John Mortimer Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“There is always time for failure”
-- John MortimerSource : John Mortimer (2010). “CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE”, p.272, Penguin UK
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“No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.”
-- John MortimerSource : A Voyage Round My Father act 1 (1971)
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“To escape jury duty in England, wear a bowler hat and carry a copy of the Daily telegraph.”
-- John Mortimer -
“Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.”
-- John Mortimer -
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“The only rule I have found to have any validity in writing is not to bore yourself.”
-- John Mortimer -
“I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.”
-- John MortimerSource : "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
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“I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.”
-- John Mortimer -
“The old middle-class prerogative of being permanently in a most filthy temper.”
-- John Mortimer -
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“It is desperately important to remember when enough is enough, when you've finished the scene.”
-- John Mortimer -
“We don't know much about the human conscience, except that it is soluble in alcohol.”
-- John Mortimer -
“No power on earth, however, can abolish the merciless class distinction between those who are physically desirable and the lonely, pallid, spotted, silent, unfancied majority.”
-- John Mortimer -
“The secret of good health and happiness is to have rather small illnesses throughout your life which you can rely on to stop you doing anything you don't want to do.”
-- John MortimerSource : "In the Pina Colada zone" by Kathryn Flett, www.theguardian.com. August 7, 2004.
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“We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum.”
-- John Mortimer -
“Writing about the indignities of old age: the daunting stairway to the restaurant restroom, the benefits of a wheelchair in airports and its disadvantages at cocktail parties, giving the user what he described as a child's-eye view of the party and a crotch-level view of the guests. Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous.”
-- John Mortimer -
“The people look forbidding, solemn, marked by that impossible ideal, Communism, which, like Christianity, seemed to demand too much of humanity and, falling into the wrong hands, led too easily to horrible brutality.”
-- John MortimerSource : John Mortimer (1994). “Murderers and Other Friends: Another Part of Life”, Viking Press
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“Rumpole, you must move with the times." "If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them.”
-- John MortimerSource : John Mortimer (2007). “Rumpole Misbehaves”, p.68, Penguin
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“The worst fault of the working classes is telling their children they're not going to succeed, saying: There is life, but it's not for you.”
-- John Mortimer -
“I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.”
-- John Mortimer -
“On the three pigs he and his wife own: "We acquired the pigs last year. My wife was born on a pig farm and has always been very fond of pigs. Of course, they are for eating, which is why they are named Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. You wouldn’t want to eat Rufus, Marcus and Esmeralda.”
-- John Mortimer -
“I'd been told of all the things you're meant to feel when your father dies. Sudden freedom, growing up, the end of dependence, the step into the sunlight when no one is taller than you and you're in no one's shadow. I know what I felt. Lonely.”
-- John Mortimer -
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“Loyalty to the school to which your parents pay to send you seemed to me like feeling loyalty to Selfridges.”
-- John MortimerSource : John Mortimer (2010). “CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE”, p.40, Penguin UK
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“Irritable Judges suffer from a bad case of premature adjudication.”
-- John Mortimer -
“Never believe a rumour until you hear it officially denied.”
-- John Mortimer -
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“I don't think you ever feel a success really because everything could always be done better than you've done it...”
-- John Mortimer -
“A war against terrorism is an impracticable conception if it means fighting terrorism with terrorism.”
-- John Mortimer -
“Murderers have usually killed the one person in the world that was bugging them and they're usually quite peaceful and agreeable.”
-- John Mortimer -
“Do we want blanks, asterisks and exclamation marks which people can fill in with their own imaginations, or are we prepared and strong enough to tolerate, even if we do not approve, the strong Anglo-Saxon, realistic and vivid language?”
-- John Mortimer -
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“People will go to endless trouble to divorce one person and then marry someone who is exactly the same, except probably a bit poorer and a bit nastier. I don't think anybody learns anything.”
-- John MortimerSource : "Rumpole creator Mortimer dies at 85" by Sam Marsden and Chris Moncrieff, January 16, 2009.
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“The main aim of education should be to send children out into the world with a reasonably sized anthology in their heads so that, while seated on the lavatory, waiting in doctors' surgeries, on stationary trains or watching interviews with politicians, they may have something interesting to think about.”
-- John Mortimer
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