Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Man has to pick up the use of his functions as he goes along- especially the function of Love.
No one is more triumphant than the man who chooses a worthy subject and masters all its facts.
Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?
It is so difficult - at least, I find it difficult - to understand people who speak the truth.
Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism.
Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.
Don't believe those lies about intellectual people. They're only written to soothe the majority.
The crime of suicide lies rather in its disregard for the feelings of those whom we leave behind.
A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist.
So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
Pity wraps the student of the past in an ambrosial cloud, and washes his limbs with eternal youth.
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of man.
Life is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.
I have always found writing pleasant and don't understand what people mean by 'throes of creation.'
Life - No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.
One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.
I won't be protected. I will choose for myself what is ladylike and right. To shield me is an insult.
One doesn't come to Italy for niceness," was the retort; "one comes for life. Buon giorno! Buon giorno!
If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting--both for us and for her.
The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot.
As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.
“It is Fate that I am here,” persisted George. “But you can call it Italy if it makes you less unhappy.”
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in everyone, even if you do not approve of them.
Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.
Expansion, that is the idea the novelist must cling to, not completion, not rounding off, but opening out.
...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out.
Of course he despised the world as a whole; every thoughtful man should; it is almost a test of refinement.
Their quarrel was no more surprising than are most quarrels — inevitable at the time, incredible afterwards.
I'm a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.
The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not.
Pathos, piety, courage, they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.
One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.
Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.
Characters must not brood too long. They must not waste time running up and down ladders in their own insides.
Growing old is an emotion which comes over us at almost any age; I had it myself between the ages of 25 and 30.
What is the good of your stars and trees, your sunrise and the wind, if they do not enter into our daily lives?
A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
Towns are after all excrescences, grey fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves.
. . . life is sometimes life and sometimes only a drama, and one must learn to distinguish t'other from which . . .
The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.
Hardship is vanishing, but so is style, and the two are more closely connected than the present generation supposes.
The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
One marvels why the middle classes still insist on so much discomfort for their children at such expense to themselves.
But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.
Love is a great force in private life; it is indeed the greatest of all things; but love in public affairs does not work.
It comes to this then: there always have been people like me and always will be, and generally they have been persecuted.