novelists-from-england

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"Truth is its own defence."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"[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."

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

"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?"

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

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

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

"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."

"There is no thermometer for wants!"

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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!"

""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."

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

"No emergency excuses you from exercising tolerance."

"[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!"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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!"

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

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

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

"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?""

"Foolish economy and reckless expenditure are indications of an elementary quality. In that sense woman is still something of a savage. She is still less civilized than man, largely because she has not been educated. This may be a very good thing, and it certainly is an agreeable one from the masculine point of view. Whether we consider woman's attitude to the law, to social service, or to war, it is the same thing. In most cases she is lawless; she will obey the law because she is afraid of it, but she will not respect it. For her it is always sic volo, sic jubeo. I suspect that if she had had a share in making the law she would not have been like this, for she would have become aware of the relation between law and life. Roughly she tends to look upon the law as tyrannous if she does not like it, as protective if she does like it. Probably there is little relation between her own moral impulse, which is generous, and the law, which is only just."

"Men have been found to deny woman intellect; they have credited her with instinct, with intuition, with a capacity to correlate cause and effect much as a dog connects its collar with a walk."

"There are human tendencies, such as belief in a divine spirit, painting pictures, making war, composing songs. Are there any special female tendencies? Given that we glimpse what distinguishes man from the beast, is there anything that distinguishes woman from man? ... Questions addressed to women do not always yield the truth; nor do questions addressed to men; for a desire to please, vanity, modesty, interfere. But the same question addressed to a woman may, according to circumstances, be sincerely answered in four ways,—1. Truthfully, with a defensive touch, if she is alone with another woman.2. With intent to cause male rivalry if she is with two men.3. With false modesty and seductive evasiveness if she is with one man and one woman.4. With a clear intention to repel or attract if she is with a man alone.And there are variations of these four cases! A man investigating woman's points of view often finds the response more emotional than intellectual. Owing to the system under which we live, where man is a valuable prey, woman has contracted the habit of trying to attract. Even aggressive insolence on her part may conceal the desire to attract by exasperating."

"It seemed to me that this desertion of the old saloon, child of the taverns where the clipper captains used to meet to drink, I suppose mulled claret and canary wine, is as significant of Finis Bostoniæ as the installation of the most modern repetition plant. For here is a revolution in the mind, which matters more than a revolution in the workshop. The old saloon meant as much to Boston as the learned ones who paced the greensward at Cambridge; it was part of the same adventurous individual life, where a man took a single chance and, when he succeeded, took his pleasure. Now, Boston is socialized industrially, and a new impulse toward efficiency has turned away the flow of its people from the taverns where it used to royster. It is not age which has killed Boston, for no cities die of age; it is the youth of other cities, of young America, who would not let Old Boston live unless it transformed itself as it is doing."

"The solar system is like a roulette gone mad, and the earth is the ball. It's been rolling for millions of years; what's going to happen if it stops? What hole will the ball plump into? Thirty-six — A pocketful of money for everybody — or zero? And the eternal banker sweeps up the stakes?"

"There is no peace in Chicago. In Chicago the past and the future give birth to an unruly being that angrily shakes the fetters of one tradition as it creates another which it thrown away as it goes, like a snake which wearies of its skin and sloughs it off for a new one. It is a city of terror and light, untamed and unwearied. It has harnessed a white-hot energy to beginnings; upon its roofs it erects cities; it has torn the vitals of its streets for railway cuttings, set up porticoes as promises of colonnades. Grim is the heart within, and hot as molten metal. The city writhes in its narrow communications, as the head of Medusa among its tangled hair. Its suburbs lie like disjointed members, deprived of easy transit to the body: the suburban stores forbid it; they fear for their custom, and the politicians tumble and crawl in, graft, threat, and proclamation, over the great body that heaves, angry and chafed, yet negligent of what is not its daily labor, like a dray horse with bent head that shakes the tenacious flies. Here is room for lust and its repression, none for listlessness; here is everlasting struggle, no mild aspiration to peace. There is no peace in Chicago."