Great Throughts Treasury

"If things happen all the time you are never nervous. It is when they are not happening that you are nervous."

"If you are looking down while you are walking it is better to walk uphill the ground is nearer."

"If you are too careful, you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something."

"If you can do it then why do it?"

"If you can't say anything nice about anyone else, come sit next to me."

"In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody."

"In the United States there is more space where nobody is is than where anybody is."

"In France one must adapt oneself to the fragrance of a urinal."

"In the morning there is meaning, in the evening there is feeling."

"If you do not remember while you are writing, it may seem confused to others but actually it is clear and eventually that clarity will be clear, that is what a master-piece is, but if you remember while you are writing it will seem clear at the time to anyone but the clarity will go out of it that is what a master-piece is not."

"If you knew it all it would not be creation but dictation."

"In time of war you know much more what children feel than in time of peace, not that children feel more but you have to know more about what they feel. In time of peace what children feel concerns the lives of children as children but in time of war there is a mingling there is not children's lives and grown up lives there is just lives and so quite naturally you have to know what children feel."

"In the United States there is more space where nobody is than where anybody is. This is what makes America what it is."

"It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work. And after all there is no sense in it because if it were not for my work they would not be interested in me so why should they not be more interested in my work than in me. That is one of the things one has to worry about in America."

"Is money money or isn't money money. Everybody who earns it and spends it every day in order to live knows that money is money, anybody who votes it to be gathered in as taxes knows money is not money. That is what makes everybody go crazy.... When you earn money and spend money every day anybody can know the difference between a million and three. But when you vote money away there really is not any difference between a million and three."

"It does change the age that is young, once in Paris it was twenty-six, then it was twenty-two, then it was nineteen and now it is between thirty and forty. They tell about a new young man, how old is he you say and they say he is thirty."

"It is a difficult thing to like anybody else's ideas of being funny."

"It is a very strange feeling when one is loving a clock that is to every one of your class of living an ugly and a foolish one and one really likes such a thing and likes it very much and liking it is a serious thing, or one likes a colored handkerchief that is very gay and every one of your kind of living thinks it a very ugly or a foolish thing and thinks you like it because it is a funny thing to like it and you like it with a serious feeling, or you like eating something that is a dirty thing and no one can really like that thing or you write a book and while you write it you are ashamed for everyone must think you a silly or a crazy one and yet you write it and you are ashamed, you know you will be laughed at or pitied by everyone and you have a queer feeling and you are not very certain and you go on writing. Then someone says yes to it, to something you are liking, or doing or making and then never again can you have completely such a feeling of being afraid and ashamed that you had then when you were writing or liking the thing and not any one had said yes about the thing."

"It does make a big difference, it is why Robin Hood lives, crime if you know the reason if you know the motive if you can understand the character if it is not a normal one is not interesting a crime in itself is not interesting it is only there and when it is there everybody has to take notice of it. It is important in that way but in every other way it is not important."

"It is extraordinary that when you are acquainted with a whole family you can forget about them."

"It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true."

"It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business."

"It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken."

"It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son."

"It is hard living down the tempers we are born with. We all begin well, for in our youth there is nothing we are more intolerant of than our own sins writ large in others and we fight them fiercely in ourselves; but we grow old and we see that these our sins are of all sins the really harmless ones to own, nay that they give a charm to any character, and so our struggle with them dies away."

"It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger."

"It is natural not to care about a sister certainly not when she is four years older and grinds her teeth at night."

"It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death."

"it is nice that nobody writes as they talk and that the printed language is different from the spoken otherwise you could not lose yourself in books and of course you do you completely do."

"It is richly held to be not all for it because idleness is no blessing."

"It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important."

"It is the human habit to think in centuries from a grandparent to a grandchild because it just does take about a hundred years for things to cease to have the same meaning as they did before,"

"It is so friendly so simply friendly and though inevitable not a sadness and though occurring not a shock."

"It often makes me know that as a cousin of mine once said about money, money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money."

"It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself."

"It is very natural that everyone who makes anything inside themselves that is makes it entirely out of what is in them does naturally have to have two civilizations. They have to have the civilization that makes them and the civilization that has nothing to do with them."

"It is very easy to love alone."

"Just as everybody has the vote including women, I think children should, because as a child is conscious of itself then it has to me an existence and has a stake in what happens."

"It takes a heap of loafing to write a book."

"I've been rich and I've been poor. It's better to be rich."

"Language as a real thing is not imitation either of sounds or colors or emotions it is an intellectual recreation and there is no possible doubt about it and it is going to go on being that as long as humanity is anything."

"Ladies there is no neutral position for us to assume."

"Let me listen to me and not to them. May I be very well and happy. May I be whichever they can thrive or just may they not. They do not think not only but always with prefer and therefore I like what is mine for which not only willing but willingly. Because which it matters. They find it one in union. In union there is strength."

"Let me listen to me and not to them"

"Literature -- creative literature -- unconcerned with sex, is inconceivable."

"Living in England does not free the American the way living in France frees him because the french [sic] and the American do not have the sense of going on together, from the beginning they know that there is no going on together no past present and future"

"Men and girls, men and girls: Artificial swine and pearls"

"Men cannot count, they do not know that two and two make four if women do not tell them so."

"Melanctha Herbert was always losing what she had in all the things she saw. Melanctha was always being left when she was not leaving others. Melanctha Herbert always loved too hard and much too often. She was always full with mystery and subtle movements and denials and vague distrusts and complicated disillusions. Then Melanctha would be sudden and impulsive and unbounded in some faith, and then she would suffer and be strong in her repression. Melanctha Herbert was always seeking rest and quiet and always she could only find new ways to be in trouble."

"Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches."