Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.
My conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.
While her lips talked culture, her heart was planning to invite him to tea
If there is on earth a house with many mansions, it is the house of words.
The more highly public life is organized the lower does its morality sink.
One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate.
Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
There's enough sorrow in the world, isn't there, without trying to invent it.
She must be assured that it is not a criminal offense to love at first sight.
Words deserted him immediately. He could only speak when he was not asked to.
Surely the only sound foundation for a civilization is a sound state of mind.
Suspense: the only literary tool that has any effect upon tyrants and savages.
Italy and London are the only places where I don't feel to exist on sufferance.
One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life.
Those who search for truth are too conscious of the maze to be hard on others...
You want to love everyone equally, and that's worse than impossible--it's wrong.
The sun was already declining and each of the trees held a premonition of night.
Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think, creation's.
Neanderthal man listened to stories, if one may judge by the shape of his skull.
It was unbearable, and he thought again, 'How unhappy I am!' and became happier.
One can run away from women, turn them out, or give in to them. No fourth course.
Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce "boum.
I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the respectability, the petty unselfishness.
Let her go to Italy!" he cried. "Let her meddle with what she doesn't understand!
I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.
We are all like Scheherazade's husband, in that we want to know what happens next.
If God could tell the story of the Universe, the Universe would become fictitious.
You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you.
Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvellous than the land.
I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals.
Our final experience, like our first, is conjectural. We move between two darkness's.
Reformers who are obsessed with purity and cannot see that their obsession is impure.
I'd far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children.
The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.
The emotions may be endless. The more we express them, the more we may have to express.
A facade of skyscrapers facing a lake and behind the facade, every type of dubiousness.
The English countryside, its growth and its destruction, is a genuine and tragic theme.
But after all, what have we to do with taverns? Real menace belongs to the drawing-room.
The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
Chess is a forcing house where the fruits of character can ripen more fully than in life
Excuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.
I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.
Axiom : Novel must have either one living character or a perfect pattern: fails otherwise.
By the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes--a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.
I have almost completed a long novel, but it is unpublishable until my death and England's.
Outside the arch, always there seemed another arch. And beyond the remotest echo, a silence.
If we act the truth the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run
To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.
But why I cry out against Rubens is because he painted undressed people instead of naked ones.