Quotes to inspire and reflect

An artist observes, selects, guesses, and synthesizes.

The artist is not a reporter, but a Great Teacher. It is not his business to depict the world as it is, but as it ought to be.

I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration.

I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.

Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.

The good of a book lies in its being read.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.

Literature is a splendid mistress, but a bad wife.

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.

The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous, licentious, abominable, infernal — not that I ever read them. No, I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.

The web, then, or the pattern, a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature.

There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.

There is a splinter of ice in the heart of a writer.

University printing presses exist, and are subsidised by the government, for the purpose of producing books which no one can read; and they are true to their high calling.

I suppose that so long as there are people in the world, they will publish dictionaries defining what is unknown in terms of something equally unknown.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

One forgets words as one forgets names. One’s vocabulary needs constant fertilising or it will die.

Poets … though liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions.

I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.

The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is the truth, but still greater … is silence about truth.

Writers don’t give prescriptions. They give headaches.

Women have been called queens for a long time, but the kingdom given them isn’t worth ruling.

Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present.

I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a poem and to be given away by a novel.

That perpetual hunger to be beautiful and that thirst to be loved which is the real curse of Eve.

Don’t be surprised if I demur, for, be advised

A nickname is the heaviest stone that the Devil can throw at a man.

Dull. To make dictionaries is dull work.

I test my bath before I sit

A soggy little island huffing and puffing to keep up with Western Europe.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

This fellow’s wise enough to play the fool,

Five days shalt thou labour, as the Bible says. The seventh day is the Lord thy God’s. The sixth day is for football.

Let men be wise by instinct if they can, but when this fails be wise by good advice.

Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy.

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

Prudent, cautious self-control, is wisdom’s root.

The motto of chivalry is also the motto of wisdom; to serve all, but love only one.

If one learns from others but does not think, one will be bewildered. If, on the other hand, one thinks but does not learn from others, one will be in peril.

If to talk to oneself when alone is folly, it must be doubly unwise to listen to oneself in the presence of others.

Fools need advice most, but wise men only are the better for it.

Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.

Moral virtues we acquire through practice like the arts.