Quotes by Novelists - Page 6

What is difficulty? Only a word indicating the degree of strength requisite for accomplishing particular objects a mere notice of the necessity for exertion ... a mere stimulus to men.
Samuel Warren
O God if in the day of battle I forget Thee do not Thou forget me.
William King
Our rages daughters of despair creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright.
Georges Bernanos
I have lived to thank God that all my prayers have not been answered.
Jean Ingelow
Who rises from prayer a better man his prayer is answered.
George Meredith
Prayer among sane people has never superseded practical efforts to secure the desired end.
George Santayana
I sit beside my lonely fire and pray for wisdom yet: for calmness to remember or courage to forget.
Charles Hamilton Aide
Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless but prayer for strength of soul is that passion of the soul which catches the gift it seeks.
George Meredith
She heard the snuffle of hypocrisy in her prayer. She had to cease to pray.
George Meredith
I pray like a robber asking alms at the door of a farmhouse to which he is ready to set fire.
Léon Bloy
Unless I had the spirit of prayer I could do nothing.
Charles G. Finney
He was one of those men who possess almost every gift except the gift of the power to use them.
Charles Kingsley
This is one of the bitter curses of poverty: it leaves no right to be generous.
George Gissing
If you've ever really been poor you remain poor at heart all your life.
Arnold Bennett
Persistent prophecy is a familiar way of assuring the event.
George R. Gissing
The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
Ayn Rand
If any has a stone to throw It is not I ever or now.
Elinor Wylie
Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.
George Meredith
We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.
Honoré de Balzac
I am happy and content because I think I am.
Alain-Rene Lesage
Every man is free to rise as far as he's able or willing but the degree to which he thinks determines the degree to which he'll rise.
Ayn Rand
If you are possessed by an idea you find it expressed everywhere you even smell it.
Thomas Mann
The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it and it will in turn look sourly upon you laugh at it and with it and it is a jolly kind companion.
William Makepeace Thackeray
To think of losing is to lose already.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always she had to admit interesting.
May Sarton
I actually remember feeling delight at two o'clock in the morning when the baby woke for his feed because I so longed to have another look at him.
Margaret Drabble
A majority is always better than the best repartee.
Benjamin Disraeli
Damn your principles! Stick to your party!
Benjamin Disraeli
Manners are the hypocrisy of a nation.
Honoré de Balzac
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door leaving those who look through to guess what is seen during a moment.
Carl Sandburg
Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land wanting to fly in the air.
Carl Sandburg
Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the colour of the wind.
Maxwell Bodenheim
Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public.
George Santayana
Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.
Carl Sandburg
I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.
Robert Graves
There's no money in poetry but then there's no poetry in money either.
Robert Graves
The essentials of poetry are rhythm dance and the human voice.
Earle Birney
Villon our sad bad glad mad brother's name.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Philosophy has a fine saying for everything - for Death it has an entire set.
Laurence Sterne
A man cannot dress without his ideas get clothed at the same time.
Laurence Sterne
(Abraham Lincoln's) weathered face was homely as a plowed field.
Stephen Vincent Benét
The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
William Makepeace Thackeray
When something has been perfect there is a tendency to try hard to repeat it.
Edna O'Brien
Perfect order is the forerunner of perfect horror.
Carlos Fuentes
At times failure is very necessary for the artist. It reminds him that failure is not the ultimate disaster. And this reminder liberates him from the mean fussing of perfectionism.
John Berger
A perfect poem is impossible. Once it has been written the world would end.
Robert Graves
Peace at any price.
Alphonse de Lamartine
Help us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light nothing flowers.
May Sarton
Breathes there the man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said This is my own my native land!
Walter Scott
Men may be linked in friendship. Nations are linked only by interests.
Rolf Hochhuth
Ireland is a fatal disease fatal to Englishmen and doubly fatal to Irishmen.
George Moore
1 tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.
Carl Sandburg
I have loved to the point of madness that which is called madness that which to me is the only sensible way to love.
Françoise Sagan
Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion history romance and art would be useless.
Honoré de Balzac
Knowledge of mankind is a knowledge of their passions.
Benjamin Disraeli
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
W Somerset Maugham
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.
George Santayana
Departure should be sudden.
Benjamin Disraeli
Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of children.
William Makepeace Thackeray
A mother who is really a mother is never free.
Honoré de Balzac