Cecil Beaton was an innovator, both in his photography and his Academy Award and Tony Award winning costume design. His desire to keep working and make a difference was obvious in his later years when a stroke paralyzed him, but he found ways to modify his camera so that he could continue doing what he loved. Below are some words of wisdom from Sir Cecil Beaton:
All I want is the best of everything and there's very little of that left. Cecil Beaton
Americans have an abiding belief in their ability to control reality by purely material means... airline insurance replaces the fear of death with the comforting prospect of cash.
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 of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Cecil Beaton
I can't afford a whole new set of enemies.
Cecil Beaton
I have the worst ear for criticism; even when I have created a stage set I like, I always hear the woman in the back of the dress circle who says she doesn't like blue. Cecil Beaton
More varied than any landscape was the landscape in the sky, with islands of gold and silver, peninsulas of apricot and rose against a background of many shades of turquoise and azure.
Cecil Beaton
Mrs Woolf's complaint should be addressed to her creator, who made her, rather than me.
Cecil Beaton
Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly.
Cecil Beaton
On close inspection, this device turned out to be a funereal juke box - the result of mixing Lloyd's of London with the principle of the chewing gum dispenser.
Cecil Beaton
Perhaps the world's second-worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore.
Cecil Beaton
San Francisco is perhaps the most European of all American cities.
Cecil Beaton
What is elegance? Soap and water!
Cecil Beaton