Great One Liners

[storeynicholas]

About the UK's current Loyal Opposition. "x was born with a silver spoon up his nose."

That's putting it at the very highest.
NJS

[carl browne]

A similar line from Ann Richards, former governor of Texas, about George H W Bush:

"He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

[hgb3]

How about one more? I am uncertain of its origin, but

The milk of human kindness is generally amber hued and 90 proof.

[ProfMoriarty]

Lady Astor: Winston, if I were married to you I would put poison in your coffee.

Winston Churchill: Madam, were I married to you I would drink it.

[storeynicholas]

Lady Astor: Winston, if I were married to you I would put poison in your coffee.

Winston Churchill: Madam, were I married to you I would drink it.

I thought that it was soup............
NJS

[ProfMoriarty]

Actually, storeynicholas, the way I originally heard it was that one evening Lady Astor (an "appeaser" during the 1930s) and the Great Lion (at that time in "the Wilderness") were weekend guests at a country house. Churchill had gotten a bit tipsy and combative regarding Hitler, facism and British preparedness and the Lady observed that he was "drunk".
Churchill's response: "Indeed, Lady Astor, but you are ugly. And tomorrow when we each arise, I shall be sober....but you will still be ugly."
The next morning, Lady Astor referred to the Lion's "dreadful behavior" of the night before and made the comment I posted above: that were she married to him, she would poison his morning coffee. Churchill, always insisting on the last word, allowed as how, were he married to her, he would indeed drink it.
It is dangerous to have an "idol", but I have a few historical figures that I really admire and Churchill is in that pantheon; not really for his repartee, but because of his dogged determination and persistence in the face of sometimes seeming insurmountable challenges.
It is ironic that I write this on this day (November 22) from Boston. This is, to this day, an unofficial day of mourning around here (the anniversay of President Kennedy's murder). He literally worshipped Churchill and, despite the fact that the Lion and the President's father, the Ambassador, did not get along, several times arranged to meet with him socially. (When he became President, he arranged that Churchill have American citizenship bestowed upon him by the Congress. There exists, somewhere in American network news archives, a tape of the ceremony before both houses of Congress which is very moving. Churchill, around ninety by then, is moved to near tears.)
Jack

[storeynicholas]

Dear Jack,
I expect that the version that I heard is just a version that just got passed around and you set it in context. I knew of Churchill's US citizenship - and, moreover, we should never forget that Churchill was half American anyway - what a coincidental boon too for Britain in the circumstances in which his hour came. I have read of various occasions when he quite openly wept: you mention one and another was when he was honoured as an Old Harrovian. He seems to have been almost Georgian in his lack of inhibition and even once, when someone started palying a waltz on the piano during a wartime meeting, took himself off around the floor. He also once told someone that he could not stand near the edge of railway platforms for fear that he might want to jump. You mention today as the anniversary of JFK's murder and I recall the exact moment when my mother told me, in great sadness, what had happened (a few days short of my 4th birthday) - and I clearly recall that, vey solemnly, I went out into the garden and stared at a piece of coal on the earth and wondered, for the first time, why we must come to dust. So I join in your comemmoration, which should, probably, be more widely noted because I am not sure that either Britain or the USA has had such inspirational leadership since Churchill and Kennedy.
NJS

[marcelo]

"I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow."

Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882.

[storeynicholas]

"I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared that the sense of being well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquillity which religion is powerless to bestow."

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1769–1811)

This place sometimes has the quality of a Temple about it!
NJS

[Frog in Suit]

Great line, but a quick check of Wikepedia gives Emerson' s dates as 1803-1882.

Frog in Suit

[marcelo]

Thanks, FiS. I have corrected my previous post.

[carl browne]

I'd really like to keep this thread going! It's too good to let die.

Now that I've reached (early?) middle age, (slightly) younger men will bid me pass through a door first with the witless and ever annoying, "age before beauty."

The proper response is, "pearls before swine."

I don't suppose the rest of the world has been infected by the sublimely vacuous, insipid, and in every other way feckless, "have a nice day?"

The proper response to THAT is, "I'm afraid I've made other plans."


I saw "Charade" again last night. The best Alfred Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made.

Audrey Hepburn: "Do you know what's wrong with you?"
Cary Grant: "What?"
Audrey Hepburn: "Nothing!"

Also:

Cary Grant: "When you come on, you come on."
Audrey Hepburn: "Well, come on."

[David V]

A Cary Grant line not from a script:
"Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be 'Cary Grant'."

From Groucho:

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others. "

"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. "

"Wives are people who feel they don't dance enough."

[Trey]

Mr. Browne:

"Charade" is a good movie. Nevertheless, it pales in comparison to three other Cary Grant/Hitchcock collaborations ("North by Northwest", "Notorious", and "To Catch a Thief") and possibly a fourth ("Suspicion" - especially if Hitch had gone with the original ending and had Cary Grant kill Monkeyface). "Charade's" cast is awesome! What a group of villains!

As Cary Grant would say, "Happy Thoughts".

Trey

[storeynicholas]

Another response to ´Have a nice day!´[which is, actually meant to be helpful] is It is too early to tell

I agree that Suspicion is up there with the top Hitch films - Joan Fontaine won the only best actress Oscar for a Hitch film as Monkey Face. I think that it was best not to have CG kill her - it would have tarnished his reputation...
NJS