Katharine Whitehorn Quotes

I blame Rousseau, myself. “Man is born free”, indeed. Man is not born free, he is born attached to his mother by a cord and is not capable of looking after himself for at least seven years (seventy in some cases).

I yield to no one in my admiration for the office as a social center, but it’s no place actually to get any work done.

I am all for people having their heart in the right place; but the right place for a heart is not inside the head.

A good listener is not someone with nothing to say. A good listener is a good talker with a sore throat.

The best career advice to give to the young is, ‘Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.’

From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.

People get a bad impression of it [the English climate] by continually trying to treat it as if it was a bank clerk, who ought to be on time on Tuesday next, instead of philosophically seeing it as a painter, who may do anything so long as you don’t try to predict what.

I wouldn’t say when you’ve seen one Western you’ve seen the lot; but when you’ve seen the lot you get the feeling you’ve seen one.

Outside every thin woman is a fat man trying to get in.

The wind of change, whatever it is, blows most freely through an open mind.

Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for it.

The great rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you.

When it comes to housework the one thing no book of household management can ever tell you is how to begin. Or maybe I mean why.

Any committee that is the slightest use is composed of people who are too busy to want to sit on it for a second longer than they have to.

I just wish, when neither of us has written to my husband’s mother, I didn’t feel so much worse about it than he does.

Have you ever taken something out of the clothes hamper because it had become, relatively, the cleanest thing?

It is a pity that so often the only way to treat girls like people seems to be to treat them like boys.

It’s a pity more men are not bastards by birth instead of vocation.

There are some circles in America where it seems to be more socially acceptable to carry a hand-gun than a packet of cigarettes.

Hats divide generally into three classes: offensive hats, defensive hats, and shrapnel.

A food is not necessarily essential just because your child hates it.

American patriotism is generally something that amuses Europeans, I suppose because children look idiotic saluting the flag and because the constitution contains so many cracks through which the lawyers may creep.

Filing is concerned with the past; anything you actually need to see again has to do with the future.

A good marriage is like Dr Who’s Tardis: small and banal from the outside but spacious and interesting from within.

The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.

Have you ever taken anything out of the clothes basket because it had become, relatively, the cleaner thing?

No nice men are good at getting taxis.

I am firm. You are obstinate. He is a pig-headed fool.