The Quotebook
On money and want.
A Bristol boyhood without a bicycle, and what success does not repair.
He was careful with money all his life and never pretended otherwise. What is striking in the record is how often he connected it back to Bristol.
The lines.
19 quotationsVerified
“I’ll beg, I’ll borrow, I’ll — please, Judge, I’ll sell anything I’ve got until I get going again. And she’ll never go hungry, she’ll never be without clothes, not so long as I’ve got two good hands, so help me!”
Cary Grant as Roger Adams · 1941 · film · Penny Serenade (1941)
Roger Adams pleads with a judge not to take his adopted daughter. The scene brought Grant his first Academy Award nomination.
Spoken as Roger Adams in Penny Serenade (1941).
Verified
“It always amazes me that those who fight for the luxuries of life are the first to resent those who have them.”
Cary Grant · 1964 · interview · Motion Picture
On envy.
'Love – That's All Cary Grant Ever Thinks About,' Motion Picture, June 1964.
Verified
“I suppose the fact is I love feeling free inside even better than I love you, Julia.”
Attributed
“I’ve been called cheap so often I no longer wince at the word.”
Verified
“No money, no material reward is comparable to the praise, the shouts of well done and accompanying pat on the back of one’s fellowman.”
Cary Grant · 1963 · memoir · Ladies' Home Journal
Recalling schoolboy applause, and the applause that followed it for the rest of his life.
Ladies' Home Journal, autobiographical series, 1963.
Verified
“Anyone can do well... It’s all out there waiting for you to take. But first you must reach out and get it. You must work for your riches. You cannot expect it to fall into your lap.”
Verified
“In about a week, you’ll either collect or lose your shirt.”
Cary Grant as Geoff Carter · 1939 · film · Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Gallows humour after a fatal crash.
Spoken as Geoff Carter in Only Angels Have Wings (1939).
Verified
“The world is changing out there. There’s a lot of new, exciting ideas running around. Some of them might be right and some might be cockeyed, but they’re affecting all our lives.”
Verified
“I want to know how I stand, where I fit into the picture, what it’s all going to mean to me. I can’t find that out sitting behind some desk in an office, so as soon as I get enough money together, I’m gonna knock off for a while.”
Cary Grant as Johnny Case · 1938 · film · Holiday (1938)
Johnny Case explains the holiday of the title — an argument Grant himself would make about his own retirement thirty years later.
Spoken as Johnny Case in Holiday (1938).
Verified
“My father made no more than a modest living and we had little money. Yet today I am considered, except among the wealthy, to be wealthy.”
Cary Grant · 1963 · memoir · Ladies' Home Journal
On the distance between his Bristol childhood and his later fortune.
Ladies' Home Journal, autobiographical series, 1963.
Attributed
“When I was a boy, I could not afford a bicycle. Now I could buy a hundred, and I want none of them.”
Attributed
“Do your job and demand your compensation — but in that order.”
Verified
“An expensive tie is not a luxury — the wrinkles fall out quicker and the knot will hold better.”
Verified
“I’m fascinated now by the economics of the movie business. I’m one of these people who can’t wait to see what will happen with Ted Turner and MGM.”
Verified
“I’m so broke I’m in two halves.”
Ernie Mott · 1944 · film · None But the Lonely Heart (1944)
Ernie Mott, a restless drifter in London's East End, laments his poverty.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Ernie Mott in None But the Lonely Heart (1944).
Verified
“I’m sorry you think more of your diamonds than you do of your soul.”
Captain Cummings · 1933 · film · She Done Him Wrong (1933)
Cummings, posing as a temperance reformer, chides Lady Lou about her priorities.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Captain Cummings in She Done Him Wrong (1933).
Verified
“It’s a conspiracy, I tell you. The minute you start they put you on the all-American sucker list. You start out to build a home and wind up in the poorhouse.”
Jim Blandings · 1948 · film · Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)
Blandings rants about the escalating cost of building his house in Connecticut.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Jim Blandings in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948).
Verified
“They say money talks — all it’s ever said to me is goodbye.”
Ernie Mott · 1944 · film · None But the Lonely Heart (1944)
Ernie makes a rueful joke about his chronic lack of funds.
Screen dialogue, spoken by Ernie Mott in None But the Lonely Heart (1944).
Verified
“Well, I did do that, but it seemed like a sensible thing to do. After all, the buttons still were perfectly all right, and I would need them in case the buttons on my good shirts went bad.”