[on Hector being sacked]
No more genital massage as one speed along leafy suburban roads. No more the bike's melancholy long withdrawing roar as he dropped you at the corner, your honor still intact.
"Felix" The Headmaster
Clive Merrison · 6 quotes
Hector
Richard Griffiths · 4 quotes
Dakin
Dominic Cooper · 2 quotes
Irwin
Stephen Campbell Moore · 2 quotes
Mrs. Lintott
Frances de la Tour · 1 quote
Rudge
Russell Tovey · 1 quote
Scripps
Jamie Parker · 1 quote
The History Boys quotes
Page 1 of 2But this is History. Distance yourselves. Our perspective on the past alters. Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground. We don't see it, and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past. And one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be... even on the Holocaust.
History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind... with a bucket.
How do I define history? It's just one ****in' thing after another.
I said it from the start: you can't polish a turd! (About Rudge)
I want to be up there with Manchester Grammar, Haberdasher Askes, Leighton Park... or is that an open prison? No matter.
I was a geographer. I went to Hull.
I would hate to turn out boys who, in later life, would claim to have a love of literature, or speak of the lure of language, and their love of words. Words, said in a way that's somehow... Welsh.
On enquiry I find his pupils know all the words of "When I'm Cleaning Windows". And Gracie Fields, Dorothy, Gracie Fields.
One oddity: Rudge. And Christ Church of all places! Might get into Loughborough... on a bad year... otherwise all brights!
Pass the parcel. That's sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it, and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys. That's the game I want you to learn. Pass it on.
Remember boys: festoon your answers with gobbets, and you won't go far wrong.
The best moments in reading are when you come across something — a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things — that you'd thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it's as if a hand has come out and taken yours.
The more you read, though, the more you'll see that literature is actually about losers... It's consolation. All literature is consolation.
The truth was, in 1914, Germany doesn't want war. Yeah, there's an arms race, but it's Britain who's leading it. So, why does no one admit this?