Illogically, I tend to assume that if you ( Philip Larkin) dream of caning schoolgirls bottoms, it disqualifies you from dismissing half the nation as work-shy.
ALAN BENNETTThe longer I practise medicine, the more convinced I am there are only two types of cases: those that involve taking the trousers off and those that don’t.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Life is generally something that happens elsewhere.
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Culminating with a man in a white coat saying to one kindly, “And now can you tell me the name of the Prime Minister?”
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One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.
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Above literature?’ said the Queen. ‘Who is above literature? You might as well say one was above humanity.
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One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human.
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Artists, celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.
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There’s very little in the substance of [THE LADY IN THE VAN] which is not fact though some adjustments have had to be made.
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And if it can be explained that it can be explained away.’ ‘But this is History. Distance yourselves.
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Some local boys come in and there is a bit of chat between them and the fish-fryer about whether the kestrel under the counter is for sale.
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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
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I’m not “happy” but I’m not unhappy about it.
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You must take people as they come. Remember, too that though you will generally know more about the condition than the patient, it is the patient who has the condition and this if nothing else bestows on him or her a kind of wisdom.
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Never read the Bible as if it means something. Or at any rate don’t try and mean it. Nor prayers.
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It’s like going to a place that you’ve never been to before – you’ve got a picture of it and then you go there and that picture is totally wiped out by the reality.
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You don’t put your life into your books, you find it there.
ALAN BENNETT






