The Infinite Library

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.”

“I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.”

“I am enjoying to a full that period of reflection which is the happiest conclusion to a life of action.”

“I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”

“One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me not to rest so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”

“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.”

“There is only one big thing-desire. And before it, when it is big, all is little.”

“Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.”

“The condition every art requires is, not so much freedom from restriction, as freedom from adulteration and from the intrusion of foreign matter.”

“The irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.”

“The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.”

“Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.”

“A work-room should be like an old shoe; no matter how shabby, it's better than a new one.”

“Art, it seems to me, should simplify.”

“What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.”

“Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.”

“That is happiness: to be dissolved into something completely great.”

“Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything.”

“The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.”

“Sometimes a neighbor whom we have disliked a lifetime for his arrogance and conceit lets fall a single commonplace remark that shows us another side, another man, really; a man uncertain, and puzzled, and in the dark like ourselves.”

“I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air. or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”

“Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile his friends are everything.”

“Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact.”

“Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.”

“All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens.”

“When we look back, the only things we cherish are those which in some way met our original want; the desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and of its own accord.”

“I guess everybody thinks about old times, even the happiest people.”

“Desire is creation, is the magical element in that process. If there were an instrument by which to measure desire, one could foretell achievement.”

“Sometimes I wonder why God ever trusts talent in the hands of women, they usually make such an infernal mess of it. I think He must do it as a sort of ghastly joke.”

“To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.”

“The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and exhausted world.”

“When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them as if their reason had left them. When it has left a place where we have always found it, it is like shipwreck; we drop from security into something malevolent and bottomless.”

“Where there is great love, there are always miracles.”

“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”

“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”

“Where there is great love, there are always wishes.”

“The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”

“Religion is different from everything else; because in religion seeking is finding.”

“That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”

“I tell you, there is no such thing as creative hate!”

“Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.”