Phyllis Bottome Quotes

There is no thermometer for wants!

Feelings change facts.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Truth is its own defense.

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

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

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

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!

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!

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

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 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?

... 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.

hurt vanity is one of the cruelest of mortal wounds.

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

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?

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

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.

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

to everything there is an end - except fear.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 are so mysterious as the eyes of a child?

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