It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.
John GalsworthyThe bicycle... has been responsible for more movement in manners and morals than anything since Charles the Second. Under its influence, wholly or in part, have blossomed weekends, strong nerves, strong legs, strong language... equality of sex, good digestion and professional occupation - in four words, the emanicipation of women.
John GalsworthyHumanism is the creed of those who believe that in the circle of enwrapping mystery, men's fates are in their own hands - a faith that for modern man is becoming the only possible faith.
John GalsworthyLove is not a hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of a wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always, wild!
John GalsworthyIt isnot good enough tospend time and ink indescribing the penultimate sensations and physical movements of people getting into a state of rut, we all know them so well.
John GalsworthyIt isn't enough to love people because they're good to you, or because in some way or other you're going to get something by it. We have to love because we love loving.
John GalsworthyMen are in fact, quite unable to control their own inventions; they at best develop adaptability to the new conditions those inventions create.
John GalsworthyThe beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy, the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.
John GalsworthyWhen Man evolved Pity, he did a queer thing - deprived himself of the power of living life as it is without wishing it to become something different.
John GalsworthyBy the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the texture of men's souls.
John GalsworthyFrom behind a wooden crate we saw a long black-muzzled nose poking round at us. We took him out-soft, wobbly, tearful; set him down on his four, as yet not quite simultaneous legs, and regarded him. He wandered a little round our legs, neither wagging his tail nor licking at our hands; then he looked up, and my companion said: "He's an angel!"
John GalsworthyTake modern courtships! They resulted in the same thing as under George the Second, but took longer to reach it, owing to the motor-cycle and the standing lunch.
John GalsworthyWealth is a means to an end, not the end itself. As a synonym for health and happiness, it has had a fair trial and failed dismally.
John GalsworthyWe are not living in a private world of our own. Everything we say and do and think has its effect on everything around us.
John GalsworthyBeauty means this to one person, perhaps, and that to the other. And yet when any one of us has seen or heard or read that which to us is beautiful, we have known an emotion which is in every case the same in kind, if not in degree; an emotion precious and uplifting.
John GalsworthyA man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, Nothing else.
John GalsworthyLight-heartedness always made Soames suspicious - there was generally some reason for it.
John GalsworthyHe was afflicted by the thought that where Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which no doubt, was why so many people looked on it as immoral.
John GalsworthyEssential characteristics of a gentleman: The will to put himself in the place of others; the horror of forcing others into positions from which he would himself recoil; and the power to do what seems to him to be right without considering what others may say or think.
John GalsworthyHonesty of thought and speech and written word is a jewel, and they who curb prejudice and seek honorably to know and speak the truth are the only builders of a better life.
John GalsworthyI am still under the impression that there is nothing alive quite so beautiful as a thoroughbred horse.
John GalsworthyOnce admit that we have the right to inflict unnecessary suffering and you destroy the very basis of human society.
John GalsworthyThere are houses whose souls have passed into the limbo of Time, leaving their bodies in the limbo of London. Such was not quite the condition of Timothy's on the Bayswater Road, for Timothy's soul still had one foot in Timothy Forsyte's body, and Smither kept the atmosphere unchanging, of camphor and port wine and house whose windows are only opened to air it twice a day.
John GalsworthyThere are moments when Nature reveals the passion hidden beneath the careless calm of her ordinary moods-violent spring flashing white on almond-blossom through the purple clouds; a snowy, moonlit peak, with its single star, soaring up to the passionate blue; or against the flames of sunset, an old yew-tree standing dark guardian of some fiery secret.
John GalsworthyThe young man who, at the end of September, 1924, dismounted from a taxicab in South Square, Westminster, was so unobtrusively American that his driver had some hesitation in asking for double his fare. The young man had no hesitation in refusing it.
John GalsworthyThere is one rule for politicians all over the world: Don't say in Power what you say in opposition; if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.
John GalsworthyThe law is what it is-a majestic edifice, sheltering all of us, each stone of which rests on another.
John GalsworthyLove! Beyond measure — beyond death — it nearly kills. But one wouldn't have been without it.
John GalsworthyWe are all familiar with the argument: Make war dreadful enough, and there will be no war. And we none of us believe it.
John GalsworthyMemory heaps dead leaves on corpse-like deeds, from under which they do but vaguely offend the sense.
John GalsworthyJustice is a machine that, when some one has once given it the starting push, rolls on of itself.
John GalsworthyIt is by muteness that a dog becomes for one so utterly beyond value; with him one is at peace, where words play no torturing tricks.Those are the moments that I think are precious to a dog-when, with his adoring soul coming through his eyes, he feels that you are really thinking of him.
John Galsworthy