Where there is great love, there are always miracles.
Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.
That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.
I guess everybody thinks about old times, even the happiest people.
Religion is different from everything else because in religion seeking is finding.
It’s all very well to tell us to forgive our enemies; our enemies can never hurt us very much. But oh, what about forgiving our friends?
The fact that I was a girl never damaged my ambitions to be a pope or an emperor.
What was any art but a mold to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself- life hurrying past us and running away, to strong to stop, too sweet to lose.
It seems to me that the pleasure one feels in a work of art is just one thing that one does not have to explain.
There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.
Trees were so rare in that country, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used to feel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons.
I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.
I only knew the schoolbooks said he “died in the wilderness, of a broken heart.””More than him has done that,” said Antonia sadly, and the girls murmured assent.
Her secret? It is every artist’s secret–passion. That is all. It is an open secret, and perfectly safe. Like heroism, it is inimitable in cheap materials.
He knew he would always remember her, standing there with that expectant, forward-looking smile, enough to turn the future into summer.
He used to say that he never felt the hardness of the human struggle or the sadness of history as he felt it among those ruins. He used to say, too, that it made one feel an obligation to do one’s best.
Old people, who have felt blows and toil and known the world’s hard hand, need, even more than children do, a woman’s tenderness.
Constant comparisons are the stamp of the foreigner; one continually translates manners and customs of a new country into terms of his own, before he can fully comprehend them.
And I advise ye to think well, he told her It’s better to be a stray dog in this world than a man without money. I’ve tried it both ways, and I know. A poor man stinks, and God hates him.
I suppose the test of one’s decency is how much of a fight one can put up after one has stopped caring, and after one has found that one can never please the people they wanted to please.
Only a Woman, divine, could know all that a woman can suffer.
The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.
It’s by understanding me, and the boys, and mother, that you have helped me. I expect that is the only way one person ever really can help another.
As in most families, the mere struggle to have anything of one’s own, to be one’s self at all, creates an element of strain that keeps everybody almost at the breaking point.
Either a building is part of a place or it is not. Once that kinship is there, time will only make it stronger.
Some memories are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
As I went back alone over that familiar road, I could almost believe that a boy and girl ran along beside me, as our shadows used to do, laughing and whispering to each other in the grass.
Miracles… seem to me to rest not so much upon… healing power coming suddenly near us from afar but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that, for a moment, our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there around us always.
Miracles surround us at every turn, if we but sharpen our perceptions to them.
Prayers said by good people are always good prayers
The old man smiled. ‘I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.
Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen.
Pittsburgh was even more vital, more creative, more hungry for culture than New York. Pittsburgh was the birthplace of my writing.
No one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person.
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
There are some things you learn best in calm and some in storm.
There is only one big thing-desire. And before it when it is big all is little.
I tell you there is no such thing as creative hate!
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.
That is happiness: to be dissolved into something completely great.
Where there is great love there are always wishes.
I am enjoying to a full that period of reflection which is the happiest conclusion to a life of action.
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.
No one can builu her security upon the nobleness of another person.
In this world people have to pay an extortionate price for any exceptional gift whatever.
Some memories are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.
I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.
That is happiness to be dissolved into something complete and great.
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.
Only solitary men know the full joys of friendship. Others have their family; but to a solitary and an exile, his friends are everything.
Where there is great love, there are always wishes.
There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.
The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.
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.
The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.