nobis orator quem constituimus is qui a M. Catone finitur vir bonus dicendi peritus, verum, id quod et ille posuit prius et ipsa natura potius ac maius est, utique vir bonus."

"Mutos enim nasci et egere omni ratione satius fuisset quam providentiae munera in mutuam perniciem convertere."

"Neque enim tantum id dico, eum qui sit orator virum bonum esse oportere, sed ne futurum quidem oratorem nisi virum bonum. Nam certe neque intellegentiam concesseris iis qui proposita honestorum ac turpium via peiorem sequi malent, neque prudentiam, cum in gravissimas frequenter legum, semper vero malae conscientiae poenas a semet ipsis inproviso rerum exitu induantur."

"Videor mihi audire quosdam (neque enim deerunt umquam qui diserti esse quam boni malint) illa dicentis: "Quid ergo tantum est artis in eloquentia? cur tu de coloribus et difficilium causarum defensione, nonnihil etiam de confessione locutus es, nisi aliquando vis ac facultas dicendi expugnat ipsam veritatem? Bonus enim vir non agit nisi bonas causas, eas porro etiam sine doctrina satis per se tuetur veritas ipsa.""

"Et hercule quantumlibet secreta studia contulerint, est tamen proprius quidam fori profectus, alia lux, alia veri discriminis facies, plusque, si separes, usus sine doctrina quam citra usum doctrina valeat."

"Vain hopes are often like the dreams of those who wake."

"Oh, you've got a gun? So, you want to pop that?"

"Yo' waddup; this is Snoop D-O-Double-G sayin' stop the violence, drop the guns, and increase the peace."

"What did Snoop Dogg say to a guy carryin' an umbrella? "looks like drizzle ma nizzle""

"Now this No Limit shit, No Limit nigga Everbody wanna know how this shit happens, but we ain't playa hatin' And what's goin' on, but ya know what? It don't get no realer than this though dog."

"I had to shake the spot cause the game got crowded I'm devoted and quote it, I'm rowdy and bout it A No Limit Soldier, and happy to shout it."

"I'm sellin this shit, I ain't tellin this shit, I'm a mutha fuckin 2-time felon ya bitch From the cold hearted streets of the LBC To a mansion in the south down the street from my nigga P See, real niggas recognize the realness Put ya muthafuckin' choppers up if ya feel this."

"So if you got your chrome, you need to stay in the zone And get a vest for your mutha fuckin dome Cause it's on like a dog with out his bone I'm in it to win it and No Limit is my home (for life for life)."

"I'm a gangsta, but y'all knew that Da Big Boss Dogg, yeah I had to do that I keep a blue flag hanging out my backside, only on the left side, yeah that's the Crip side."

"Waitin' on the pizzle, the dizzle and the shizzle G's to the bizzack, now ladies here we gizzo."

"Mr. D, why is you doin' the Big Nasty on my bed?!"