All Quotes

"Men are always the same. Fear makes them cruel."

"Tahiti is very far away, and I knew that I should never see it again. A chapter of my life was closed, and I felt a little nearer to inevitable death."

"Both these men are in love with Natasha, Count Rostov's younger daughter, and in her Tolstoy has created the most delightful girl in fiction. Nothing is so difficult as to portray a young girl who is at once charming and interesting. Generally the young girls of fiction are colorless (Amelia in Vanity Fair), priggish (Fanny in Mansfield Park), too clever by half (Constantia Durham in The Egoist), or little geese (Dora in David Copperfield), silly flirts or innocent beyound belief. It is understandable that they should be an awkward subject for the novelist to deal with, for at that tender age the personality is undeveloped. Similarly a painter can only make a face interesting when the vicissitudes of life, thought, love and suffering have given it character. In the portrait of a girl the best he can do is to represent the charm and beauty of youth. But Natasha is entirely natural. She is sweet, sensitive, and sympathetic, willful, childish, womanly already, idealistic, quick-tempered, warm-hearted, headstrong, capricious and in everything enchanting. Tolstoy created many women and they are wonderfully true to life, but never another who wins the affection of the reader as does Natasha."

"It's no good trying to keep up old friendships. It's painful for both sides. The fact is, one grows out of people, and the only thing is to face it."

"Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job."

"Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all."

"...you know what the critics are. If you tell the truth they only say you're cynical and it does an author no good to get a reputation for cynicism."

"It's very hard to be a gentleman and a writer."

"...when you are young you take the kindness people show you as your right..."

"The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes..."

"There is no silence in the East."

"Mandalay has its name; the falling cadence of the lovely word has gathered about itself the chiaroscuro of romance."

"The Chinese are the aristocracy of the East."

"They are like a face full of character that intrigues and excites you, but that on closer acquaintance you discover is merely the mask of a vulgar soul. Such is Tourane."

"I would sooner read a time-table or a catalogue than nothing at all. ... They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written."

"There is a sort of man who pays no attention to his good actions, but is tormented by his bad ones. This is the type that most often writes about himself."

"There is only one thing about which I am certain, and this is that there is very little about which one can be certain."

"I have not been afraid of excess: excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."

"...the future will one day be the present and will seem as unimportant as the present does now."

"...we learn resignation not by our own suffering, but by the suffering of others."

"You are not angry with people when you laugh at them. Humour teaches tolerance, and the humorist, with a smile and perhaps a sigh, is more likely to shrug his shoulders than to condemn."

"I do not believe they are right who say that the defects of famous men should be ignored. I think it is better that we should know them. Then, though we are conscious of having faults as glaring as theirs, we can believe that that is no hindrance to our achieving also something of their virtues."

"The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill."

"Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young."

"... habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous."

"The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind. Failure makes people bitter and cruel."

"I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell... their heart's in the right place, but their head is a thoroughly inefficient organ."

"I have been forced to conclude from this that we know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits."

"It is salutary to train oneself to be no more affected by censure than by praise..."

"The great critic ... must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things."

"Tradition is a guide and not a jailer."

"There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless."

"Old age has its pleasures, which, though different, are not less than the pleasures of youth."

"Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long."

"Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved."

"We are not the same persons this year as last ; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person."

"Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul."

"By the time I was twenty-four I had constructed a complete system of philosophy. It rested on two principles: The Relativity of Things and The Circumferentiality of Man. I have since discovered that the first was not a very original discovery. It may be that the other was profound, but though I have racked my brains I cannot for the life of me remember what it was."

"Aren't you missing a lot of fun? You know, one's young for such a little while."

"It's so wonderful to shut out the world for a few hours. Rest, peace, silence, solitude. You would think they were luxuries that only the very rich can afford, and yet they cost nothing. Strange that they should be so hard to come by."

""God? What has God to do with it? Do you suppose I can look at the misery in which the vast majority of the people live in the world and believe in God? Do you suppose I believe in God who let the Bolsheviks kill my poor, simple father? Do you know what I think? I think God has been dead for millions upon millions of years. I think when he took infinity and set in motion the process that has resulted in the universe, he died, and for ages and ages men have sought and worshipped a being who ceased to exist in the act of making existence possible for them." He wondered if there was anything in what she said, this woman with her tragic history and miserable life, that God had died when he created the wide world; and was he lying dead on some vast mountain range on a dead star or was he absorbed into the universe he caused to be?"

"You know, a thing that has always struck me is people's fiendish eagerness to give anyone away. They pretend it's public spirit, I don't believe a word of it; I don't believe it's even, as a rule anyway, the desire for notoriety; I believe it's just due to the baseness of human nature that gets a kick out of injuring others. There's a whole mass of people who can't wait if they have the chance of doing down someone who's trying to get away with anything."

"The world he knew, the peaceful happy world of the surface, was like a pretty lake in which were reflected the dappled clouds and the willows that grew on its bank, where carefree boys paddled their canoes and the girls with them trailed their fingers in the soft water. It was terrifying to think that below, just below, dangerous weeds waved tentacles to ensnare you and all manner of strange, horrible things, poisonous snakes, fish with murderous jaws, waged an unceasing and hidden warfare."

"It was too sweeping a judgement to be satisfactory; the idea dawned in Charley's mind that perhaps men were more complicated than he had imagined, and if you just said that a man was this or that you couldn't get very far."

"Stunning, isn't it?" he said then, giving her arm an affectionate pressure. "Yes, it's all right. What business is it of yours?" Charley turned his head sharply. No one had ever asked him a question like that about a picture before. "What on earth d'you mean? It's one of the great portraits of the world. Titian, you know." "I daresay. But what's it got to do with you?" Charley didn't quite know what to say. "Well, it's a very fine picture and it's beautifully painted. Of course it doesn't tell a story if that's what you mean." "No, I don't," she smiled. "I don't suppose it's got anything to do with me really." "Then why should you bother about it?"

"It was like one of those comedies where the sets are good and the clothes pretty, where the dialogue is clever and the acting competent, so that you pass an agreeable evening, but a week later cannot remember a thing about it."

"It looked as though the people we thought we knew best carried secrets that they didn't even know themselves. Charley had a sudden inkling that human beings were infinitely mysterious. The fact was that you knew nothing about anybody."

"I'm beginning to think it's very hard to know what to believe in this world."

"I made up my mind long ago that life was too short to do anything for myself that I could pay others to do for me."

"I don't believe in the god of the Christians who gave his son in order to save mankind. That's a myth. But why should it have arisen if it didn't express some deep-seated intuition in men? I don't know what I believe, because it's instinctive, and how can you describe an instinct with words? I have an instinct that the power that rules us, human beings, animals and things, is a dark and cruel power and that everything has to be paid for, a power that demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and that though we may writhe and squirm we have to submit, for the power is ourselves."