Stephen Fry Quotes

Hey-ho, it's raining inside: it isn't my fault and there's nothing I can do about it, but sit it out. But the sun may well come out tomorrow and when it does, I shall take full advantage.

I knew I couldn't believe in God, because I was fundamentally Hellenic in my outlook.

You don't sit down and write a wish list about the person you are going to fall violently in love with. It just doesn't work like that.

To me, reason is as spiritual as anything else, the beauty of reason seems to me indelible and ineffable and numinous... the spirit is after all the same word we use to describe... essence

Atheism is not just about not believing there is a God, but on the assumption that there is one, what kind of God is he?

You can't reason yourself back into cheerfulness any more than you can reason yourself into an extra six inches in height.

My life, at least, is divided between writing and performing and mixtures of the two.

There is so much we can learn from TV. It's a window on the world.

Moving from chair to chair, from coffee machine to coffee machine is the limit of my action in most films. But I enjoy being cast in them because I love watching them.

Well, isn't it splendid & rather toffee?

Compromise is a stalling between two fools.

Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.

I'm afraid I don't believe there is such a thing as blasphemy, just outrage from those insecure in their own faith.

Thank you for your input; I can tell you are struggling towards being interesting.

It is a cliche that most cliches are true, but then like most cliches, that cliche is untrue.

The church has no power over our lives any more, which is something of a blessing for those who do not enjoy red-hot pokers or iron thumb-screws.

Generally, we admire the thing we are not.

I don't watch television, I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.

Nature admits no hierarchy of beauty or usefulness or importance.

Talent is inborn, but technique is learned.

I went to Cambridge and thought I would stay there. I thought I would quietly grow tweed in a corner somewhere and become a Don or something.

Many people would no more think of entering journalism than the sewage business - which at least does us all some good.

That one can love another of the same gender, that is what the homophobe really cannot stand.

Like vichyssoise, revenge is a dish best served cold.

I have to mime at parties when everyone sings Happy Birthday... Mime or mumble and rumble and growl and grunt so deep that only moles, manta rays and mushrooms can hear me.

No adolescent ever wants to be understood, which is why they complain about being misunderstood all the time.

It's extremely unlucky to be superstitious, for no other reason than it is always unlucky to be colossally stupid.

Stop wanting wealth and fame and start wanting instead to do something well about which you are passionate

I have Van Gogh's ear for music

Old Professors never die, they just lose their faculties.

The people I know who swear the most tend to have the widest vocabularies.

How can I tell you what I think until I've heard what I'm going to say?

Knowing what I now know I would never have done anything so fatuous; but then I never would have known what I know now had I not.

You can't just say there is a god because the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children

Literature is the only access to truth we have on this planet.

They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we're not 100 per cent human, that we're always letting ourselves down. We're constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment.

There's nothing worse than the British in one of their fits of morality.

When push-off comes to shove-off, a man must have a reason to get out of bed in the mornings, something more than the threat of bedsores, at any rate.

A cut glass English accent can fool unsuspecting Americans into detecting a brilliance that isn't there

...as absurd and dishonest as claiming that the trouble with computer games is that they stop people watching television.

Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers.

I don't believe there is a God. If I were to believe in a god, l would believe in gods.

I get an urge, like a pregnant elephant, to go away and give birth to a book.

Entry is not equivalent to possession.

We always make the mistake, the fatal mistake in the case of military people, of imagining that each war will be a kind of version of the one that happened previously.

Not one word of the following is true

It is easy to forget that the most important aspect of comedy, after all, its great saving grace, is its ambiguity. You can simultaneously laugh at a situation, and take it seriously.

There's no doubt that I do have extremes of mood that are greater than just about anybody else I know.

Families where there is not much laughter I think are signs of some sort of dysfunctionality or sickness.

All we have to do is listen. The Good Lord gave us two ears and only one mouth, my dear white-headed mother used to say.