Forsyth Quotes & Sayings

Who needs sense when you have alliteration? — Mark Forsyth

The ogres and witches and giants of fairytales stand in as metaphors for those obstacles that we all face in our own lives. — Kate Forsyth

Thank God for modern medicine. It was not until 1905 that ergophobia (the morbid fear of returning to work) was first identified and reported in the British Medical Journal. As yet there is no known cure, but doctors have been working on it, and may get back to working on it sometime soon. — Mark Forsyth

The greatest element in life is not what occupies most of its time, else sleep would stand high in the scale. Nor is it what engrosses most of its thought, else money would be very high. The two or three hours of worship and preaching weekly has perhaps been the greatest signal influence on English life. Half an hour of prayer, morning or evening, every day, may be a greater element in shaping our course than all our conduct and all our thought. — Peter Forsyth

Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811) records that: The Welch are said to be so remarkably fond of cheese, that in cases of difficulty their midwives apply a piece of toasted cheese to the janua vita [gates of life] to attract and entice the young Taffy, who on smelling it makes most vigorous efforts to come forth. — Mark Forsyth

The Latin word for sausage was botulus, from which English gets two words. One of them is the lovely botuliform, which means sausage-shaped and is a more useful word than you might think. The other word is botulism.
Sausages may taste lovely, but it's usually best not to ask what's actually in them. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it was a sausage-maker who disposed of the body. — Mark Forsyth

Anyone who has ever taken out a mortgage will be unsurprised to learn that it is, literally, a /death pledge/. — Mark Forsyth

By fire, fever, storm and sword, your blood shall suffer this bane. No peace or joy for Wintersloe's lord, till the puzzle ring is whole again — Kate Forsyth

On stage, I think I'm 35. Working takes over my whole body and I become a younger man - that's why I won't stop. — Bruce Forsyth

I didn't think Comfort and Joy was going to be a box-office smash. — Bill Forsyth

A ham sandwich is better than nothing. Nothing is better than eternal happiness. So eternal happiness is beaten by a ham sandwich. — Mark Forsyth

Love is nothing because those who do something for the love of it do it for nothing. — Mark Forsyth

My two elder sisters married Englishmen and went abroad. — Bill Forsyth

Prayer is the atmosphere of revelation, in the strict and central sense of that word. It is the climate in which God's manifestation bursts open into inspiration. — Peter Forsyth

I am not doddery ... doddery I am not! — Bruce Forsyth

It could still be a good night if you play your cards right. — Bruce Forsyth

I don't want to grow old gracefully. I want to put up a bit of a fight. — Bruce Forsyth

Probably more than anybody else, I loved Nat 'King' Cole as a performer - not only his singing but his piano playing. Whenever he had a new record come out, I'd get it and try to learn how he was playing. And he was one of the nicest people I'd ever met. — Bruce Forsyth

When our ancestors crouched about the camp fire at night, they told each other tales of gods and heroes, monsters and marvels, to hold back the terrors of the night. Such tales comforted and entertained, diverted and educated those who listened, and helped shape their sense of the world and their place in it. — Kate Forsyth

One of the biggest mistakes people make is to think that what you need to write a novel is imagination, creativity and a facility with words. Yes, you need all those things, but a novel is a highly complex organism that needs to be dealt with in quite a logical manner. — Kate Forsyth

It is not in our choice to spread the gospel or not. It is our death if we do not. — Peter Forsyth

Faint traces of other black churches are tucked away in handwritten ledgers at the state archives at Morrow; in the collections at the University of Georgia in Athens; even in the basement of the Forsyth courthouse, where a cardboard box atop a metal filing cabinet still holds deeds for the land on which black residents once founded Mt. Fair, Shakerag, and Stoney Point - about which nothing is known but names and approximate locations. All that can be said for certain is that, again and again in the fall of 1912, white men sloshed gasoline and kerosene onto the benches and wooden floors of such rooms, then backed out into the dark, tossing lit matches as they went. All over the county, beneath the ground on which black churches stood, the soil is rich with ashes. — Patrick Phillips

All religion is founded on prayer, and in prayer it has its test and measure. — Peter Forsyth

There's a flame of magic inside every stone & every flower, every bird that sings & every frog that croaks. There's magic in the trees & the hills & the river & the rocks, in the sea & the stars & the wind, a deep, wild magic that's as old as the world itself. It's in you too, my darling girl, and in me, and in every living creature, be it ever so small. Even the dirt I'm sweeping up now is stardust. In fact, all of us are made from the stuff of stars. — Kate Forsyth

In the pioneer West Whitopias, immigration tended to be the dominant social and racial issue. In Forsyth County, Georgia, immigration is still an issue, but because you have that complicated history of the Trail of Tears and slavery and Jim Crow, the Whitopia has a different flavor. — Richard Benjamin

There are things that Scotsmen get and other people don't get in the dialogue. Scottish characters can be pinpointed by a phrase, targeted very quickly. — Bill Forsyth

When I married Wilnelia, one of the first things I wanted to know about Puerto Rico was the quality of the golf courses. — Bruce Forsyth

When a new kind of 'race trouble' broke out in 1912, Forsyth was a place that had already witnessed the rapid expulsion of an entire people, and many residents, like Charlie Harris, had heard firsthand accounts from relatives who'd taken part in the Cherokee removals. So whenever someone first suggested that blacks in the county should not only be punished for the murder of Mae Crow but driven out of the county forever, the white people of Forsyth knew in their bones that such a thing was possible. After all, many families owed their land and their livelihoods to exactly such a racial cleansing in the 1830s. — Patrick Phillips

Lots of people come up to me and call me Sir Bruce now. Interviewers call me Sir with every question, but I never make a point of making people call me Sir. It doesn't matter to me, though; it was a great honour to be knighted. I'm very proud of it. — Bruce Forsyth

Offices are peculiar places and nobody is ever quite sure what happens in them, least of all the people who work there. But the day tends to begin with a morning meeting, in which everybody decides what they will fail to do for the rest of the day. — Mark Forsyth

Prayer is, paradoxically, both a gift and a conquest, a grace and a duty. Does that not mean, is it not a special case of the truth, that all duty is a gift, every call on us a blessing, and that the task we often find a burden is really a boon? — Peter Forsyth

Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. — Mark Forsyth

Fairytales work on two levels. On a conscious level, they are stories of true love and triumph and overcoming difficult odds and so are pleasurable to read. But they work on a deeper and symbolic level in that they play out our universal psychological dramas and hidden desires and fears. — Kate Forsyth

The first duty of every soul is to find not its freedom but its Master. — P.T. Forsyth

The local church is the outcrop of the church universal. — Peter Forsyth

I was attacked by a dog when I was a toddler, and my injuries were so bad, I spent quite a bit of my childhood in and out of hospital. Books were absolutely my salvation during those years. — Kate Forsyth

Wouldst like to con a glimmer with me this early black?', which he [Cab Calloway] helpfully explains as 'the proper way to ask a young lady to go to the movies'. It should be noted here, that if the object of your affections replies 'Kill me', they are not requesting to be euthanatised and you should not actually murder them. Kill me is merely the Cab Calloway way of saying 'Show me a good time' and is the best response you could have hoped for. Jive was rather confusing in this way. — Mark Forsyth

It's important for a dancer to wear very tight underpants. I used to feel a bit exposed if I wasn't being held up in the right place. — Bruce Forsyth

Ambition can take the place of everything - even sex. — Bruce Forsyth

He was one of the masters of the thriller and he really was one of the great signposts, because he took the spy thriller out of the gentility of the drawing room and into the back streets of Istanbul and where it all really happened, ... The Day of the Jackal. — Frederick Forsyth

What's wrong with writing about love? Everybody longs for love. — Kate Forsyth

Oscar Wilde said that "All crime is vulgar, just as all vulgarity is crime," and then got sent off to Reading Gaol to reconsider and write ballads. — Mark Forsyth

Almost all great fortunes are based upon one cracking good idea and the guts to go with it — Frederick Forsyth

A dutiful son has to remember not to slouch or swear or, in Hamlet's case, murder the old bat. — Mark Forsyth

When there is no more room in hell the dead will walk the earth." Dawn of the Dead — David P. Forsyth

P. T. Forsyth's book Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind. These are its opening words: 'It is, perhaps, an overbold beginning, but I will venture to say that with its preaching Christianity stands or falls. — John R.W. Stott

When I was in the business as a young performer, it was a recognised fact that when you got to 60 you were out, because there'd be a new crop of comics coming up all the time, every 10 years or so. — Bruce Forsyth

So familiar are eggs to us, however, that in the eighteenth century they were referred to as cackling farts, on the basis that chickens cackled all the time and eggs came out of the back of them. — Mark Forsyth

To tell the truth, fairytales have never gone out of style. They have been told and retold for thousands of years, finding new shapes and structures with each new generation of tellers. — Kate Forsyth

I'd made these experimental films but I thought the major chore of a filmmaker was to relate to actors. — Bill Forsyth

Every word we speak calls on 37 muscles and thousands of nerves. It's not surprising that sometimes these nerves and muscles fail us. — Kate Forsyth

May my heart be kind, my mind fierce, and my spirit brave. — Kate Forsyth

I don't do close-ups any more. I am better looking from the waist downwards. — Bruce Forsyth

Schoolchildren are asked to write essays on what William Blake thought about the Tiger; despite the fact that William Blake was a nutjob whose opinions, in a civilized society, would be of no interest to anybody apart from his parole officer. — Mark Forsyth

As I grew up, I read and loved many fairy-tale retellings and began to think about writing my own reimagining of 'Rapunzel.' — Kate Forsyth

Fairy tales are stories of triumph and transformation and true love, all things I fervently believe in. — Kate Forsyth

And what do you think true love is? her father had asked her. 'Loving even when all hope is gone,' she had answered. — Kate Forsyth

The movie business is very much like that: people in authority making purely emotional decisions instead of interesting rational ones. — Bill Forsyth

Lord, deliver us from what we already knew we wanted. Give us some new desires, the weirder the better. — Mark Forsyth

As an adult, I have often been deep in serious conversation with someone I've highly respected and seen them roll an eye as my mouth has mangled yet another magnificently conceived, clumsily articulated sentence. In my mind, the words are mellifluous as honey. In my mouth, they are shards of glass. — Kate Forsyth

If I couldn't move, I don't know what I would do. That would be terrifying for me; I don't know how I'd cope with that. — Bruce Forsyth

I wish I could paint like Raphael," Lucio said. "I'd paint you! You should smile more often - it's like dawn breaking over a snowfield. — Kate Forsyth

It is time to buddle (scrub in water) all that is not illutile (unwash-awayable). Baudelaire said that humans were deluded if they thought they could wash away all their spots with vile tears, but Baudelaire was French and therefore knew nothing about hygiene or shower gel. — Mark Forsyth

It could well be argued that the continuing rights abuses of the present Iraqi regime, if it is allowed to survive, will prove most distressing. This is beyond any doubt. But the West has been required to witness terrible scenes in China, Russia, Vietnam, East Timor, Cambodia, and many other parts of the world. It is simply not possible for the United States to impose humanity on a worldwide scale unless it is prepared to enter into permanent global war. — Frederick Forsyth

My writing tools were my most precious belongings. My best quill pen was made from a raven's feather ... I was often so poor that I could not pay my mantua-maker, but I always invested in the best ink and parchment. I smoothed it with pumice stone till it was as white and fine as my own skin, ready to absorb the rapid scratching of my quill — Kate Forsyth

Once there was a gypsy queen who wore on her wrist a chain of six lucky charms - a golden crown, a silver horse, a butterfly caught in amber, a cat's eye shell, a bolt of lightning forged from the heart of a falling star, and the flower of the rue plant, herb of grace. The queen gave each of her six children one of the charms as their lucky talisman, but ever since the chain of charms was broken, the gypsies had been dogged with misfortune. — Kate Forsyth

Kate Forsyth's Bitter Greens is an enthralling concoction of history and magic, an absorbing, richly detailed, and heart-wrenching reimagining of a timeless fairytale. — Jennifer Chiaverini

I love fairy tales because of their haunting beauty and magical strangeness. They are set in worlds where anything can happen. Frogs can be kings, a thicket of brambles can hide a castle where a royal court has lain asleep for a hundred years, a boy can outwit a giant, and a girl can break a curse with nothing but her courage and steadfastness. — Kate Forsyth

Position for his colleague in Secret Intelligence would be just the reverse. Sir Mark was having — Frederick Forsyth

The world is a cruel place, Petrosinella, and it wounds the weak. — Kate Forsyth

We touch the last reality directly in prayer. — P.T. Forsyth

We shall come one day to a heaven where we shall gratefully know that God's great refusals were sometimes the true answers to our truest prayer. — Peter Forsyth

After all, fiction is only fact minus time. — Mark Forsyth

It gets harder every day to get out of bed. I don't feel like it loads of the time. It is only my exercise routine which wakes me up. — Bruce Forsyth

You must forgive them, my child. Forgiveness is a part of penitence. — Frederick Forsyth

Ava's father believed that myths and fairy tales - like dreams - opened a window into the unconscious. by listening to the language of dreams and old tales, he said, all humans could learn to understand themselves and the world, better. — Kate Forsyth

We all want to win against all odds. We all want to be loved. We all wish it was possible to change our world and to make our world a better place. — Kate Forsyth

The period is one of the most complicated and concepts of classical rhetoric. Nobody in the ancient world could quite decide what it meant, but they were united in the belief that it was terribly, terribly important. — Mark Forsyth

I have struggled all my life with my stuttering. Not to mention all my other speech impediments. I think I have every language disorder known to speech pathologists. — Kate Forsyth

The Three Musketeers had a cry of 'All for one and one for all'. The symmetry makes it memorable but also reflects the reciprocity. It is that great human symmetry: the deal. — Mark Forsyth

War is an unpredictable beast. Once unleashed, it runs like a rabid dog, ravening friend or foe alike. It can drag on for years, a slow attrition of nerve and fortitude, or be over in one brilliant flash, an extravagant conflagration of flame and blood and waste. — Kate Forsyth

I hate Mondays - I hate that feeling you've got to get yourself up. — Bruce Forsyth

Goodness, that Simon Cowell is a sensitive soul. — Bruce Forsyth

The Bible is chock-a-block with such unnecessary but beautiful antitheses. God, whatever his other failings, is a great rhetorician. — Mark Forsyth

I have spent twenty years trying to understand the look in her eyes. Was it love or hatred, contempt or pity, bewilderment or understanding? I shall never know. — Frederick Forsyth

She paced her room all day, tossed sleeplessly in her bed all night. At dusk, she sat in her window and poured all her longing and desire into her songs, hoping he would somehow hear her and return.
And he did. — Kate Forsyth

Seasickness ... is caused ... by the disturbance ... to the inner ear " he said. " You just need ... to ... look ... at ... the horizon ... " His last words disappeared as he vomited violently over the side of the boat. "What's wrong " "Doctor Death is seasick. — Kate Forsyth

Oxygen was called flammable air for a while, but it didn't catch on. — Mark Forsyth

The studio system reminds me of the stock market. — Bill Forsyth

At the moment, my mother is the only one left in Glasgow, although it's certainly my home. — Bill Forsyth

The beauty of merism is that it's absolutely unnecessary. It's words for words' sake: a gushing torrent of invention filled with noun and noun and signifying nothing. Why a rhetorical figure that gabs on and on for no good reason should be central to the rite of marriage is beyond me. — Mark Forsyth

To have no loyalty is to have no dignity, and in the end, no manhood. — Peter Forsyth

It is much harder than you might think to show people your bottom. — Mark Forsyth

If I go out one night, I must stay in the next. It's the same with my golf. If I play one day, I don't play the next. I try to pace myself. — Bruce Forsyth

A round of golf is the ideal antidote to stress. — Bruce Forsyth

I read a lot when I'm away. I love courtroom dramas and I'm always looking for new authors. — Bruce Forsyth

Human beings, for some reason or another, like symmetry. You leave a bunch of them next to a jungle for a couple of days and you'll come back to find an ornamental garden. We take stones and turn them into the Taj Mahal or St. Paul's Cathedral. — Mark Forsyth

So popular is alliteration that in the 1960s it actually made a grab for political power. In the 1960s a vast radical youth movement began campaigning to do things for the sole reason that they began with the same letter. Ban the bomb. Burn your bra. Power to the people. For a moment there it seemed as though alliteration would change the world. But then the spirit of idealism faded and those who had manned the barricades went off and got jobs in marketing. — Mark Forsyth

I'm not even really a joke-teller. I can do ad-lib and banter, but I don't do jokes. — Bruce Forsyth

I've always been a family entertainer. Every show I have done has been suitable for any age - parents never need to worry that, if they pop out of the room, I'll say anything untoward. — Bruce Forsyth