Cecil Beaton Quotes


"On close inspection, this device turned out to be a funereal juke box - the result of mixing Lloyd's of London with the principle of the chewing gum dispenser."
- Cecil Beaton
(Related: London, Result)

"Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly."
- Cecil Beaton
(Related: History, Fashion, Needs)

"Mrs Woolf's complaint should be addressed to her creator, who made her, rather than me."
- Cecil Beaton
(Related: Complaint)

"I have the worst ear for criticism; even when I have created a stage set I like, I always hear the woman in the back of the dress circle who says she doesn't like blue."
- Cecil Beaton
(Related: Criticism, Dress, Woman)

"I can't afford a whole new set of enemies."
- Cecil Beaton
(Related: Enemies)

"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary."
- Cecil Beaton
(Related: Purpose, Vision, Integrity, Play, Will)

"All I want is the best of everything and there's very little of that left."
- Cecil Beaton
(Related: Want)

"Americans have an abiding belief in their ability to control reality by purely material means... airline insurance replaces the fear of death with the comforting prospect of cash."
- Cecil Beaton
(Related: Death, Fear, Belief, Control, Ability, Americans, Reality)

"What is elegance? Soap and water!"
- Cecil Beaton
(Related: Elegance)

"San Francisco is perhaps the most European of all American cities."
- Cecil Beaton
(Related: American, Cities)

"Perhaps the world's second-worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore."
- Cecil Beaton
(Related: Being, Boredom, Crime, First, World)