Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Tidied all my papers. Tore up and ruthlessly destroyed much. This is always a great satisfaction.
Oh, how quickly things changed! Why didn't happiness last for ever? For ever wasn't a bit too long.
The great thing to remember is we can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough.
What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in the face of difficulties.
roses are the only flowers at garden-parties; the only flowers that everybody is certain of knowing.
It is strange that there are times when I feel the stars are not at all solemn: they are secretly gay.
I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.
Whenever I prepare for a journey I prepare as though for death. Should I never return, all is in order.
Perhaps it does not matter so very much what it is one loves in this world. But love something one must.
Regret is an appalling waste of energy, and no one who intends to be a writer can afford to indulge in it.
... I'd always rather be with people who loved me too little rather than with people who loved me too much.
Wind moving through grass so that the grass quivers. This moves me with an emotion I don't even understand.
Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who all are happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.
Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different.
There are always these moments in life when the limits of suffering are reached and we become heroes and heroines.
I always felt that the great high privilege, relief and comfort of friendship was that one had to explain nothing.
How idiotic civilization is! Why be given a body if you have to keep it shut up in a case like a rare, rare fiddle?
Courage is like a disobedient dog, once it starts running away it flies all the faster for your attempts to recall it.
I am poor - obscure - just eighteen years of age - with a rapacious appetite for everything and principles as light as my purse.
I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope that I can ask you to share my future plusses.
Bless you, my darling, and remember you are always in the heart - oh tucked so close there is no chance of escape - of your sister.
The ostrich burying its head in the sand does at any rate wish to convey the impression that its head is the most important part of it.
Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
Why it should be such an effort to write to the people one loves I can't imagine. It's none at all to write to those who don't really count.
I don't believe other people are ever as foolishly excited as I am while I'm working. How could they be? Writers would have to live in trees.
Letters are the real curse of my existence. I hate to write them: I have to. If I don't, there they are - the great guilty gates barring my way.
I think I hate snow, downright hate it. There is something stupefying in it, a kind of 'You must be worse before you're better,' and down it spins.
Would you not like to try all sorts of lives - one is so very small - but that is the satisfaction of writing - one can impersonate so many people.
Isn't life,' she stammered, 'isn't life--' But what life was she couldn't explain. No matter. He quite understood. 'Isn't it, darling?' said Laurie.
But one day we shall be rich, and the next poor. One day we shall dine in a palace and the next we'll sit in a forest and toast mushrooms on a hatpin.
In fact, isn't it a joy - there is hardly a greater one - to find a new book, a living book, and to know that it will remain with you while life lasts?
By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with... the earth and the wonders thereof - the sea - the sun.
When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.
Yes, my mother's death is a terrible sorrow to me. I feel - do you know what I mean - the silence of it so. She was more alive than anyone I have ever known.
Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can't build on it it's only good for wallowing in.
conversation is like a dear little baby that is brought in to be handed round. You must rock it, nurse it, keep it on the move if you want it to keep smiling.
It's a terrible thing to be alone - yes it is - it is - but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath - as terrible as you like - but a mask.
The truth is that every true admirer of the novels cherishes the happy thought that he alone - reading between the lines - has bcome the secret friend of their author.
Warm, eager, living life-to be rooted in life-to learn, to desire, to know, to feel, to think, to act. This is what I want. And nothing less. That is what I must try for.
What I feel for you can’t be conveyed in phrasal combinations; It either screams out loud or stays painfully silent but I promise — it beats words. It beats worlds. I promise
I am going to enjoy life in Paris I know. It is so human and there is something noble in the city... It is a real city, old and fine and life plays in it for everybody to see.
I feel I must live alone, alone, alone - with artists only to touch the door. Every artist cuts off his ear and nails it on the outside of the door for the others to shout into.
Now's the time when children's noses All become as red as roses And the colour of their faces Makes me think of orchard places Where the juicy apples grow, And tomatoes in a row.
That is the fearful part of having been near death. One knows how easy it is to die. The barriers that are up for everybody else are down for you, and you've only to slip through.
How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you — you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences — like rags and shreds of your very life.
I really only have Perfect Fun with myself. Other people won't stop and look at the things I want to look at or, if they do, they stop to please me or to humor me or to keep the peace.
The late evening is the time of times. Then with that unearthly beauty before one it is not hard to realise how far one has to go. To write something that will be worthy of that rising moon, that pale light.
Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.
I love the night. I love to feel the tide of darkness rising, slowly and slowly washing, turning over and over, lifting, floating, all that lies strewn upon the dark beach, all that lies hid in rocky hollows.
When I say "I fear" - don't let it disturb you, dearest heart. We all fear when we are in waiting-rooms. Yet we must pass beyond them, and if the other can keep calm, it is all the help we can give each other.