Quotes by Novelists - Page 9

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
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
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
If we could but paint with the hand as we see with the eye!
Honoré de Balzac
Parents are sometimes a bit of a disappointment to their children. They don't fulfill the promise of their early years.
Anthony Powell
Pain and pleasure like light and darkness succeed each other.
Laurence Sterne
Broad acres are a patent of nobility and no man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own. However small it is on the surface it is 4000 miles deep and that is a very handsome property.
Charles Dudley Warner
The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Fear makes us feel our humanity.
Benjamin Disraeli
Why is it that people who cannot show feeling presume that that is a strength and not a weakness?
May Sarton
How does one kill fear? ... How do you shoot a specter through the heart slash off its spectral head take it by its spectral throat?
Joseph Conrad
Envy is the most stupid of vices for there is no single advantage to be gained from it.
Honoré de Balzac
Comparisons of one's lot with others' teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.
Thornton Wilder
Envy is an insult to oneself.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
There is no greater glory than love nor any greater punishment than jealousy.
Lope de Vega
It is quite wrong to think of old age as a downward slope. On the contrary one climbs higher and higher with the advancing years and that too with surprising strides.
George Sand
The middle years caught between children and parents free of neither: the past stretches back too densely it is too thickly populated the future has not yet thinned out.
Margaret Drabble
Let us accept truth even when it surprises us and alters our views.
George Sand
Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before but in saying exactly what you think yourself.
James Stephens
To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence.
Joseph Conrad
The secret to success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Benjamin Disraeli
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity the most important thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage.
Benjamin Disraeli
A filly who wants to run will always find a rider.
Jacques Audiberti
God forgives those who invent what they need.
Ayn Rand
Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.
Thomas Mann
Predominant opinions are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing.
Benjamin Disraeli
I'm an idealist: I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.
Carl Sandburg
Time is a circus always packing up and moving away.
Ben Hecht
Time is a sandpile we run our fingers in.
Carl Sandburg
A little space of time before time expires a little way of breath.
Algernon Swinburne
Habit is stronger than reason.
George Santayana
The moment we pass out of our habits we lose all sense of permanency and routine.
George Moore
Each day and the living of it has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.
May Sarton
Happy the man and happy he alone He who can call today his own He who secure within can say "Tomorrow do thy worst For I have lived today."
Henry Fielding
Learn to drink the cup of life as it comes.
Agnes Turnbull
Let us savour the swift delights of the most beautiful of our days!
Alphonse de Lamartine
Death accompanies us at every step and enables us to use those moments when life smiles at us to feel more deeply the sweetness of life. The more certain the end the more tempting the minute.
Theodore Fontane
My advice to you is not to inquire why or whither but just to enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate.
Thornton Wilder
We shall never have more time. We have and have always had all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until to-morrow. Keep going. ... Concentrate on something useful.
Arnold Bennett
One hour of life crowded to the full with glorious action and filled with noble risks is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum.
Sir Walter Scott
A sense of the value of time ... is an essential preliminary to efficient work it is the only method of avoiding hurry.
Arnold Bennett