Quote collection
62 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"But one wants the idea of Death, you know, as something large and unknowable, something that allows a person to stretch himself out. Especially one wants it if one is tired. Or perhaps what one wants is simply a release from sensation, from all consciousness for ever."
"Fourteen-year-old, why must you giggle and dote, Fourteen-year-old, why are you such a goat? I'm fourteen years old, that is the reason, I giggle and dote in season."
"If there wasn't death, I think you couldn't go on."
"You must have some money if you are going to live simply. It need not be much, but you must have some."
"Life in the [London] suburb is richer at the lower levels. At these levels the people are not self-conscious at all, they are at liberty to be as eccentric as they please, they do not know that they are eccentric."
"I like food, I like stripping vegetables of their skins, I like to have a slim young parsnip under my knife."
"If a lady comes up to you and tells you that your dear mama is lying in a faint on the pavement round the corner, don't you believe her, don't have anything to do with her, do not go with her into the cab. It is the White Slave Traffic."
"It is the privilege of the rich To waste the time of the poor To water with tears in secret A tree that grows in secret That bears fruit in secret That ripened falls to the ground in secret And manures the parent tree Oh the wicked tree of hatred and the secret The sap rising and the tears falling."
"As Nature is always careless and indifferent Who sees, who steps, means nothing and this is pretty."
"Cry pretty, pretty, pretty and you'll be able Very soon not even to cry pretty And so be delivered entirely from humanity This is prettiest of all, it is very pretty."
"I made Man with too many faults. Yet I love him. And if he wishes, I have a home above for him."
"The flower and fruit of love are mine The ant, the fieldmouse and the mole"
"Christianity in the suburb is cheerful. The church is a centre of social activity and those who go to church need never be lonely."
"I'm sorry to say my dear wife is a dreamer, and as she dreams she gets paler and leaner. Then be off to your Dream, with his fly-away hat, I stay with the girls who are happy and fat."
"Coleridge received the Person from Porlock And ever after called him a curse, Then why did he hurry to let him in? He could have hid in the house."
"This is the simplest of all thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god."
"My friendships, they are a very strong part of my life, they are as light as gossamer but also they are as strong as steel. And I cannot throw them off, nor altogether do with them or without them. And I love them at the point where they say: It is nice to see you again. And I love them too at the point when they say: Good-bye, come again soon. The rhythm of friendship is a very good rhythm."
"I only asked my friends to be friendly and polite, I found them indifferent and censorious; The one I left to silence, the other to reproach: God send me over all such friends victorious."
"Youth is an arithmetical statement of passing interest, each hour eats it up."
"Truth is far and flat, and fancy is fiery; and truth is cold, and people feel the cold, and they may wrap themselves against it in fancies that are fiery, but they should not call them facts; and, generally, poets do not; they are shrewd, they feel the cold, too, but they know a hawk from a handsaw, a fact from a fancy, as none knows better."