SundayMay 18, 2025
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
Only connect!
Riposte of 'that old lady in the anecdote who was accused by her nieces of being illogical,' Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?
How do I know what I think until I see what I say?
I have only got down on to paper, really, three types of people: the person I think I am, the people who irritate me, and the people I'd like to be.
Railway termini ... are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas! we return.
Personal relations are the important thing for ever and ever, and not this outer life of telegrams and anger.
One always tends to overpraise a long book, because one has got through it.
Ideas are fatal to caste.
Happiness in the ordinary sense is not what one needs in life, though one is right to aim at it. The true satisfaction is to come through, and see those whom one lives come through.
I distrust Great Men. They produce a desert of uniformity around them and often a pool of blood too, and I always feel a little man's pleasure when they come a cropper.
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible.
Failure or success seem to have been allotted to men by their stars. But they retain the power of wriggling, of fighting with their star or against it, and in the whole universe the only really interesting movement is this wriggle.
One of the evils of money is that it tempts us to look at it rather than at the things that it buys.
Curiosity is one of the lowest of the human faculties. You will have noticed in daily life that when people are inquisitive they nearly always have bad memories and are usually stupid at bottom.
Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.
There lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer.
The traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it.
They go forth [into the world] with well-developed bodies, fairly developed minds and undeveloped hearts. An undeveloped heart not a cold one. The difference is important.
There are only two rules. One is E. M. Forster's guide to Alexandria; the best way to know Alexandria is to wander aimlessly. The second is from the Psalms; grin like a dog and run about through the city.
So, Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
Tolerance is a very dull virtue. It is boring. Unlike love, it has always had a bad press. It is negative. It merely means putting up with people, being able to stand things.
Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think creation's.
The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken.
Spoon-feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
Unless we remember we cannot understand.
Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy.
Yes, oh dear, yes, the novel tells a story.
Beethovens Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated into the ear of Man.
At night, when the curtains are drawn and the fire flickers, my books attain a collective dignity.
The final test for a novel will be our affection for it, as it is the test of our friends, and of anything else which we cannot define.
[The Englishman] has been taught at his public school that feeling is bad form. He must not express great joy or sorrow, or even open his mouth too wide when he talks his pipe might fall out if he did.
I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.
The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
Books have to be read. It is the only way of discovering what they contain. A few savage tribes eat them, but reading is the only method of assimilation revealed to the West.
Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due she reminds us too much of a prima donna.
America is rather like life. You can usually find in it what you look for. It will probably be interesting, and it is sure to be large.
The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.
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.
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch.
I would rather be a coward than brave because people hurt you when you are brave.
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