Quote collection
817 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"if newspapers were written by people whose sole object in writing was to tell the truth about politics and the truth about art we should not believe in war, and we should believe in art."
"Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words."
"Romantic Love is only an Illusion. A story one makes up in One's Mind about Another Person."
"Young women... you are, in my opinion, disgracefully ignorant. You have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an empire or led an army into battle. The plays by Shakespeare are not by you, and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse?"
"King old ladies assure us that cats are often the best judges of character. A cat will always to to a good man, they say."
"The most extraordinary thing about writing is that when you've struck the right vein, tiredness goes. It must be an effort, thinking wrong."
"Whenever you see a board up with "Trespassers will be prosecuted," trespass at once."
"One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin."
"what she loved: life, London, this moment of june."
"Finally, I would thank, had I not lost his name and address, a gentleman in America, who has generously and gratuitously corrected the punctuation, the botany, the entomology, the geography, and the chronology of previous works of mine and will, I hope, not spare his services on the present occasion."
"I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual"
"Jealousy ... survives every other passion of mankind."
"It seemed to her such nonsense-inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that."
"Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action."
"...she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day."
"Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet."
"The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers."
"If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure - the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?"
"Listening (had there been any one to listen) from the upper rooms of the empty house only gigantic chaos streaked with lightning could have been heard tumbling and tossing, as the winds and waves disported themselves like the amorphous bulks of leviathans whose brows are pierced by no light of reason, and mounted one on top of another, and lunged and plunged in the darkness or the daylight (for night and day, month and year ran shapelessly together) in idiot games, until it seemed as if the universe were battling and tumbling, in brute confusion and wanton lust aimlessly by itself."
"But then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, and with extravagant enthusiasm."