Quote collection
679 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Wherever we turn we find that the real obstacles to peace are human will and feeling, human convictions, prejudices, opinions. If we want to get rid of war we must get rid first of all of its psychological causes. Only when this has been done will the rulers of the nations even desire to get rid of the economic and political causes."
"I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.'"
"I don't care where I'm from, nor where I'm going. From hell to hell."
"Words play an enormous part in our lives and are therefore deserving of the closest study."
"The natural rhythm of human life is routine punctuated by orgies."
"No Romeo-and-Juliet acts, no nonsense about Love with a large L, none of that popular song claptrap with its skies of blue, dreams come true, heaven with you. Just sensuality for its own sake."
"The horror no less than the charm of real life consists precisely in the recurrent actualization of the inconceivable"
"I will have no Parsons around me but such as drink deep, ride to Hounds and caress the Wives and Daughters of their Parishioners.A Virtuous Parson does nothing to test or exercise the Faith of his Flock."
"...it is not what one has experienced but what one does with what one has experienced that matters."
"The flower of the present rosily blossomed."
"The nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upon them, tend to acquire a taste for more."
"Can you say something about nothing?"
"The consistent thinker, the consistently moral man, is either a walking mummy or else, if he has not succeeded in stifling all his vitality, a fanatical monomaniac."
"The old idea that words possess magical powers is false; but its falsity is the distortion of a very important truth. Words do have a magical effect - but not in the way that magicians supposed, and not on the objects they were trying to influence. Words are magical in the way they affect the minds of those who use them."
"Well... ...That's what you always forget, isn't it? I mean, you forget to pay attention to what's happening. And that's the same as not being here and now."
"The fact that people are shocked is the best proof that they need shocking."
"The pursuit of truth is just a polite name for the intellectual's favorite pastime of substituting simple and therefore false abstractions for the living complexities of reality."
"The only consistent people are the dead"
"Only a person with a Best Seller mind can write Best Sellers."
"Societies are composed of individuals and are good only insofar as they help individuals to realize their potentialities and to lead a happy and creative life."