Stella Benson

"None of us wants to be average. That we are so is a melancholy fact borne in upon us in middle life, and we do not always relish it."

"All progress in knowledge takes place through the correction of that which has been received on authority, ... but without the huge body of traditional knowledge, accurate and inaccurate together, there would be nothing even to correct. Progress is not made in spite of authority, but by means of it."

"Reason cannot remain a bare intellectual faculty; it must become a faculty of judgment dealing with the question of values."

"Sometimes I pose, but sometimes I pose as posing."

"Twenty-three is said to be the prime of life by those who have reached so far and no farther. It shares this distinction with every age, from ten to three-score and ten."

"The dense and godly wear consistency as a flower, the imaginative fling it joyfully behind them."

"Curiosity needs food as much as any of us, and dies soon if denied it."

"The gardener was one of those who are never surprised without being thunderstruck."

"Islands are gregarious animals, they decorate the ocean in conveys."

"She specialised in feminism, and in her eyes to be a woman was in itself a good argument."

"Call no man foe, but never love a stranger. Build up no plan, nor any star pursue. Go forth with crowds; in loneliness is danger. Thus nothing Fate can send, And nothing Fate can do Shall pierce your peace, my friend."

"The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it."

"High and miraculous skies bless and astonish my eyes; All my dead secrets arise, all my dead stories come true. Here is the Gate to the Sea. Once you unlocked it for me; Now, since you gave me the key, shall I unlock it for you?"

"Did Older and Wiser people ... ever shout and jump with joy in their pyjamas in the moonlight? Did they ever feel just drunk with being young, and in at the start? And were Older and Wiser people's jokes ever funny?"

"It was young David mocked the Philistine. It was young David laughed beside the river. There came his mother — his and yours and mine — With five smooth stones, and dropped them in his quiver."

"The first stone is love, and that shall fail you. The second stone is hate, and that shall fail you. The third stone is knowledge, and that shall fail you. The fourth stone is prayer, and that shall fail you. The fifth stone shall not fail you."

"The fifth stone is a magic stone, my David, Made up of fear and failure, lies and loss."

"Oh, bless your blindness, glory in your groping! Mock at your betters with an upward chin! And, when the moment has gone by for hoping, Sling your fifth stone, O son of mine, and win."

"Grief do I give you — grief and dreadful laughter. Sackcloth for banner, ashes in your wine. Go forth, go forth, nor ask me what comes after. The fifth stone shall not fail you, son of mine."

"The more committees you belong to, the less of ordinary life you will understand. When your daily round becomes nothing more than a daily round of committees you might as well be dead."

"A committee, of course, exists for the purpose of damping enthusiasms."

"What is this Charity, this clinking of money between strangers, and when did Charity cease to be a comforting and secret thing between one friend and another? ... The real Love knows her neighbour face to face, and laughs with him and weeps with him, and eats and drinks with him, so that at last, when his black day dawns, she may share with him, not what she can spare, but all that she has."

"Nearly everybody in San Francisco writes poetry. Few San Franciscans would admit this, but most of them would rather like to have their productions accidentally discovered."

"Always there is a sort of dream of air between you and the hills of California, a veil of unreality in the intervening air. It gives the hills the bloom that peaches have, or grapes in the dew."

""Well, Ipsie, all I can say is..." But she never said anything more, so perhaps that really was all she could say."

"The train ran like a struggling fish on an almost taut line; it jerked helplessly yet strongly from side to side; twitching and tugging, it was drawn through the rippling land towards the ruthless mountains."

"Sometimes I think there are two kinds of people — the autobiographists and the biographists."

"Family jokes, though rightly cursed by strangers, are the bond that keeps most families alive."

"He had always been sartorially unlucky; he had always suffered ... from the devilishness of clothes. A conspiracy of tailors and outfitters, as it seemed to him, caused him always to be nipped at the armpits by waistcoats, irked across the back by coats, deserted by studs, tortured by shoes, blistered by socks, betrayed by sock-suspenders and braces."

"Cows in India occupy the same position in society as women did in England before they got the vote. Woman was revered but not encouraged. Her life was one long obstacle race owing to the anxiety of man to put pedestals at her feet. While she was falling over the pedestals she was soothingly told that she must occupy a Place Apart—and indeed, so far Apart did her place prove to be that it was practically out of earshot. The cow in India finds her position equally lofty and tiresome. You practically never see a happy cow in India."

"We travel because we do not know. We know that we do not know the best before we start. That is why we start. But we forget that we do not know the worst either. That is why we come back."

"Los Angeles is a sophisticated city; it has no eccentricities and no heart."