Quotes

Religion . . . is a man’s total reaction upon life.

Although all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind’s most important function.

Some people are far more sensitive to resemblances, and far more ready to point out wherein they consist, than others are . They are the wits, the poets, the inventors, the scientific men, the practical geniuses.

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?

Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as “chain” or “train” do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life .

In its widest possible sense . . . a man’s Self is the sum total of all that he can call his , not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.

The best way to define a man’s character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: “ This is the real me!”

[ On experiencing his initial stroke :] So here it is at last, the distinguished thing!

The war has used up words.

The black and merciless things that are behind the great possessions.

The fatal futility of Fact.

We must know, as much as possible, in our beautiful art . . . what we are talking about—& the only way to know it is to have lived & loved & cursed & floundered & enjoyed & suffered—I think I don’t regret a single “excess” of my responsive youth—I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions & possibilities I didn’t embrace .

The terrible fluidity of self-revelation .

The historian, essentially, wants more documents than he can really use; the dramatist only wants more liberties than he can really take.

She couldn’t dress it away, nor walk it away, nor read it away, nor think it away; she could neither smile it away in any dreamy absence nor blow it away in any softened sigh. She couldn’t have lost it if she had tried—that was what it was to be really rich. It had to be the thing you were.

In art economy is always beauty.

Vereker’s secret, my dear man—the general intention of his books: the string the pearls were strung on, the buried treasure, the figure in the carpet.

The time-honored bread-sauce of the happy ending.

The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does compete with life.

If I should certainly say to a novice, “Write from experience, and experience only,” I should feel that this was a rather tantalising monition if I were not careful immediately to add, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”

[ Of Henry David Thoreau :] He was worse than provincial—he was parochial.

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

The curious thing is that the more the mind takes in, the more it has space for, and that all one’s ideas are like the Irish people at home who live in the different corners of a room, and take boarders.

We stand like a race with shrunken muscles, staring helplessly at the weights our forefathers easily lifted.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master .

[ Upon being asked in court testimony whether he had memory lapses :] Not that I recall.

“It isn’t fair, it isn’t right,” Mrs. Hutchinson screamed, and then they were upon her.

[ Defending his practice of sharing his bed with young boys :] Why can’t you share your bed? The most loving thing to do is to share your bed with someone.

Look, don’t kill that fly!

Living is abnormal.

A civil servant doesn’t make jokes.

With vine leaves in his hair.

[ “Last words,” responding to a nurse’s remark that he “seemed to be a little better” :] On the contrary.

Our common lust for life.

Always do that, wild ducks do. Go plunging right to the bottom . . . as deep as they can get . . . hold on with their beaks to the weeds and stuff—and all the other mess you find down there. Then they never come up again.

I love this town so much that I’d rather destroy it than see it prosper on a lie.

The party programs grab hold of every young and promising idea and wring its neck.

Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population—the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it’s the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it’s the fools that form the overwhelming majority. But I’ll be damned if that means it’s right that the fools should dominate the intelligent.

The life of a normally constituted truth is generally, say, about seventeen or eighteen years, at most twenty; rarely longer. But truths as elderly as that have always worn terribly thin. But it’s only then that the majority will have anything to do with them; then it will recommend them as wholesome food for thought. But there’s no great food-value in that sort of diet.

This meeting declares that it considers Dr. Thomas Stockmann, Medical Officer to the Baths, to be an enemy of the people.

The majority is never right.

[ Helmer :] First and foremost, you are a wife and mother.

I’ve only to pick up a newspaper and I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. Over the whole country there must be ghosts, as numerous as the sands of the sea. And here we are, all of us, abysmally afraid of the light.

If I’m ever to reach any understanding of myself and the things around me, I must learn to stand alone. That’s why I can’t stay here with you any longer.

I have another duty equally sacred. . . . My duty to myself.