One recipe for happiness is to have to sense of entitlement.’ To this she added a star and noted at the bottom of the page: ‘This is not a lesson I have ever been in a position to learn.
ALAN BENNETTIf you find yourself born in Barnsley and then set your sights on being Virginia Woolf it is not going to be roses all the way.
More Alan Bennett Quotes
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Cloisters, ancient libraries … I was confusing learning with the smell of cold stone.
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It was the kind of library he had only read about in books.
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You have the knowledge but that does not entitle you to be superior. Knowledge makes you the servant not the master.
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Have you ever thought, headmaster, that your standards might perhaps be a little out of date?
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I’m for the freedom of expression, given that it will be under strict control.
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Nature played a cruel trick on her by giving her a waxed mustache.
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Polly: Education with socialists, it’s like sex, all right as long as you don’t have to pay for it.
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I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.
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I don’t talk very well. With writing, you’ve time to get it right. Also I’ve found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn’t write no one would want me to talk anyway.
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Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.
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But most men regard their life as a poem that women threaten.
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I saw someone peeing in Jermym Street the other day. I thought, is this the end of civilization as we know it? Or is it simply someone peeing in Jermyn Street?
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To begin with, it’s true, she read with trepidation and some unease.
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History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind with the bucket.
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Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
ALAN BENNETT