Phyllis Bottome

"There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them."

"In my early life, and probably even today, it is not sufficiently understood that a child's education should include at least a rudimentary grasp of religion, sex, and money. Without a basic knowledge of these three primary facts in a normal human being’s life — subjects which stir the emotions, create events and opportunities, and if they do not wholly decide must greatly influence an individual’s personality — no human being’s education can have a safe foundation."

"There is no thermometer for wants!"

"Knowledge cannot be changed, but the use to which it may be put can very easily be changed."

"Even not being liked has a certain virtue about it, if the reason for the dislike does not lie in yourself!"

"Physical inferiority is always stressed rather than relieved by a militaristic rule; so that it would not surprise me to find that the half of the human race that produces and trains the other half, will be once more degraded! One must not forget that many women will like it better. For one pets what one degrades; and one has to support what one has enfeebled."

""Ought"! What an ugly word that is!"

"Even the slightest failure was an indignity to Olaf; but to Hans failure had no more moral significance than success."

"When you know a person particularly well, you cannot escape their ruffled feelings."

"Darkness began to drink up the last cold light upon the mountainside."

"Every hen thinks she has laid the best egg! Can we not all believe as we choose? But the choice of others — what is that to us? Let them alone — Nazis and Communists. How do we know that they are not two ways of avoiding the same thing?"

"No emergency excuses you from exercising tolerance."

"[T]o be a Jew is to belong to an old harmless race that has lived in every country in the world; and that has enriched every country it has lived in.It is to be strong with a strength that has outlived persecutions. It is to be wise against ignorance, honest against piracy, harmless against evil, industrious against idleness, kind against cruelty! It is to belong to a race that has given Europe its religion; its moral law; and much of its science — perhaps even more of its genius — in art, literature and music.This is to be a Jew; and you know now what is required of you! You have no country but the world; and you inherit nothing but wisdom and brotherhood. I do not say that there are no bad Jews — userers; cowards; corrupt and unjust persons — but such people are also to be found among Christians. I only say to you this is to be a good Jew. Every Jew has this aim brought before him in his youth. He refuses it at his peril; and at his peril he accepts it."

"[H]urt vanity is one of the cruellest of mortal wounds."

"I am never at picnics. The ground was not meant to be sat upon in its raw state, I feel sure, and I prefer my food without either caterpillars or drafts!"

"A blossom must break the sheath it has been sheltered by."

"I have prized courage. For with courage a human being is safe enough. And without it — he is never for one instant safe!"

"The words her father had said to her, echoed over and over in her memory — "Love generously, wisely, and without haste!" She thought that wisdom was in the simple joy of her lover’s eyes; about generosity Freya did not think at all — for those who practise it never weigh it — but the word "haste" she blotted out of her mind."

"When lightning strikes, the mouse is sometimes burned with the farm."

"It is you men who make war! ... We, who have children, would never make it! Why should a woman be broken up in pain, to give her child life, only to see him carried away from her, to make food for guns?"

"Curses are children of hate; they belong to the wrong family! Prayers are better than curses!"

"Time stood as still as an enemy in ambush."

"It is a very dangerous thing to have an idea that you will not practise."

"Truth is its own defence."

"This death...is not a great affair! Think — it happens once only — to each of us—as birth does. What do you know about being born? That — and no more — will you know about the act of death."

"All persecution is a sign of fear; for if we did not fear the power of an opinion different from our own, we should not mind others holding it."

"It is a good thing to learn early that other people's opinions do not matter, unless they happen to be true."

"That a Jew is despised or persecuted is bad for him, of course — but far worse for the Christian who does it — for although persecuted he can remain a good Jew — whereas no Christian who persecutes can possibly remain — if he ever was one — a good Christian!"

"Our responsibility to ourselves comes first — because in a sense what one is oneself is the responsibility that one has for others!"

"He was so nearly honest a man, that his undigested lie, mortally disagreed with him."

"Her religion was that of all artists — obedience to the laws of her creative art."

"The boy still has that uneasy half-deluded love a man never wholly loses for his mother; but I should suppose that the girl Gillian has emptied from her hard little heart the last traces of her childhood's affection for her mother. Both children were no doubt used as active recipients for their parents' conflict. They were filled, poor little empty cups, by their parents, with the poison of their differences; and then passed from one to the other."

"Psychology...is a science, not a sort of Savonarola. It cannot reform people against their wills. It can only provide a better method of mixing the human ingredients presented to it. As it is a social science it must depend as much upon the patient's willingness to be cured, as upon the physician's skill in curing. There is neither force nor magic in psychiatry."

"When a reserved person once begins to talk, nothing can stop him, and he does not want to have to listen, until he has quite finished his unfamiliar exertion."

"A man whose every exertion is bent upon showing up the flaws in his wife’s character must be at least partially responsible for some of them."

"Neither situations nor people can be altered by the interference of an outsider. If they are to be altered, that alteration must come from within."

"It is true that her heart is sick, but where there is laughter there is always more health than sickness."

"The only creative power I know is that of what might roughly be called "love"; not of course a sentimental love: a far more impersonal and less individual emotion. I sometimes think that migratory birds may have it for each other. They fly in the same direction, and have never been seen to interfere with each other's flights."

"A red-hot belief in eternal glory is probably the best antidote to human panic that there is."

"Neither saints nor angels have ever increased my faith in this enigma Life; but what are called "common men and women" have increased it."

"I wonder how often not the intention but the desire springs up in a doctor's mind: "Can I let this human being out of the trap of Life?""

"A doctor is a man who, if his career is well-chosen, looks upon himself as a guardian of life; he cannot take lightly what infringes the rights of his great charge.And yet can life be made undignified by any act of man? Life is being interrupted on these nights by man's obscenity, as nature is interrupted by storms, or by the explosions of pent-up gases; but such catastrophes are not permanent, as are the laws of nature. Nor are these cruel obscenities from the innocent skies, made by man against his brother, capable of inflicting any real indignity upon life. They will cease, and life itself will be unchanged by them."

"Morale is not a single instinct. It has many ingredients. A sense of personal responsibility, the natural courage of an individual, the amount of his acquired self-discipline — and above all his interest in others — these together make up the spirit of morale."

"I believe that all daughters, even when most aggravated by their mothers, have a secret respect for them. They believe perhaps that they can do everything better than their mothers can, and many things they can do better, but they have not yet lived long enough to be sure how successfully they will meet the major emergencies of life, which lie, sometimes quite creditably, behind their mothers."