GEORGE V

I venture to allude to the impression which seemed generally to prevail among their brethren across the seas, that the Old Country must wake up if she intends to maintain her old position of pre-eminence in her colonial trade against foreign competitors.

After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in twelve months.

Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government.

How is the Empire?

My father was frightened of his mother; I was frightened of my father, and I am damned well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me.

Always go to the bathroom when you have a chance.

I ask you, men of all classes, to come forward voluntarily, and take your share in the fight.

In ancient days the darkest moment has ever produced in men of our race the sternest resolve.

To enable our country to organize more effectively its military resources in the present great struggle for the cause of civilization, I have, acting on the advice of my Ministers, deemed it necessary to enroll every able-bodied man between the ages of eighteen and forty-one

I wonder what she [his grandmother Queen Victoria] would have thought of a Labor Government?

Is it possible that my people live in such awful conditions?... If I had to live in conditions like that I would be a revolutionary myself.

To the distinguished representatives of the commercial interests of the Empire ... I venture to allude to the impression which seemed generally to prevail among our brethren overseas, that the old country must wake up if she intends to maintain her old position of pre-eminence in her Colonial trade against foreign competitors.

This is absolutely terrible. I’m quite unprepared for it. David [his older brother] has been trained for this all his life. I’ve never even seen a state paper.

Well, what are you socialists going to do about me?

I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come than the massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.

I look upon him as the greatest criminal known for having plunged the world into this ghastly war.

I may be uninspired but I’ll be damned if I’m an alien.

The Old Country must wake up if she intends to maintain her old position of pre-eminence in her Colonial trade against foreign competitors.

If you do not seek to publish what you have written, then you are not a writer and you never will be.

I thought men like that shot themselves.

I cannot understand it, after all I am only a very ordinary sort of fellow.

Data is what distinguishes the dilettante from the artist

Golf always makes me so damned angry.

Dialogue is character and character is plot.

No more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris.