48 quotes
painting by Dora Carrington
“What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.”
"Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him."
on Death
"The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death."
on Life
"Expansion. That is the idea the novelist must cling to. Not completion. Not rounding off, but opening out."
on Writing
"I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars."
on Peace
"A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself."
on Art
"The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul."
on Truth
"Either life entails courage or it ceases to be life."
on Courage
"He had awoken too late for happiness, but not for strength, and could feel an austere joy, as of a warrior who is homeless but stands fully armed."
on Strength
"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."
"Why children?' he asked. 'Why always children? For love to end where it begins is far more beautiful, and Nature knows it."
on Love
"The advance of regret can be so gradual that it is impossible to say "yesterday I was happy, today I am not."
on Happiness
"It is so difficult - at least, I find it difficult - to understand people who speak the truth."
"To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art."
"Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon."
on Wisdom
"Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along."
on Learning
"A work of art is never finished. It is merely abandoned."
"Only connect!"
"If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."
"For the dead, who seem to take away so much, really take with them nothing that is ours."
"The historian records, but the novelist creates."