Great Novelist Quotes

He saw before him two roads, both equally straight ; but he saw two; and that terrified him — him, who had never in his life known but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory.

There are moments when a rope's end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, and fall like a ripe fruit.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.

Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification.

This reminds me, Godmother, to ask you a serious question. You are as wise as wise can be (having been brought up by the fairies), and you can tell me this: Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?

Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since-on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with.

I ask myself how I could give in to this perpetual vertigo that I in fact provoked and feared. I floated among erratic clouds and talked to myself in front of the mirror in the vain hope of confirming who I was. My delirium was so great that during a student demonstration complete with rocks and bottles, I had to make an enormous effort not to lead it as I held up a sign that would sanctify my truth: I am mad with love.

Negro blood is sure powerful, because just one drop of black blood makes a colored man. One drop--you are a Negro! . . . Black is powerful.

But I don't think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.

The art of governing is a great metier, requiring the whole man, and it is therefore not well for a ruler to have too strong tendencies for other affairs.

The Secretary, working in the Dismal Swamp betimes next morning, was informed that a youth waited in the hall who gave the name of Sloppy. The footman who communicated this intelligence made a decent pause before uttering the name, to express that it was forced on his reluctance by the youth in question, and that if the youth had had the good sense and good taste to inherit some other name it would have spared the feelings of him the bearer.

But man is so addicted to systems and to abstract conclusions that he is prepared deliberately to distort the truth, to close his eyes and ears, but justify his logic at all cost.

For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote a letter and his were dry sticks; but suddenly it would come over her, If he were with me now what would he say? --some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine morning--indeed they did.

I think writing, my writing, is a species of mediumship. I become the person.

A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.

If you modestly enjoy your fame you are not unworthy to rank with the holy.

She couldn’t read his expression. As he started toward her, she recalled the way he’d seemed to glide through the sand the first time she’d ever seen him; she remembered their kiss on the boat dock the night of his sister’s wedding. And she heard again the words she’d said to him on the day they’d said good-bye. She was besieged by a storm of conflicting emotions—desire, regret, longing, fear, grief, love. There was so much to say, yet what could they really begin to say in this awkward setting and with so much time already passed?

Man serves the interests of no creature except himself.

The beautiful has but one type, the ugly has a thousand.

Early on, he'd learned to enjoy simple things, things that couldn't be bought, and he had a hard time understanding people who felt otherwise.

All of us have wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.

I always had an aversion to your apostles of freedom; each but sought for himself freedom to do what he liked.

It is fun to have fun.

Taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.

When K. looked at the castle, often it seemed to him as if he were observing someone who sat quietly there in front of him gazing, not lost in thought and so oblivious of everything, but free and untroubled, as if he were alone with nobody to observe him, and yet must notice that he was observed, and all the same remained with his calm not even slightly disturbed; and really - one did not know whether it was cause or effect - the gaze of the observer could not remain concentrated there, but slid away.

A joy shared is a joy doubled.

Luxuries are easy to take up but very difficult to give up

I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up every line as he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I fully believed) like a snail.

Every offense is avenged on earth.

Perfection is the measure of heaven, and the wish to be perfect the measure of man.

People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favor.

I have tipped waiters, and I have been tipped by waiters.

Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us.

There is repetition everywhere, and nothing is found only once in the world.

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

She turned the key, never taking her eyes from him.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

We are all happy if we but knew it.

The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general.

Women's glances express what they dare not speak.

To contemplate is to look at shadows.

The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency.

I speak for the trees!

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

Mrs Dalloway is always giving parties to cover the silence

As for the bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a great shock to him, from which he recovered only slowly.

If her eyes had no expression, it was probably because they had nothing to express. If she had few wrinkles, it was because her mind had never traced its name or any other inscription on her face.

Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.

Scepticism, that dry caries of the intelligence.

Horses frighten me as much as chickens do,’ he said. ‘That is too bad, because lack of communication with horses has impeded human progress,’ said Abrenuncio. ‘If we ever broke down the barriers, we could produce the centaur.

The art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea.

Love is infinitely more endurable than hate.

Women are more attuned to feelings than men are, and if they’re not being truthful, more often than not it’s because they think truth might hurt your feelings. But it doesn’t mean they don’t love you.

People are always talking about originality, but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us, and this goes on to the end.

I had toward the poetic art a peculiar relation which was only practical after I had cherished in my mind for a long time a subject which possessed me, a model which inspired me, a predecessor who attracted me, until at length, after I had molded it

The question "From where does the poet get it?" addresses only the what, nobody learns anything about the how when asking that question.