"I had no idea Gwendolen knew any foreign languages, and I am not sure that I approve. It's the sort of thing that can only broaden a girl's mind."

Tom Stoppard Literature See all quotes by Tom Stoppard →

React to this quote

More by Tom Stoppard

“What a fine persecution—to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.”

“Words, words. They’re all we have to go on.”

“(an anguished cry): Consistency is all I ask! (low, wry rhetoric): Give us this day our daily mask.”

“All your life you live so close to truth, it becomes a permanent blur in the corner of your eye, and when something nudges it into outline it is like being ambushed by a grotesque.”

“We’re more of the blood, love and rhetoric school. Well, I’ll leave the choice to you, if there is anything to choose between them. They’re hardly divisible, sir—well, I can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and I can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and I can do you all three concurrent or consecutive, but I can’t do you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory—they’re all blood, you see.”

“Maidens aspiring to godheads— And vice versa—”

Resonant Thoughts

"I know what you're thinking!"

— Dylan Moran

Entertainment1971

#mind

"The proper method for hastening the decay of error is not by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contr…"

— William Godwin

Literature1756–1836

#mind

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved…"

— Jesse Jackson

Politics1941–2026

#mind

"The good thing about Higgs is that depending on the mass it actually manifests itself inside the detector in completely different ways. And many different ways depending on the mass, and we have to co…"

— Tejinder Virdee

Science1952

#nature