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John Osborne Quotes

John Osborne

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Don't clap too hard - it's a very old building.
- John Osborne
Collection: Architecture
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There's no such thing as failure - just waiting for success.
- John Osborne
Collection: Failure
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They spend their time looking forward to the past.
- John Osborne
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In London, love and scandal are considered the best sweeteners of tea.
- John Osborne
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Why do I do this every Sunday? Even the book reviews seem to be the same as last week's. Different books same reviews.
- John Osborne
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Heroes, whatever high ideas we may have of them, are mortal and not divine. We are all as God made us and many of us much worse.
- John Osborne
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It is easy to answer the ultimate questions - it saves you bothering with the immediate ones.
- John Osborne
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The whole point of a sacrifice is that you give up something you never really wanted in the first place. People are doing it around you all the time. They give up their careers, say - or their beliefs - or sex.
- John Osborne
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Here we are, we're alone in the universe, there's no God, it just seems that it all began by something as simple as sunlight striking on a piece of rock. And here we are. We've only got ourselves. Somehow, we've just got to make a go of it. We've only ourselves.
- John Osborne
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Go on - but don't think you can kill my confidence. I've had experts doing it for years.
- John Osborne
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I never deliberately set out to shock, but when people don't walk out of my plays I think there is something wrong.
- John Osborne
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It is widely held that too much wine will dull a man's desire. Indeed it will in a dull man.
- John Osborne
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It is not true that drink changes a man's character. It may reveal it more clearly.
- John Osborne
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Heaven be thanked, we live in such an age when no man dies for love except upon the stage.
- John Osborne
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Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.
- John Osborne
Collection: Dog
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Don't be afraid of being emotional. You won't die of it.
- John Osborne
Collection: Emotional
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The schoolteacher is certainly underpaid as a childminder, but ludicrously overpaid as an educator.
- John Osborne
Collection: Educator
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Censorship is the commonest social blasphemy because it is mostly concealed, built into us by indolence, self-interest and cowardice.
- John Osborne
Collection: Fear
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Let's pretend that we're human beings and that we're actually alive.
- John Osborne
Collection: Alive
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You see I learnt at an early age what it was to be angry - angry and helpless. And I can never forget it. I knew more about - love... betrayal... and death, when I was ten years old than you will probably ever know in your life.
- John Osborne
Collection: Love
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Laughter's the nearest we ever get, or should get, to sainthood. It's the state of grace that saves most of us from contempt.
- John Osborne
Collection: Laughter
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Writers don't need love; all they require is money.
- John Osborne
Collection: Writing
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A refined sort of butcher, a woman is.
- John Osborne
Collection: Butchers
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I must be the luckiest man in the world. Not only am I bisexual, I am also Welsh.
- John Osborne
Collection: Bisexual
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Royalty is the gold filling in a mouthful of decay
- John Osborne
Collection: Gold
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And even in the hatred of the majority, there's a kind of triumph because I know that, although they'd never admit it, they secretly respect me.
- John Osborne
Collection: Hatred
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Oh heavens, how I long for a little ordinary human enthusiasm. Just enthusiasm - that's all. I want to hear a warm, thrilling voice cry out Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I'm alive!
- John Osborne
Collection: Voice
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We all of us waited for him to die. The family sent him a check every month, and hoped he'd get on with it quietly, without too much vulgar fuss.
- John Osborne
Collection: Death
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That voice that cries out doesn't have to be a weakling's does it?
- John Osborne
Collection: Voice
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The whole point of a sacrifice is that you give up something you never really wanted in the first place. People are doing it around you all the time. They give up their careers, say -- or their beliefs -- or sex.
- John Osborne
Collection: Sex
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George Bernard Shaw writes like a Pakistani who has learned English when he was twelve years old in order to become an accountant.
- John Osborne
Collection: Writing
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Marriage is rather a silly habit.
- John Osborne
Collection: Marriage
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The British public has always had an unerring taste for ungifted amateurs.
- John Osborne
Collection: Taste
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There will be a quick rash of hairy American filth, but it shouldn't threaten the existence of decent, serious British filth.
- John Osborne
Collection: Filth
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I must say it's pretty dreary living in the American Age - unless you're an American of course. Perhaps all our children will be Americans.
- John Osborne
Collection: Children

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