Cecil Beaton

A technical failure that shows some attempt at aesthetic expression is of infinitely more value than uninspired success.

— Cecil Beaton

“Be daring, be different, be impractical; be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers.”

— Cecil Beaton

[He stared into the camera] like some sort of an animal gazing from across the back of its sty. (On Winston Churchill)

— Cecil Beaton

More varied than any landscape was the landscape in the sky, with islands of gold and silver, peninsulas of apricot and rose…

— Cecil Beaton

I have the worst ear for criticism, even when I have created a stage set I like, I always hear the woman…

— Cecil Beaton

Americans have an abiding belief in their ability to control reality by purely material means... airline insurance replaces the fear of death…

— Cecil Beaton

Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be…

— Cecil Beaton

On close inspection, this device turned out to be a funereal juke box - the result of mixing Lloyd's of London with…

— Cecil Beaton

All I want is the best of everything and there's very little of that left.

— Cecil Beaton

Love is someone you can be silly with

— Cecil Beaton

Intelligent and alert, wistful but enthusiastic, frank yet tactful, assured without conceit and tender without sentimentality.

— Cecil Beaton

I can't afford a whole new set of enemies.

— Cecil Beaton

Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures…

— Cecil Beaton

San Francisco is perhaps the most European of all American cities

— Cecil Beaton

Miss Marilyn Monroe calls to mind the bouquet of a fireworks display, eliciting from her awed spectators an open-mouthed chorus of ohs…

— Cecil Beaton

You can't teach people photography, they've got to learn how to do it the best way possible for them. They can learn…

— Cecil Beaton

After twenty annual visits, I am still surprised each time I return to see this giant asparagus bed of alabaster and rose…

— Cecil Beaton

What is elegance? Soap and water!

— Cecil Beaton

Mrs Woolf's complaint should be addressed to her creator, who made her, rather than me.

— Cecil Beaton

The truly fashionable are beyond fashion.

— Cecil Beaton

I want to make photographs of very elegant women taking the lipstick off their teeth.

— Cecil Beaton