"To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is – in other words, not a thing, but a think."
"It's very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out of what is already there so that it soon becomes an old acquaintance. Old acquaintances aren't by any means always welcome, but at least one can't be mistaken as to who or what they are."
6 likes
Source: Penelope Fitzgerald (1998). “The Gate of Angels”, p.202, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
About the author
Same author
More quotes by Penelope Fitzgerald
"Helping other people is a drug so dangerous that there is no cure short of total abstention."
"I have remained true to my deepest convictions. I mean the courage of those who are born to be defeated, the weaknesses of the strong, and the tragedy of misunderstandings and missed opportunities, which I have done my best to treat as comedy—for otherwise how can we manage to bear it?"
"It is interesting to note that everyone has a different take on the world, a different opinion, and given the same inputs have completely different outputs."
"If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips."
"The body, then, has a mind of its own. It must follow, then, that the Mind has a body of its own, even if it’s like nothing that we can see around us, or have ever seen."