Margot Asquith Quotations

Lord Birkenhead is very clever but sometimes his brains go to his head.

No one ever pruned me. If you have been sunned through and through like an apricot on a wall from your earliest days, you are oversensitive to any withdrawal of heat.

He has a brilliant mind until he makes it up.

He could not see a belt without hitting below it.

What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.

Of Lloyd George: he couldn't see a belt without hitting below it.

The power to love what is purely abstract is given to few.

All I can say about my mind is that, like a fire carefully laid by a good housemaid, it is one that any match will light ...

the announcement that you are going to tell a good story (and the chuckle that precedes it) is always a dangerous opening.

Rich men's houses are seldom beautiful, rarely comfortable, and never original. It is a constant source of surprise to people of moderate means to observe how little a big fortune contributes to Beauty.

To marry a man out of pity is folly; and, if you think you are going to influence the kind of fellow who has never had a chance, poor devil, you are profoundly mistaken. One can only influence the strong characters in life, not the weak; and it is the height of vanity to suppose that you can make an honest man of anyone.

Stafford Cripps has a brilliant mind, until he makes it up.

The Bible tells us to forgive our enemies, not our friends

Although I am not stupid, the mathematical side of my brain is like dumb notes upon a damaged piano.

The spirit is an inward flame; a lamp the world blows upon but never puts out.

I have no face, only two profiles clapped together.

There are some people that you cannot change, you must either swallow them whole or leave them alone.

There are big men, men of intellect, intellectual men, men of talent and men of action; but the great man is difficult to find, and it needs --apart from discernment --a certain greatness to find him.

She spends her day powdering her face till she looks like a bled pig.

He could never see a belt without hitting below it.

Symbols are the imaginative signposts of life.

Truthfulness with me is hardly a virtue. I cannot discriminate between truths that and those that don't need to be told.

It is always dangerous to generalize, but the American people, while infinitely generous, are a hard and strong race and, but for the few cemeteries I have seen, I am inclined to think they never die.

What a pity, when Christopher Colombus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.

There is nothing more perplexing in life than to know at what point you should surrender your intellect to your faith.

From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war.

Haunted from my early youth by the transitoriness and pathos of life, I was aware that it is not enough to say "I am doing no harm," I ought to be testing myself daily, and asking myself what I am really achieving.

Lloyd George? There is no Lloyd George. There is a marvellous brain; but if you were to shut him in a room and look through the keyhole there would be nobody there.

My dear old friend King George V told me he would never have died but for that vile doctor, Lord Dawson of Penn.

[On Austen Chamberlain:] He is more loyal to his friends than to his convictions.

Convictions no doubt have to be modified or expanded to meet changing conditions but ... to be a reliable political leader sooner or later your anchors must hold fast where other men's drag.

I have always wanted to be a man, if only for the reason that I would like to have gauged the value of my intellect.

[On spiritualism:] I always knew the living talked rot, but it's nothing to the rot the dead talk.

[To Jean Harlow, who repeatedly mispronounced her first name:] No, no, Jean. The t is silent, as in Harlow.

Too much brilliance has its disadvantages, and misplaced wit may raise a laugh, but often beheads a topic of profound interest.

[To her host upon leaving a party:] Don't think it hasn't been charming, because it hasn't.

If Kitchener was not a great man, he was, at least, a great poster.

I have been devoured all my life by an incurable and burning impatience: and to this day find all oratory, biography, operas, films, plays, books, and persons, too long.

Till I see money spent on the betterment of man instead of on his idleness and destruction, I shall not believe in any perfect form of government ...

You can do something with talent, but nothing with genius....

If you have been sunned through and through like an apricot on a wall from your earliest days, you are oversensitive to any withdrawal of heat.

I was born in the country of Hogg and Scott between the Yarrow and the Tweed, in the year 1864.

I do not say I was ever what I would call "plain," but I have the sort of face that bores me when I see it on other people.

My sort of looks are of the kind that bore me when I see them on other people.

It is not dying, but living, that is a preparation for Death.

The Almighty is a wonderful handicapper: He will not give us everything.

Rumor is untraceable, incalculable, and infectious.

The ingrained idea that, because there is no king and they despise titles, the Americans are a free people is pathetically untrue. . . . There is a perpetual interference with personal liberty over there that would not be tolerated in England for a week.

The first element of greatness is fundamental humbleness (this should not be confused with servility); the second is freedom from self; the third is intrepid courage, which, taken in its widest interpretation, generally goes with truth; and the fourth-the power of love-although I have put it last, is the rarest.

She tells enough white lies to ice a wedding cake.

My father's nature turned out no waste product; he had none of that useless stuff in him that lies in heaps near factories. He took his own happiness with him.

He's very clever, but sometimes his brains go to his head.

The capacity to suffer varies more than anything that I have observed in human nature.

His modesty amounts to deformity.

It is easier to influence strong than weak characters in life.