Quotes by Novelists - Page 16

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable what it is or what it means can never be said.
George Santayana
The author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.
Benjamin Disraeli
The father of every good work is discontent and its mother is diligence.
Lajos Kassak
Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois so that you may be violent and original in your work.
Gustave Flaubert
Caricature is rough truth.
George Meredith
History repeats itself but the special call of an art which has passed away is never reproduced. It is utterly gone out of the world as the song of a destroyed wild bird.
Joseph Conrad
If you ask me what I came to do in this world I an artist I will answer you: T am here to live out loud.'
Émile Zola
What's an artist but the dregs of his work - the human shambles that follows it around?
William Gaddis
An artist may visit a museum but only a pedant can live there.
George Santayana
Art is a delayed echo.
George Santayana
If artists and poets are unhappy it is after all because happiness does not interest them.
George Santayana
I am bound to furnish my antagonists with arguments but not with comprehension.
Benjamin Disraeli
When you read and understand a poem comprehending its rich and formal meanings then you master chaos a little.
Stephen Spender
Handsome is that handsome does.
Henry Fielding
Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained.
Arthur Somers Roche
Fear ringed by doubt is my eternal moon.
Malcolm Lowry
For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation.
Thornton Wilder
Nothing in life is more remarkable than the unnecessary anxiety which we endure and generally create ourselves.
Benjamin Disraeli
Hi handsome hunting man Fire your little gun Bang! Now the animal Is dead and dumb and done. Nevermore to peep again creep again leap again Eat or sleep or drink again. Oh what fun.
Walter de la Mare
I loathe people who keep dogs. They are cowards who haven't got the guts to bite people themselves.
August Strindberg
Boston is a moral and intellectual nursery always busy applying first principles to trifles.
George Santayana
Stormy husky brawling City of the Big Shoulders.
Carl Sandburg
As for what you're calling hard luck - well we made New England out of it. That and codfish.
Stephen Vincent Benét
The skyline of New York is a monument of a splendour that no pyramids or palaces will ever equal or approach.
Ayn Rand
In the United States 'First' and 'Second' class can't be painted on railroad cars for all passengers being Americans are equal and it would be 'unAmerican.' But paint 'Pullman' on a car and everyone is satisfied.
Owen Wister
The true America is the Middle West and Columbus discovered nothing at all except another Europe.
W. L. George
America is so vast that almost everything said about it is likely to be true and the opposite is probably equally true.
James T. Farrell
Ours is the country where in order to sell your product you don't so much point out its merits as you first work like hell to sell yourself.
Louis Kronenberger
Growing old - it's not nice but it's interesting.
August Strindberg
Never have I enjoyed youth so thoroughly as I have in my old age. In writing Dialogues in Limbo The Last Puritan and now all these descriptions of the friends of my youth and the young friends of my middle age I have drunk the pleasure of life more pure more joyful than it ever was when mingled with all the hidden anxieties and little annoyances of actual living. Nothing is inherently and invincibly young except spirit. And spirit can enter a human being perhaps better in the quiet of old age and dwell there more undisturbed than in the turmoil of adventure.
George Santayana
When I was very young I was disgracefully intolerant but when I passed the thirty mark I prided myself on having learned the beautiful lesson that all things were good and equally good. That however was really laziness. Now thank goodness I've sorted out what matters and what doesn't. And I'm beginning to be intolerant again.
G. B. Stern
Before you contradict an old man my fair friend you should endeavour to understand him.
George Santayana
A man of sixty has spent twenty years in bed and over three years in eating.
Arnold Bennett
Old age is an island surrounded by death.
Juan Montalvo
To keep the heart unwrinkled to be hopeful kindly cheerful reverent -that is to triumph over old age.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you have not committed.
Anthony Powell
Youth is a blunder Manhood a struggle Old Age a regret.
Benjamin Disraeli
All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hourglass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so would I?
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
You must not think sir to catch old birds with chaff.
Cervantes
Be frank and explicit. That is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others.
Benjamin Disraeli
There is no education like adversity.
Benjamin Disraeli
It is from the level of calamities ... that we learn impressive and useful lessons.
William Makepeace Thackeray
Mistakes are often the best teachers.
James A. Froude
Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
George Santayana
There is nothing the body suffers which the soul may not profit by.
George Meredith
Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
Henry Fielding
Necessity is often the spur to genius.
Honoré de Balzac
Adversity is to me at least a tonic and a bracer.
Sir Walter Scott
Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.
Joseph Conrad
To knock a thing down especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle is a deep delight to the blood.
George Santayana
But search the land of living men Where wilt thou find their like again.
Sir Walter Scott
A play visibly represents pure existing.
Thornton Wilder
The unencumbered stage encourages the truth operative in everyone. The less seen the more heard. The eye is the enemy of the ear in real drama.
Thornton Wilder
Many plays certainly mine are like blank cheques. The actors and directors put their own signatures on them.
Thornton Wilder
When the characters are really alive before their author the latter does nothing but follow them in their action in their words in the situations which they suggest to him.
Luigi Pirandello
Ours must be the first age whose great goal on a nonmaterial plane is not fulfillment but adjustment.
Louis Kronenberger
The mind which renounces once and forever a futile hope has its compensations in ever-growing calm.
George R. Gissing
I not only bow to the inevitable I am fortified by it.
Thornton Wilder
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.
Thornton Wilder
We do not write as we want but as we can.
W Somerset Maugham