Phyllis Bottome Quotations

It is very a dangerous thing to have an idea that you will not practice

Neither situations nor people can be altered by the interference of an outsider. If they are to be altered, that alteration must come from within.

There are two ways of meeting difficulties: You alter the difficulties or you alter yourself to meet them.

Truth, though it has many disadvantages, is at least changeless. You can always find it where you left it.

To be in the right is often an expensive business.

There is nothing final about a mistake, except its being taken as final

Love comes into your being like a tidal wave ... sometimes it withdraws like a wave, till there isn't such a thing as a pool left, and every bit of your heart is as dry as seaweed beyond the wave's reach.

The two best subjects for conversation are talking shop and making love.

Time indeed has very little to do with living except at its beginning or near its end.

Curses are children of hate; they belong to the wrong family! Prayers are better than curses!

Some of us cling to our curses if we haven't anything better to cling to!

the unfortunate thing about worldliness is that its rewards are rather less than its appetites.

if you listen long enough - or is it deep enough? - the silence of a lover can speak plainer than any words! Only you must know how to listen. Pain must have taught you how.

Lots of men hate women now-a-days. ... It was a man-made world, and now we're asking to go shares in the making.

death ... is not a great affair! Think - it happens once only - to each of us - as birth does. What do you know about being born? that - and no more - will you know about the act of death.

A desire that has never been fulfilled is considerably less acute than one that has been fulfilled and then checked at the source.

There is no thermometer for wants!

it is better in the long run to be cheated than to cheat. I have learned that there is no middle way.

with courage a human being is safe enough. And without it - he is never for one instant safe!

Death deceives relations often, and doctors sometimes, but the patient - never.

to everything there is an end - except fear.

Feelings change facts ...

Personally, I think it's a good way to let a child start right in with the laws of Nature before he's old enough to be surprised at them.

What are so mysterious as the eyes of a child?

That a Jew is despised or persecuted is bad for him, of course-but far worse for the Christian who does it-for although persecuted he can remain a good Jew-whereas no Christian who persecutes can possibly remain-if he ever was one-a good Christian.

Taboos on the human heart are more dangerous than any risk we run by using our emotions. Sensation is the life of man; it is his actual energy. To suppress it is to lose creative power!

People who talk of new lives believe there will be no new troubles.

We do good by ourselves, but we seldom do wrong alone.

A man whose every exertion is bent upon showing up the flaws in his wife's character must be at least partially responsible for some of them.

A red-hot belief in eternal glory is probably the best antidote to human panic that there is.

To see a shadow and think it is a tree that is a pity; but to see a tree and to think it a shadow can be fatal.

It is a very dangerous thing to have an idea that you will not practice.

There's nothing final about a mistake, except its being taken as final.

This is the real tragedy of mankind, that until now the spirit of man has not been able to free itself, even along the path of its own development, from the tentacles of self-deception.

If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot. Observations must play second fiddle to integrity.

If money had been the way to save the world, Christ himself would have been rich.

In my early life, and probably even today, it is not sufficiently understood that a child's education should include at least a rudimentary grasp of religion, sex, and money. Without a basic knowledge of these three primary facts in a normal human being's life --subjects which stir the emotions, create events and opportunities, and if they do not wholly decide must greatly influence an individual's personality --no human being's education can have a safe foundation.

artists are exposed to great temptations: their eyes see paradise before their souls have reached it, and that is a great danger.

I wonder how often not the intention but the desire springs up in a doctor's mind: 'Can I let this human being out of the trap of Life?

Jane had that happy disposition which would like to imagine that every one really wishes the well-being of his neighbour and struggles, though sometimes rather disastrously, to help him towards it.

Poets, when they write of love, give themselves and everyone else away!

A blossom must break the sheath it has been sheltered by.

Life was a series of messes, and one spent one's time cleaning them up; if one had any heart at all one also gave a part of one's time to cleaning up those of other people.

When we refuse to accept our limitations, Nature, who is a stern realist, pays us out.

Truth is no man's slave - but lies - what magnificent servants they make ...

hurt vanity is one of the cruelest of mortal wounds.

It is you men who make war! ... We, who have children, would never make it! Why should a woman be broken up in pain, to give her child life, only to see him carried away from her, to make food for guns?

Human beings don't show, any more than cities at dusk, their real necessities! And yet if you looked -- past the circle of outside lights, through the street walls still standing -- into the want and emptiness within!

... what most people tell you a confidence for is to get something off their chest which hasn't really been on it. They don't necessarily want to hide the truth from you, but they're out to hide it from themselves

... most people are dead, and none of them seem to mind it. One hears a great many complaints about life, doesn't one? And there are people I know who would certainly grumble -- however dead they were -- if there were anything to grumble at.

... a woman who has been a nun is never anything else.

Knowledge cannot be changed, but the use to which it may be put can very easily be changed.

... can life be made undignified by any act of man?

Our responsibility to ourselves comes first -- because in a sense what one is oneself is the responsibility that one has for others!

When you know a person particularly well, you cannot escape their ruffled feelings.

... one pets what one degrades; and one has to support what one has enfeebled

Truth is its own defense.

Neither saints nor angels have ever increased my faith in this enigma Life; but what are called 'common men and women' have increased it.

Marriage! ... Why, it is like living in a thimble with a hippopotamus!

Nobody can afford to appear more pleasant than they really are!

I am never at picnics. The ground was not meant to be sat upon in its raw state, I feel sure, and I prefer my food without either caterpillars or drafts!

... the ears of the hunted grow even keener than a hunter's.

All persecution is a sign of fear; for if we did not fear the power of an opinion different from our own, we should not mind others holding it.

it is the possibilities which are the most terrible things in life.

it must depend as much upon the patient's willingness to be cured, as upon the physician's skill in curing. There is neither force not magic in psychiatry.

A refugee is as helpless as a new born child - but not so appealing! Besides, a new born child has no memories!

If one has one cow, it is always better not to be too familiar with those who have seven.

Morale is not a single instinct. It has many ingredients. A sense of personal responsibility, the natural courage of an individual, the amount of his acquired self-discipline -- and above all his interest in others -- these together make up the spirit of morale.

The only creative power I know is that of what might roughly be called 'love'; not of course a sentimental love: a far more impersonal and less individual emotion. I sometimes think that migratory birds may have it for each other. They fly in the same direction, and have never been seen to interfere with each other's flights.

... not being liked has a certain virtue about it, if the reason for the dislike does not lie in yourself!

We cannot alter facts, but we can alter our ways of looking at them.

Curiosity is the only thing that really carries through time, isn't it? The creative curiosity, I mean, which fights its way into expression?

No emergency excuses you from exercising tolerance.

When lightning strikes, the mouse is sometimes burned with the farm.

Every hen thinks she has laid the best egg! Can we not all believe as we choose? But the choice of others - what is that to us? Let them alone ...

Luck enters into every contingency. You are a fool if you forget it -- and a greater fool if you count upon it.

She believed in letting children have a certain amount of rope, and only intervened at the last moment, in order to prevent their hanging themselves by it.

To be a Jew is to be strong with a strength that has outlived persecutions. It is to be wise against ignorance, honest against piracy, harmless against evil, kind against cruelty

When a reserved person once begins to talk, nothing can stop him; and he does not want to have to listen, until he has quite finished his unfamiliar exertion.

Things that happen, however painful they are at the time, do not matter very much for long. Only how we behave to them matters.

It's a good thing to learn early that other people's opinions do not matter, unless they happen to be true.

all daughters, even when most aggravated by their mothers, have a secret respect for them. They believe perhaps that they can do everything better than their mothers can, and many things they can do better, but they have not yet lived long enough to be sure how successfully they will meet the major emergencies of life, which lie, sometimes quite creditably, behind their mothers.

Where there is laughter there is always more health than sickness.

Anger is like mild, it should not be kept too long.

There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them.