Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
895
AUTHOR:
Mrs. Patrick (Beatrice Stella Tanner Campbell) Campbell (1865–1940)
QUOTATION:
Does it really matter what these affectionate people do—so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!
ATTRIBUTION:
Attributed to MRS. PATRICK CAMPBELL, rebuke to a young actress reporting that an old actor in the company was too fond of the young and handsome leading-man.—Alan Dent, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, p. 78 (1961).
Various versions of the first clause occur in different sources. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 3d ed., p. 128 (1970), has “I don’t mind where people make love…” and Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 15th ed., p. 706, no. 16 (1982), “My dear, I don’t care what they do…”
