Stiff Upper Lip Quotes

“It was part of war; men died, more would die, that was past, and what mattered now was the business in hand; those who lived would get on with it. Whatever sorrow was felt, there was no point in talking or brooding about it, much less in making, for form’s sake, a parade of it. Better and healthier to forget it, and look to tomorrow.
The celebrated British stiff upper lip, the resolve to conceal emotion which is not only embarrassing and useless, but harmful, is just plain commons sense”
― George MacDonald Fraser, Quartered Safe Out Here: A Harrowing Tale of World War II

“After all, the English are really too much. One can't live in that constipated fashion forever.”
― Paul Bowles, The Spider's House

“27. So often, we go through our battles in private. As it was with me and with many of the women in my generation. We were taught and reared and molded to keep that stiff upper lip and to never explain in public how deeply some people have hurt us. I cannot get away from that mold. I am comfortable in it. I derive my sanity from it.”
― psyche roxas-mendoza

“The smell nearly distracted me from my task, but no-I remained steadfast. Stiff upper lip, Watson! Action! Answers!

THEN bacon.”
― G.S. Denning, The Hell-Hound of the Baskervilles

“Human societies train people to "keep a stiff upper lip" and to "be strong" by which they mean the person should endure negative emotions. This is bad advice. Several branches of science have been studying human thriving. The results, when compiled, point to the fact that people thrive when they feel emotionally good and suffer when they do not.”
― Jeanine Joy, Ph.D.

“Now, clear your minds. It knows what scares you. It has from the very beginning. Don't give it any help, it knows too much already.”
― Poltergeist the movie

“You know the only rule you need to know to get on in this country? ‘Never complain, never explain.”
― Amanda Craig, Hearts and Minds

“I put my chin up and tried to stiffen my upper lip, but found I didn't seem to have any muscles in it.”
― Lynne Reid Banks, The L-Shaped Room

“dear little baby of the folks I work for, I got a present for you .. my whole damn life! I'm handin' it over to you & your ma & pa. if you got no money to pay, I wanna stay anyhow, my pleasure is to wait on you forever. to hell with my children & hooray for you!.. you stayin' up all night fixin' up Character Parts for me! givin' 'em what you call dignity! dignity! you know what your dignity is? a black straw hat with a flower stickin' up in front, hands folded cross my stomach, sayin' the same damn fool things .. only nice & easy & proper!" --trouble in mind (1955)”
― Alice Childress

“If he was paralyzed, we'd have to put in ramps and have things altered for wheelchair access; you can get kitchens refitted; bathrooms altered ... I'd get him a really fast wheelchair. It'd be OK. If he couldn't talk, I'd get him a great computer. Anything can be dealt with, everything can be overcome. Just be alive. Just, please God, I beg you, please, please keep him alive for me.”
― Mindy Hammond, On the Edge

“Behind him, his PA, Mrs Partridge, sat scratchpad in hand, making the Sphinx look like a collection of facial tics.”
― Jodi Taylor, When a Child is Born

“In America, they use exclamation marks to make everything terrific, in France to make everything terrible, but here in England we don't use them at all.”
― Neel Burton

“Was it ghastly?"

I remembered the sunlit summer of 1940, the crowds rushing from Paris, as from a fire, to join the snake-like lines of mattress-topped cars that drove slow, slower and slowest of all just before their closely packed passengers scattered into ditches where the dive bombers still found them. I remembered Nice with its sea and sky and palm trees still as bright as new travel posters and its sidewalks crowded with the most typical of twentieth-century tourists: displaced persons. I remembered the sensation of living in a dull fear-encircled vacuum and the incredulous joy with which I greeted my husband when he arrived hollow-eyed from his narrow escape and long hitch-hike across two countries. I remembered Lyons in the unheated winters, the wind scything between the cliff-like gray houses and inserting itself into the city's labyrinth of passageways. I remembered the turnip meals, the recurrent colds and chilblains, the disinclination to wash in icy water, the sordid temporary lodgings and false identity cards, the drearily uncomfortable atmosphere, and the exhilarating meetings with friends who had also escaped arrest. And then I remembered my husband's arrest and the nightmare that followed.

"Yes," I said, repudiating stiff upper lips, "yes, it was ghastly.”
― Monica Stirling, Ladies with a Unicorn