Quotes by Novelists - Page 13

God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.
Laurence Sterne
Man appoints and God disappoints.
Cervantes
The object of war is to survive it.
John Irving
The man who fails because he aims astray or because he does not aim at all is to be found everywhere.
Frank Swinnerton
There are people who want to be everywhere at once and they get nowhere.
Carl Sandburg
A novelist must know what his last chapter is going to say and one way or another work toward that last chapter. ... To me it is utterly basic yet it seems like it's a great secret.
Leon Uris
He is conscious of touching the highest pinnacle of fulfillment... when he is consumed in the service of an idea in the conquest of the goal pursued.
R. Briffault
One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name.
Walter Scott
To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection fears doubts ... all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.
Joseph Conrad
It is only when I dally with what I am about look back and aside instead of keeping my eyes straight forward that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart. But the first broadside puts all to rights.
Sir Walter Scott
A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.
Georges Bernanos
You cannot dream yourself into a character you must hammer and forge one for yourself.
James A. Froude
Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption also.
William Gilmore Simms
Do noble things do not dream them all day long.
Charles Kingsley
Propriety of manners and consideration for others are the two main characteristics of a gentleman.
Benjamin Disraeli
It takes immense genius to represent simply and sincerely what we see in front of us.
Edmond Duranty
It is characteristic of spontaneous friendship to take on without enquiry and almost at first sight the unseen doings and unspoken sentiments of our friends the part known gives us evidence enough that the unknown part cannot be much amiss.
George Santayana
A new acquaintance is like a new book. I prefer it even if bad to a classic.
Benjamin Disraeli
To cement a new friendship especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person and cut across the accidents of place and time.
George Santayana
There is a magic in the memory of a schoolboy friendship. It softens the heart and even affects the nervous system of those who have no heart.
Benjamin Disraeli
Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with a part of another people are friends in spots.
George Santayana
The wise man's ... friendship is capable of going to extremes with many people evoked as it is by many qualities.
Charles Dudley Warner
I like a highland friend who will stand by me not only when I am in the right but when I am a little in the wrong.
Sir Walter Scott
One's friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.
George Santayana
Truth is a rough honest helter-skelter terrier that none like to see brought into their drawing rooms.
Ouida
A cruel story runs on wheels and every hand oils the wheels as they run.
Ouida
It is well when judging a friend to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.
Arnold Bennett
The essence of true friendship is to make allowance for another's little lapses.
David Storey
The chain of friendship however bright does not stand the attrition of constant close contact.
Sir Walter Scott
Solitude is one thing and loneliness is another.
May Sarton
Friendships like marriages are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.
John D. MacDonald
Friends are the family we choose for ourselves.
Edna Buchanan
One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are.
Gail Godwin
True friends are those who really know you but love you anyway.
Edna Buchanan
There are moments in life when all that we can bear is the sense that our friend is near us our wounds would wince at consoling words that would reveal the depths of our pain.
Honoré de Balzac
The best way to keep your friends is to never owe them anything and never lend them anything.
Paul de Kock
Friendship is the perfection of love and superior to love it is love purified exalted proved by experience and a consent of minds. Love Madam may and love does often stop short of friendship.
Samuel Richardson
As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices.
Joseph Conrad
You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
Joseph Conrad
Anybody amuses me for once. A new acquaintance is like a new book. I prefer it even if bad to a classic.
Benjamin Disraeli
The superiority of the distant over the present is only due to the mass and variety of the pleasures that can be suggested compared with the poverty of those that can at any time be felt.
George Santayana
No man can be satisfied with his attainment although he may be satisfied with his circumstances.
Frank Swinnerton
Some troubles like a protested note of a solvent debtor bear interest.
Honoré de Balzac
Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do which must be done whether you like it or not.
Charles Kingsley
We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.
Honoré de Balzac
Who would care to question the ground of forgiveness or compassion?
Joseph Conrad
Only the brave know how to forgive. ... A coward never forgave it is not in his nature.
Laurence Sterne
It's a very odd thing As odd as can be That whatever Miss T. eats Turns into Miss T.
Walter de la Mare
Kissing don't last: cookery do.
George Meredith
To eat well in England you should have breakfast three times a day.
W Somerset Maugham
Dinner a time when . . . one should eat wisely but not too well and talk well but not too wisely.
W Somerset Maugham
Tis the last rose of summer. Left blooming alone.
George Moore
We're frightened of what makes us different.
Anne Rice
How does one kill fear I wonder? How do you shoot a spectre through the heart slash off its spectral head take it by the spectral throat?
Joseph Conrad
Fear true fear is a savage frenzy. Of all the insanities of which we are capable it is surely the most cruel.
Georges Bernanos
Fear is the parent of cruelty.
James A. Froude
Family is just accident. . . . They don't mean to get on your nerves. They don't even mean to be your family they just are.
Marsha Norman
The parents exist to teach the child but also they must learn what the child has to teach them and the child has a very great deal to teach them.
Arnold Bennett
[A mother] discovers with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them.
Gabriel García Márquez
Speak to me of love said St Francis to the almond tree and the tree blossomed.
Nicholas Kazantzakis