Top 35 Quotes & Sayings by John Osborne

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English playwright John Osborne.

Last updated on December 18, 2024.

John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter and actor, known for his excoriating prose and intense critical stance towards established social and political norms. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre.

English - Playwright | December 12, 1929 - December 24, 1994

Source: Wikipedia

It is widely held that too much wine will dull a man's desire. Indeed it will in a dull man.

John Osborne

It is not true that drink changes a man's character. It may reveal it more clearly.

John Osborne

Go on - but don't think you can kill my confidence. I've had experts doing it for years.

John Osborne

In London, love and scandal are considered the best sweeteners of tea.

John Osborne

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

It is easy to answer the ultimate questions - it saves you bothering with the immediate ones.

John Osborne

They spend their time looking forward to the past.

John Osborne

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

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

There's no such thing as failure - just waiting for success.

John Osborne

Don't clap too hard - it's a very old building.

John Osborne

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

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

Heaven be thanked, we live in such an age when no man dies for love except upon the stage.

John Osborne

Censorship is the commonest social blasphemy because it is mostly concealed, built into us by indolence, self-interest and cowardice.

John Osborne

There will be a quick rash of hairy American filth, but it shouldn't threaten the existence of decent, serious British filth.

John Osborne

The British public has always had an unerring taste for ungifted amateurs.

John Osborne

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

That voice that cries out doesn't have to be a weakling's does it?

John Osborne

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

Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs.

John Osborne

Royalty is the gold filling in a mouthful of decay

John Osborne

Let's pretend that we're human beings and that we're actually alive.

John Osborne

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

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

The schoolteacher is certainly underpaid as a childminder, but ludicrously overpaid as an educator.

John Osborne

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

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

Don't be afraid of being emotional. You won't die of it.

John Osborne

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

A refined sort of butcher, a woman is.

John Osborne

Writers don't need love; all they require is money.

John Osborne

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

I must be the luckiest man in the world. Not only am I bisexual, I am also Welsh.

John Osborne

Marriage is rather a silly habit.

John Osborne