John Mortimer Quotes

Quotes about:

• There is always time for failure

  John Mortimer

  John Mortimer (2010). “CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE”, p.272, Penguin UK

  43 Copy quote

• No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.

  John Mortimer

  Law, Common Sense, Nails

  A Voyage Round My Father act 1 (1971)

  14 Copy quote

• I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth foregoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward.

  John Mortimer

  Years, Worry, Three

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  6 Copy quote

• Like childhood, old age is irresponsible, reckless, and foolhardy. Children and old people have everything to gain and nothing much to lose. It's middle-age which is cursed by the desperate need to cling to some finger-hold halfway up the mountain, to conform, not to cause trouble, to behave well.

  John Mortimer

  Children, People, Childhood

  John Mortimer (1995). “Murderers and Other Friends: Another Part of Life”

  6 Copy quote

• We don't know much about the human conscience, except that it is soluble in alcohol.

  John Mortimer

  Alcohol, Humans, Knows

  8 Copy quote

• Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The ageing 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

  Running, Laughing, Dying

  John Mortimer (2000). “The Summer of a Dormouse”

  8 Copy quote

• Never believe a rumour until you hear it officially denied.

  John Mortimer

  Believe, Belief, Rumours

  13 Copy quote

• When... I told my father I wanted to be a writer, he had asked me to consider my unfortunate wife, who would have me about the house all day 'wearing a dressing gown, brewing tea and stumped for words'.

  John Mortimer

  Father, Wife, House

  John Mortimer (1995). “Murderers and Other Friends: Another Part of Life”

  4 Copy quote

• Hell must be a place where you are only allowed to read what you agree with.

  John Mortimer

  Hell, Where You Are, Agree

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  Running, Children, Party

  8 Copy quote

• 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 Mortimer

  Life, Advice, Secret

  "In the Pina Colada zone" by Kathryn Flett, www.theguardian.com. August 7, 2004.

  8 Copy quote

• Check-ups are, in my experience, a grave mistake; all they do is allow the quack of your choice to tell you that you have some sort of complaint that you were far happier not knowing about.

  John Mortimer

  Mistake, Knowing, Choices

  5 Copy quote

• I found criminal clients easy and matrimonial clients hard. Matrimonial clients hate each other so much and use their children to hurt each other in beastly ways. Murderers have usually killed the one person in the world that was bugging them and they're usually quite peaceful and agreeable.

  John Mortimer

  Hurt, Children, Hate

  "Rumpole creator Mortimer dies at 85" by Sam Marsden and Chris Moncrieff, www.independent.co.uk. January 16, 2009.

  2 Copy quote

• 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

  Art, Father, Luck

  2 Copy quote

• What obsesses a writer starting out on a lifetime's work is the panic-stricken search for a voice of his own.

  John Mortimer

  Voice, Starting Out, Panic

  5 Copy quote

• The greatest horrors of our world are committed by people who are totally sincere.

  John Mortimer

  Our World, People, Horror

  3 Copy quote

• The point at which beliefs meet may be more significant, more useful to contemplate, than their sources.

  John Mortimer

  May, Belief, Significant

  1 Copy quote

• 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

  Beauty, Lonely, Class

  3 Copy quote

• 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 Mortimer

  Moving, Way, Accompany

  John Mortimer (2007). “Rumpole Misbehaves”, p.68, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

• 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 Mortimer

  Divorce, Thinking, People

  "Rumpole creator Mortimer dies at 85" by Sam Marsden and Chris Moncrieff, January 16, 2009.

  2 Copy quote

• Loyalty to the school to which your parents pay to send you seemed to me like feeling loyalty to Selfridges.

  John Mortimer

  Loyalty, School, Parent

  John Mortimer (2010). “CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE”, p.40, Penguin UK

  5 Copy quote

• 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 Mortimer

  Fall, Hands, People

  John Mortimer (1994). “Murderers and Other Friends: Another Part of Life”, Viking Press

  2 Copy quote

• The law seems like a sort of maze through which a client must be led to safety, a collection of reefs, rocks, and underwater hazards through which he or she must be piloted.

  John Mortimer

  Rocks, Law, Safety

  'Clinging to the Wreckage' (1982) ch. 7

  5 Copy quote

• Marriage is like pleading guilty to an indefinite sentence. Without parole.

  John Mortimer

  Marriage, Guilty, Parole

  5 Copy quote

• My father, to whom I owe so much, never told me the difference between right and wrong; now I think that's why I remain so greatly in his debt.

  John Mortimer

  Father, Thinking, Differences

  John Clifford Mortimer (2005). “The scales of justice”, Penguin Hardcover

  2 Copy quote

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