I know I looked awful because my mother phoned and said I looked lovely.
Jo Brand 1957– English comedian, after getting a makeover on television
After forty a woman has to choose between losing her figure or her face. My advice is to keep your face, and stay sitting down.
Barbara Cartland 1901–2000 English writer
Sunburn is very becoming—but only when it is even—one must be careful not to look like a mixed grill.
Noël Coward 1899–1973 English dramatist, actor, and composer
Even I don’t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford.
Cindy Crawford 1966– American model
The most delightful advantage of being bald—one can hear snowflakes.
R. G. Daniels 1916–93 British magistrate
A drag queen’s like an oil painting: You gotta stand back from it to get the full effect.
Harvey Fierstein 1954– American dramatist and actor
In Los Angeles everyone has perfect teeth. It’s crocodile land.
Gwyneth Paltrow 1972– American actress
It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.
Dolly Parton 1946– American singer and songwriter
Prince Charles’ ears are so big he could hang-glide over the Falklands.
Joan Rivers 1933–2014 American comedienne
My body is a temple, and my temple needs redecorating.
Joan Rivers 1933–2014 American comedienne, explaining why she’s having more plastic surgery at the age of 78
EDINA: What you don’t realize is that inside, inside of me there is a thin person screaming to get out.
MOTHER: Just the one, dear?
Jennifer Saunders 1958– English actress and writer
It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.
Oscar Wilde 1854–1900 Irish dramatist and poet
The Right Hon. was a tubby little chap who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say ‘When!’
P. G. Wodehouse 1881–1975 English-born writer
Architecture 
In my experience, if you have to keep the lavatory door shut by extending your left leg, it’s modern architecture.
Nancy Banks-Smith 1929– British journalist
They said it was split-level and open-plan. But then again so is an NCP car park.
Alan Carr 1976– English comedian
on the proposed extension to the National Gallery, London:
Like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.
Charles, Prince of Wales 1948– heir apparent to the British throne
The National Theatre seems like a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting.
Charles, Prince of Wales 1948– heir apparent to the British throne
You have to give this much to the Luftwaffe: when it knocked down our buildings it didn’t replace them with anything more offensive than rubble.
Charles, Prince of Wales 1948– heir apparent to the British throne
My client—God—is in no hurry.
Antonio Gaudí 1853–1926 Spanish architect, of the church of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona (begun 1884)
Why is it only Tudor that we mock?
Harry Hill 1964– English comedian
A lot of nuns in a rugger scrum.
George Molnar 1910–98 Hungarian-born Australian cartoonist, on the exterior of the Sydney Opera House
The green belt was a Labour idea and we are determined to build on it.
John Prescott 1938– British Labour politician
on Brighton Pavilion:
As if St Paul’s had come down and pupped.
Sydney Smith 1771–1845 English clergyman and essayist
The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines.
Frank Lloyd Wright 1867–1959 American architect
Argument
see ANGER and Argument
The Aristocracy
see also CLASS
The Stately Homes of England,
How beautiful they stand,
To prove the upper classes
Have still the upper hand.
Noël Coward 1899–1973 English dramatist, actor, and composer
I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something in-conceivable. I can’t help it. I was born sneering.
W. S. Gilbert 1836–1911 English writer
I am an ancestor.
Marshal Junot 1771–1813 French general, reply when taunted on his lack of ancestry, having been made Duke of Abrantes
A duchess will be a duchess in a bath towel. It’s all a matter of style.
Carol Lawrence 1932– American actress
An aristocracy in a republic is like a chicken whose head has been cut off: it may run about in a lively way, but in fact it is dead.
Nancy Mitford 1904–73 English writer
Those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, euphemistically, as the stately homes of England.
Virginia Woolf 1882–1941 English novelist
The Armed Forces
see also WAR
My home at my uncle’s brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of Rears and Vices, I saw enough. No, do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.
Jane Austen 1775–1817 English novelist
We joined the Navy to see the world,
And what did we see? We saw the sea.
Irving Berlin 1888–1989 American songwriter
Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
Winston Churchill 1874–1965 British Conservative statesman
to the Duke of Newcastle, who had complained that General Wolfe was a madman:
Mad, is he? Then I hope he will bite some of my other generals.
George II 1683–1760 British king
on a regimental march:
GENERAL: Isn’t it a little fast, Korngold? The men can’t march to that.
KORNGOLD: Ah yes, well, you see Sir, this was composed for the retreat!
Erich Korngold 1897–1957 Austrian-born American composer
of a general who sent his dispatches from ‘Headquarters in the Saddle’:
The trouble with Hooker is that he’s got his headquarters where his hindquarters ought to be.
Abraham Lincoln 1809–65 American statesman
Join a Highland regiment, me boy. The kilt is an unrivalled garment for fornication and diarrhoea.
John Masters 1914–83 British writer
Napoleon’s armies always used to march on their stomachs shouting: ‘Vive l’Intérieur!’
W. C. Sellar 1898–1951 and R. J. Yeatman 1898–1968 British writers
When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind.
George Bernard Shaw 1856–1950 Irish dramatist
As for being a General, well at the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we’re all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.
Peter Ustinov 1921–2004 British actor, director, and writer
Art
Oh, I wish I could draw. I’ve always wanted to draw. I’d give my right arm to be able to draw. It must be very relaxing.